#B-day LIVE 2023

[putschki1969]

Hikaru Solo Live Details (Live Broadcast)

【LIVE Announcement】 For the first time in a long while, Hikaru will be holding a solo live! 🎵 Details about the upcoming live have been revealed on May 20 during a special live stream on the mobile app Music Champ☺️ Wasn’t able to watch the beginning since Keiko decided to do an Instagram Live and obviously, I couldn’t miss out on that XD

Details Date: Date: 2023/0723 Doors open: 17:00 | Start: 17:30 Title: B-day LIVE 2023 -Be the Best day- Venue: CLUB SEATA Tickets: https://eplus.jp/hikarulive/ Lottery period: 2023/5/20 22:00～2023/5/27 23:59 General sale: 2023/6/3 12:00～2023/7/20 18:00 Back-up band: HaKA, Yuki, Yuhei Hisama, Hiroaki Tanabe, Yusuke Suga Notes: The hall has a capacity of 500 people (standing), however, there will be seats for this event so I’m not sure how many people will fit into the venue. According to Hikaru, there will be no guests, no home video release and as of right now, no live stream option.

⁡In other news, Hikaru will hold a special live broadcast on Music Champ on July 2 (19:00~; Sunday) to celebrate her birthday together with us fans. There’s also some sort of “fever” campaign planned, ”fever” is the red firey thingy at the top of each broadcast I think, there’s another orange thingy which also needs to be increased. Not sure about the specifics. Sounds like viewers need to increase Hikaru’s “fever” amount leading up to/during the stream in order to be eligible for a handful of special presents/benefits (e.g. digital photobook for 100 million fever points). A high “fever” number seems to be achieved by buying in-app-items or maybe it’s just necessary to interact a lot and send free emojis? No idea. I don’t understand apps like this at all. Ughh, I really don’t like how this app is forced down our throats...

Live Corner (during today’s broadcast) Hikaru is joined by HaKA (Kenichiro Hakariya), a member of SPICE and C.C.C and the composer of Ambient Border as well as Hikaru’s more recent freelance songs. I love that Hikaru has been singing a lot during her broadcasts lately (inlcuding Kalafina songs) but I hate that I still haven’t figured out how to record those streams T_T 1. Survivor

■App「Music Champ」Download ・App Store https://apps.apple.com/us/app/musicchamp/id1511895708 ・Google Play https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.music.champ

[zukosdualdao]

something else (only mildly related yet very interconnected in my head to my most recent post about fandom and canonicity) interesting and, for me, relieving, is how your relationship with fandom can change over time. because, while i never would have called myself an anti (and never would have and never did harass anyone over it, to be clear, that’s always been the line-in-the-sand ,“why do people care that much?” breaking point for me), i certainly did used to subscribe to the idea that there were Bad Ships that people were Problematic (TM) for enjoying. as i said, i never harassed anyone, but i certainly nodded along (and probably reblogged some pretty self-righteous posts) to a lot of moral purity in shipping and fandom talking points. (i was, by the way, a total hypocrite, as people are wont to be. i was nodding along because i wanted to have friends in fandom and was incredibly susceptible to that kind of peer pressure at the time (which i think a lot of people are, and is normal, to a degree—it’s what happens when you’re very involved in fandom in high school of all times), but i also read and then felt guilty about reading a lot of the ‘problematic’ things i was publicly against LMAO. in my head, it was fine to privately enjoy those things, but you shouldn’t go around PROMOTING it, nevermind that people had to write those stories for me to read them in the first place. the cognitive dissonance was very real.)

anyway! needless to say, i think, based on the contents of my blog, my position on *gestures vaguely* all that has changed a lot. ironically enough, there was probably a time a few years ago where i was going “sure, makes sense” (in my own head—i was not involved enough in the atla fandom or surrounding discourse to be vocal about it) when people derided zutara as a problematic ship, and i obviously don’t feel that way anymore. interesting, too, is that i don’t… really feel like there was a specific moment or, like, a flip switched and suddenly i was on ‘the other side’ or anything lol. i just feel like i grew up and realized that the kind of nuance and compassion i have always advocated for irl is just as applicable in online fandom spaces, and that there is no inherent moral value to shipping or not shipping something, or liking or not liking a character. once i realized that, i think fandom honestly got a lot more fun for me, because what i was describing before? not fun. deeply stressful. made me feel guilty for liking things, and it was my own fault! that’s not what fandom should be about.

[chaos-in-bright-pink-hair-dye]

Day 5 of killjoys week - Hopeful lies

An easy plan, really

quickly in, quickly out

grab the child and be five feet high before they notice you're gone

So why do my hands tremble when I count the beads around my wrist

again and again and again

trying to send a prayer to a god I don't believe in

Why do I hug my brothers tighter than usual

seeing broken hope in their eyes

and I know the same is in mine

they smile but their lips drip poison and blood

and I

I smile back

because everything is gonna be fine

we are always fine

always

But why do I feel a clawed hand on my shoulder

grip I shake off

instead white walls outstretching their piercing embrace

air leaving my lungs and turning into fog in front of my face

So I strap the holster to my thigh

and grin to root fear in Saturn's heart

because killjoys never die

and we have destiny covering our backs

[just-rogi]

I’m fucking venting here bc I’m angry and don’t have anyone to talk to and I’m not sure if this is political correct or right or whatever but I’m fucking pissed - I’m a public school teacher who works in the inner city and this year alone there have been two shootings in my neighborhood involving students not dying school hours- and one student who went missing due to gang ties (they were found ALIVE a DAYS later) -

I’m fucking TIRED I’m FREAKED OUT and I’m ANGRY because I have to go into work tomorrow and I have to have that conversation with the kids during our SEL block because they will have questions and bc they are in middle school some will not know how to process it and will joke while others will be genuinely upset

and I feel nauseous thinking about the fact that my mother and four of my closest friends are all going through the same fucking shit as teachers at different schools right now- and my roommate who is trans- and unrelated to his identity is also kinda an asshole- has been shitting on me all night about how I’m not I’m danger like he is and how I don’t know his pain (and while I’m not making excuses I’m an openly gay teacher who works directly with the lgbt students and activly educated my kids on trans rights AND I work for a nonprofit organization that directly works to protect trans and queer rights and JUST LAST WEEK put out a video for our organization on antitrans laws - I’m not saying I fucking get what it’s like to be trans but Jesus fuck I’m fighting the fight for trans youth more than you are working at Whole Foods) why the FUCK are you quantifying suffering, why the FUCK are you lashing out at ME of all people, and why the fuck are you telling a public school teacher in inner city Boston that I have no idea what it’s like to be afraid- motherfucker I’m angry I’m sorry but why the fuck are you monopolizing suffering why do you think you have the right to talk to me this fucking way. I get you are scared but you work in Whole Foods in Massachusetts- the bluest state there is- )

there is no fucking cap on grief- sorry I’m upset at this as well but you saying it doesn’t directly effect me is just so fucking ignorant and suffering shouldn’t be quantifiable mf we are on the same fucking side why are you infighting right now (and I know this isn’t relevant and this is entirely unrelated to him being trans but god he is so fucking sexist- saying shit like I have no idea what it’s like to have my bodily autonomy at risk as if roe v wade didn’t get overturned THIS year???) sometimes it pisses me off like fucking sorry I’m being over emotional and overreacting to a school shooting as a fucking public school teacher GOD I should be allowed to be angry too in my own goddamn apartment-

you don’t get to sit on your high horse and say you suffer more than me and that I’m not allowed to be afraid ok I’m done I’m gonna go in tomorrow and make sure to hug my one openly trans kid extra hard bc I know they are suffering just like I know my roomate is suffering and needs a place to express his anger- I get I’m an easy target bc I’m a safe person to lash out at and I’m not telling anyone how to grieve and I know a lot of this is just knee jerk reaction to violence and anger- I just wish he wasn’t expressing it at the one fucking person who doesn’t deserve it, like fuck, the one thing people always say about public school teachers is that we have it TOO easy, especially the night after a school shooting

*Also fuck terfs and fuck anyone who is using a tragedy as an excuse to hate trans people*

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[lopez-richter-fangirl]

I am just waiting for the hell thats gonna break loose here after the Jangle ball, we are all gonna die... both from Queen B (that I believe we got a sneak peak from Mere) and Priceless. RIP to all of us.

I need digi tix to come out asap cause,,,,,

[mattslolita]

one of the girls - c. sturniolo

in which ... you're one of chris sturniolo's girls for the night of the versus tour. ( chris x black!fem!reader )

warnings ; smut, fingering, cowgirl, creampie, unprotected piv ( wrap it freak hoes )

"𝒊 𝒋𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒏𝒂 𝒃𝒆 𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒈𝒊𝒓𝒍𝒔 𝒕𝒐𝒏𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕."

˗ˏˋ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ ˎˊ˗˗ˏˋ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ ˎˊ˗˗ˏˋ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ ˎˊ˗˗ˏˋ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ ˎˊ˗˗ˏˋ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ ˎˊ˗˗ˏˋ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ ˎˊ˗˗ˏˋ ꒰

every moment since you had bought the tickets, you'd been waiting for this day for months — the let's trip versus tour. you've been a fan of the sturniolo triplets since late 2022, and since you weren't able to make the first tour, here was your second chance in 2023 to make the versus tour.

you and your best friend alize had been trying to pick out the perfect outfit for you both to wear, having switched things up many times in between since you wanted it to be a perfect day.

even though as a nick girl she'd be wearing purple, you and alize wanted to match with each other to the t — her outfit contrasted yours only because she wore a cardigan instead of a puffer like you had. the amount of pictures you both took on the uber ride to the venue was insanity, as you both were twinning so hard.

when the day came, you felt excitement course throughout your body as you realized you'd soon be in close vicinity with chris sturniolo — you were a die hard avid for 'black girls 4 chris', something you and alize would joke about all the time. you liked to joke and say you were the number one chris girl ever, whilst alize said that she'd hands down be nick's favorite lesbian.

you knew sometimes your fangirling could get out of hand at times, as you found multiple occasions where chris was your wet dream or you often daydreamed about what it would be like to be with him. his voice, his hair, his personality, that smile, he had lived in your head rent free. you also knew chris probably had no issue at all when it came to hookups, but that wasn't something you cared about — even if it was for one night, one time, you wanted to be in their shoes. you wanted to know what it was like to be one of chris's girls.

the line at the venue had filled quickly, as you and alize had met several of your online friends you made from the fandom — the other girls were sweet and kind, and as you looked at the other chris girls in the crowd you briefly felt a wave of sadness as you thought that any of them could be the lucky one.

your worry dissipated though as you felt alize's excitement radiating off of her body, causing you to giggle. "girl, how are you feeling?"

"how you gon ask me that, y/n?" alize said in disbelief, causing you to giggle as she put a hand on her chest, "we literally finna be breathing the same air as nick sturniolo. hoe, i'm unwell."

some people shot alize dirty looks at her seemingly rude behavior, but both of you paid no mind to them — anyone who was friends with her knew that that's the way she joked around with people, the way she spoke in general.

"i'm so excited to see chris," you tell her dreamily, running a hand through your curly lace front you got done yesterday, "i hope i get picked as his teammate."

"laura's racist if she don't pick us to be one of they partners," alize whispered to you, causing you both to laugh as the line moved forward.

"remember, we get to get pictures and do small talk before the show starts, so make sure we're headed for that line!" you explain to alize who playfully rolls her eyes and swats your shoulder.

"girl chill out, i remember what our tickets said!" alize giggled, "i sure as hell remember how much we paid for them things, ain't no way i'm not speaking to them!"

"and then the merch," you whined, pouting your lips, "that shit was going into my funds for college next semester!"

"then you might wanna start looking for a j-o-b!" alize tells you knowingly, causing you to groan, "i told you, i can speak to my manager for you!"

"girl that man is a pervert, i'm not working there!" you say firmly, "how do you even deal with him?"

"why do you think i act like a dude every time i have a shift?" alize tells you knowingly, "you'll never catch me wearing stuff like this around him."

you felt yourself become excited again as you looped your arm with alize's looking at you guys' matching outfits. "i still can't believe how much we matched with each other!"

"what if we can get a group picture with me, you, nick, and chris?" alize wonders, "we'd all look fine as shit."

"i know chris probably looking fine as hell today," you whispered to alize, causing her to giggle at you.

"girl you always think he look fine," alize says with an eyeroll, causing you to nudge her shoulder playfully.

you could feel your nerves heighten as you got a view of the area where the triplets could be seen doing group photos with the fans. a nerve of both excitement and arousal coursed through your veins as your eyes landed on chris — stray hairs peaked from underneath his black backwards cap, his usual friendly smile painted across his features. you unknowingly bit your lip as you scanned his outfit, seeing as he was wearing an orange tasmanian devil shirt with black jeans white air forces — casual, yet he still turned you on so much.

you took a deep breath as the line drew closer, and you had an even better view of the triplets. they all looked so good, and you felt both excited and nervous at the fact that it would soon be you and alize's turn.

just as you had turned to whisper something alize, chris's eyes had somehow wondered over to you unbeknownst to you — his eyes wandered around the entirety of your outfit, drinking in your brown skin and your thick thighs which were somewhat hidden by your skirt. he almost smirked as he realized you had been dressed in all orange, letting him know you were a chris girl. his girl.

when you looked up from laughing at what alize had said, you could feel eyes on you — your breath almost caught in your throat when you realized he was checking you out. you bite your lip nervously as he swiped his thumb over his nose before giving you a small smirk, directing his attention back towards the fans who were next in line.

you could've melted right then and there, now having to clench your thighs at this. there's no way chris sturniolo was checking you out just now? your mind had to be playing tricks on you.

then again, you didn't doubt chris had thought some fans were were cute. he definitely wouldn't have had any problem hooking up with the older fans if they let him, you definitely would've wanted to hookup with him.

your nerves skyrocket even more when you realize you and alize are up next.

the security ushers you towards nick first, who offers you a warm smile and outstretched arms. "hi, love!"

"hi nick!" you say, hugging him quickly before you make your way towards matt. "hi matt!"

matt gives you a smile, hugging you back as you go to chris next.

his eyes are already on you, having watched your interaction with his brothers — a small smirk is on his face as he pulls you in for a hug, his hands dangerously close to your ass as they reside on your waist. "hi, gorgeous."

it comes out a sort of whisper, which causes your cheeks to warm as you pull away from him with a shy smile. "hi, chris."

you turn to see alize already positioned in between nick and matt, so you took that as the initiative to put yourself in between chris and matt as well. nick puts his arms around alize with a smile, whilst both matt and chris put their arms around you.

well, matt's arm stays around your neck, while chris slips his around your waist, giving it a gentle squeeze causing you to clench your thighs together.

the picture snaps twice, and you turn to wave a quick goodbye to both nick and matt. chris smirks, sending a subtle smack to your ass as you give him a shy wave and you leave with alize.

you still couldn't believe what just happened — you debated on telling alize, but she was so caught up in rambling about the fact that she just hugged and smelled nick so you just giggled with her and let her talk.

the show soon started, and unfortunately you did not get picked to be chris's teammate — but you and alize squealed of excitement when laura asked if she wanted to be nick's teammate. of course that girl was not finna pass that up.

you were front and center of the stage, watching as the show took place in front of you — you knew your eyes weren't playing tricks on you when you saw the glances chris kept sneaking at you. you couldn't help but let your doe eyes wander and stay on his, even when you were recording alize and nick. you had almost missed the perfect swish alize made with the basketball, causing you to cheer loudly for your best friend.

when chris had walked near your side of where the stage was, he gave you a subtle wink to which you smiled and blinked your doe eyes up at him. you were hoping other girls couldn't see it, as they would be quick to make stupid assumptions, because it's not like anything was happening.

the show soon ended, leaving you both nervous and excited once again since you and alize had the small talk with them now. unfortunately you and alize ended up being one of the last people in line, since she accidentally left her phone somewhere on the stage and spent time looking for it.

the small talk line up was in birth order, which you were extremely grateful for — alize had went before you, and now you were up next as you make your way towards nick again.

"hi again!" nick says to you with a beam, holding his arms out for another hug.

"hi, how are you?" you ask him excitedly, as you place one of your posters on the small table.

"i'm feeling good, it was cool to meet everyone," nick tells you, unrolling your poster of all three of them. you hold a pen out to him, which he gratefully accepts, "how are you tonight?"

"i'm doing good!" you tell him excitedly, "i can't believe chris won again, what's going on with you, stink?"

both of you laugh, and he shakes his head. "trust girl, i'm gonna win we just need to give it some time."

"period!" you say, holding your phone up, snapping a few pictures with him, "thank you so much nick, i hope you have a blessed rest of the tour!"

"thank you so much for coming!" nick smiles as you both hug one more time, before you give him a wave as you're off to matt next.

matt smiles at you as you approach him, and you smile back as you set your things on his table. "hi again!"

"hi, matt!" you say calmly, "may i hug you?"

"absolutely, c'mere," he says politely, outstretching his arms towards you, and you slip into his arms.

"how are you tonight?" you ask him, as he signs one of your posters.

"i'm doing good, i can't believe how many people came," matt tells you, and you nod understandingly.

"i'm glad to know you're doing good! i hope you're having fun, too," you tell him sweetly, as he smiles and pulls you in for another hug.

"do you wanna take some pictures?" he asks you kindly, and you nod enthusiastically, handing him your phone as he snaps a couple of .5 photos of you both.

"have a blessed rest of your tour!" you tell matt as you collect your things, beginning to walk away as he smiles and waves at you.

as you're approaching chris, he already has that same smirk plastered on his face as he watches you walk up to him slowly — when you reach him and set your things down on the table, he's instantly bringing you in for a hug.

his hands skim over your skirt momentarily, causing your breath to hitch at the close contact. "hi again, chris."

"hey ma," chris says, swiping his thumb over his bottom lip as he eyes you up and down shamelessly, "did you miss me?"

"i'm a chris girl, of course i missed you," you purred, a sudden bold confidence striking you as you blink your doe eyes at him.

he licks his lips at you and hurriedly jots something down onto one of your posters, and you find yourself unable to look away from him as you take in the way his jawline is so sharp and how the light hits him. he looks so hot, and something inside you wishes he would take you right then and there.

"alright, wrap it up!" one of the security guards yells towards you, causing you to sigh as chris gave you an apologetic smile.

"it was nice meeting you, chris," you say shyly, going to grab your posters.

"you'll see me later, gorgeous," chris whispers in your ear, sending a shiver down your spine as he pulls away, giving you a wink, "see you soon."

you give him one last smile before you hurriedly begin walking to find where alize is at. as you're nearing the hallway, a buzz in your pocket causes you to take your phone out, seeing a message from alize.

alize🙈🫦

girl tell me why i left my phone AGAIN

i went to go look for it that's why you don't see me anywhere

you curse under your breath at this, silently shaking your head as you begin walking towards the exit — suddenly a hand goes out to grab your arm and carefully yank you towards the door.

"what the fu-"

"told you you'd see me again, ma," chris's voice smirks, and you could feel yourself gasp as you turn to see him, your hand still in his.

"where are we going?" you ask, looking up at him.

"giving you a private tour," he smirks, licking his lips as he looks you up and down once more before pulling you towards the door.

it's nighttime already as the both of you exit out of the door — you feel yourself giggle slightly as the wind whips your hair whilst he hurriedly makes his way towards their tour bus with you.

he looks around to make sure nobody saw or followed, and he quickly opens the tour bus doors. chris signals for you to get inside first, and he couldn't help but watch the way your ass jiggled when you walked up the steps.

as soon as you both were inside, you barely have a chance to look around at the tour bus before chris hurriedly whirls you around to face him, his lips meeting yours in a hungry kiss.

your arms find their way wrapped around his neck as he draws you closer to him, his arms slithering down to give your waist a gentle squeeze before he lands a smack to your ass.

you gasp into the kiss, allowing his tongue access inside your mouth — you moan when his hands roam all over your body, until he hooks his arms under your legs.

"jump f'me," he mumbles into the kiss.

you do as you're told, jumping and hooking your legs around his waist. chris walks backwards towards the sofa couch, sitting down on it as he continues to kiss you.

you move your legs on either side of his waist straddling him, as you whimper into the kiss — you detach your lips from his and bite down on his bottom lip, pulling away with a pop.

"fuck, you're so hot, baby," chris breathes, causing you to whimper again as you grind down on his hard on.

"chris i want you to do whatever you want with me," you breathe, resting your forehead on his as you catch your breath, "i'm yours."

"is that so, sweetheart?" chris grins up at you, running his hands up and down your sides which causes a shiver to run down your spine, "you gonna be a good girl f'me?"

"yes, always," you tell him, grinding down on him again eliciting a low groan from him.

chris reattaches your lips, tilting his head in order to dominate the kiss — he pulls away and leaves a trail of kisses on your neck, sucking on a particularly sweet spot causing a moan to escape your lips.

you shrug your puffer jacket off of your shoulders, as chris helps to take off your halter top as well. your tits spill out of your bra causing chris to groan as he takes one in his mouth, sucking and nipping at it whilst massaging and kneading the other.

"m, fuck chris," you whine, throwing your head back as you grind down on his erection, feeling your panties dampen.

"take this off f'me baby," chris instructs you, taking his hands off of you so that you could stand up.

you hurriedly pull down your skirt, revealing the orange lace panties you wore underneath — chris's eyes darkened with lust, immediately pulling you back onto his lap. "fuck, you had this all planned out, didn't you?"

"no, but i was hoping it worked," you giggled, biting down on his earlobe as his hand went down to rub across your slick.

"look at you, so wet f'me," chris breathed against your skin, rubbing his hand along your wetness teasingly, "take these off baby."

you quickly stood up and rid yourself of the panties, throwing them to the ongoing pile of clothes. chris pulled you back onto his lap, inserting one of his long, slender fingers into your hole, causing a lewd moan to escape your lips.

"f-fuck chris, feels so good," you moan, throwing your head back as his fingers work in and out of you.

"taking my fingers so well, sweetheart," chris rasps, leaving kisses along your neck as his fingers curl inside you.

"please, faster..." you whine out, his mouth leaving a deep purple spot on your neck as he pulls away with a pop.

he speeds his pace as he finger fucks you, loving the way you sound as he abuses your walls with his fingers — he added another, increasing the pleasure and you felt your orgasm approaching quickly.

"so close, chris," you moan, grinding onto his fingers, "m' gonna cum."

"cum on my fingers baby," chris grunts in your ear.

you quickly obliged, feeling your orgasm wash over you as a moan of chris's name escapes your lips and your juices coat his fingers, your legs shaking. you stand up as he licks his fingers clean, grinning up at you as he pulls his pants and boxers down revealing his throbbing cock — your eyes widened, now knowing that he was in fact huge as fuck.

"what's the matter baby?" he grins cockily, grabbing your waist again as you hover over him.

"you're s-so big, i don't-"

a loud moan escapes your lips as chris sinks you onto his cock, and you immediately feel him stretching your walls — tears feel your waterline from how big he is, your mouth fixed into a permanent 'o' shape as you adjust to his size.

"c'mon ma, i know you can take me," chris assures you, gripping your waist tightly as a groan leaves his mouth, "be a good girl, remember?"

you nodded, just as chris suddenly thrusts his hips up hitting your g spot which elicits a moan from you as you grip his legs while your head is thrown back — he grabs your chin as forces you to look at him.

"look at me while you ride me, ma," chris instructs you sternly.

your hands still gripping his legs, you begin bouncing up and down on his cock as it abuses your cervix repeatedly — the slapping of skin as well as chris's low moans and your high pitches ones vibrated throughout the tour bus, and you were pretty sure anyone close enough could hear what was happening.

"fuck this pussy feels so good," chris grunts, watching as your tits bounce in his face, his eyes staring into yours darkly, "who's pussy is this?"

"yours chris, all yours," you moan, throwing your head back as you continue bouncing, "m'close again..."

"hold it baby, i'm almost there," chris pants, his hips thrusting upward to meet your pace, "fuck..."

suddenly chris grabs your phone and holds it up, taking a live photo of you bouncing on his cock whilst he leaves another kiss to your neck.

with a few more thrusts, you feel chris's dick twitch inside you indicating how close he is — he finally releases inside you, painting your walls white. your second orgasm washes over you, as your legs shake whilst your juices release all over chris's cock.

chris helps you off of him, and you stand up immediately grabbing your clothes scattered around — chris lands a smack to your ass as you bend over to pick your shirt up. "chris!"

he just laughs as he pulls his pants up, then hands you your skirt as well. you smile up at him shyly as you slip it on — he rubs his thumb across your lip and plants another quick kiss to it as he holds your phone up again.

"sorry i couldn't take it earlier," he says, pulling your body against his.

"it's okay, taking it here feels more intimate anyway," you giggle.

you hold the side of chris's face as he snaps the camera once, then he places a kiss to your cheek as he snaps another one.

"can i use the bathroom real quick?" you ask him shyly, and he nods, showing you where it was.

once inside you hurriedly pee, letting out a sigh as you finish and wash your hands. you look in the mirror at yourself, a small smile tugging at the corner of your lips as you look back at the girl who just got fucked by chris sturniolo.

walking back outside, you look to chris who has your phone in his hand, as he holds it out to you, which makes you smile and walk towards him, reaching for it.

he puts his hand on your waist as he holds your phone above your head, looking down at you with a smirk.

"boy, if you don't hand me my phone back!" you tell him, trying to reach for it which resulted in him holding it higher.

"few more kisses first, ma," chris grins, puckering his lips out making you giggle.

you press a kiss to his lips and pull away, but he quickly dips down to peck your lips a few more times. he hands you your phone back finally, and you smile as you begin walking towards the tour bus's exit.

"your posters!" chris says before you can leave, hurriedly handing them to you.

"thank you," you said, looking up at him, "i enjoyed tonight."

"anything for one of my girls," chris winks with a grin, planting one last kiss to your lips.

you exit the tour bus, looking around for any sign of life before you make your way around the building — you look around, your body trembling from the cold air before a honk of a horn grabs your attention and you gasp, jumping slightly.

"where the fuck were you, y/n?" alize's voice says worriedly, rolling down the window to the uber, "bitch i was looking for you!"

"shit girl, i'm so sorry," you apologize, climbing into the seat of the uber next to her, "i have so much to tell you."

"hoe, you better tell me where you disappeared to," alize whispers to you half angrily, the other curious.

before you could get a word out of your mouth, a buzz from your phone grabs your attention.

unknown

*one attachment*

y/n

chris ??? are those my panties ??? 😭

unknown

didn't fuck anybody else baby, yeah they're yours

need something to remember you by since today was our only la show

y/n

is this you telling me you wanna see me again?

unknown

i'll fly you out to another show if you're down

y/n

only if my girl can come too !

unknown

i'll get you both a plane ticket

y/n

i'll see you soon then😘

unknown

good

send me some pics to keep me company while you not here😏

"bitch what?!"

( lilly's section 💌 )

this didn't come out as good as i wanted it to, but i hope y'all liked this ! love u guys so much muah💌.

@luverboychris @muwapsturniolo @prettiest-poision @mrssturnioloo @mattsturniolosleftnut @sturnprime @thenickgirl @guccifrog @nickgetsmewetter @eyeliketoeatpoosay @e1ias3 @sp3aknaur @middlepartmatt @summerssover @riasturns @sturn777 @l0akkzz @hysteria-things @pinksturniolo @chrissturniolossidehoe @chris-slut @hoesformatt @raysmayhem-72 @whosthislyssbitch @lanas-doll @chrisssluttywaist @mbbsgf @jetaimevous @sturnsxplr-25 @moonk1ss3d

[teamatsumu]

kinktober 2023 -> day 22

knot - miya osamu x reader

word count: 1988

warnings: alpha!osamu and omega!reader, a/b/o dynamics, swearing, knotting, mentions of heat and rut

kinktober masterlist

You knew you would regret this. God, the amount of stupidity that was going into your decision right now would make you hurl later. But right now, you could give less of a shit.

It was with teary eyes and choppy, difficult breaths that you messaged Osamu. SOS. Come over ASAP. Your fingers trembled as you typed, and your vision was a mess, swimming, things going in and out of focus. Once you had sent the message, you dropped your phone somewhere out of sight, flopping back onto the bed, your sheets damp with sweat.

It was Day 6 of your heat, and even though normally things would start calming down by now, you were nowhere close to that. Instead of slowly cleaning up, like you often did during this time, you were still motionless on your bed, breathing hard and heavy, sweaty all over, and core clenching so painfully it made you cry fresh tears every few minutes. You had finally accepted that no amount of warm water bottles or silicone dildos could get you through this. Your body was craving an Alpha’s knot. And your heat was too stubborn to go down without it.

Hence the text to Osamu.

Osamu had been your friend for a few years now, ever since he opened his first ever branch of Onigiri Miya. Your personalities had gelled extremely well, so it was no wonder that you both made room for each other in your lives. Osamu was someone you trusted completely. He was kind, very caring, very perceptive, and very protective. He was the perfect Alpha, and of course, your little Omega heart had fallen head over heels for him. You were convinced however, that he didn’t feel the same for you. Osamu didn’t seem interested in courting at all, with anyone. He had briefly mentioned to you how focused he was on expanding his business, so you were sure he had no desire to be tied down with a mate at the moment. And so, your feelings remained boxed up, grateful to be part of his life in any way, even if it was platonic.

But biology could not be ignored. Even if you had gaslit yourself into believing you were fine being his friend, the Omega in you craved him. Desperately. Ardently. So no wonder you were still here, still in the very depth of your heat, with no signs of it stopping anytime soon. No wonder your Omega had taken over, mind blanking as you texted Osamu to come to you. You had lost to your Omega in your vulnerable condition, and you had beckoned the Alpha to you. Now you lay there, anxious, not knowing what you would do. All you knew was that you wanted him so bad you would do anything to get him.

The banging on your door startled you, and you heard Osamu’s muffled voice call out your name. With the last remnants of your strength, you stumbled out of your room and to the front door, clad in nothing but your tiniest shorts and skimpy crop top. The banging continued, even as your shaky hands unlocked and unchained the door. When you pulled it open, you nearly crumbled.

Your bloodshot eyes met Osamu’s calm, gray ones, his hand held up mid-knock. You saw the exact moment your scent hit him, his face scrunching and entire body stiffening, eyes widening in realization.

“You’re- you… Y/N, you-” His hand shot up to cover his nose, taking a step back. You abruptly shot forward, hand fisting the front of his shirt so he wouldn’t go any farther, tugging so hard that he stumbled towards you. You took advantage of that and pulled him further inside, shutting the door behind him and locking it.

Osamu groaned behind you, and you turned in time to see his eyes wandering over your almost bare body, your clothes leaving nothing to the imagination. His chest heaved, and a faint sheen of sweat was already forming around his hairline.

“Y-ya need to let me leave.” His voice was low, words muffled behind his hand. You almost moaned at the sound.

“Can’t.” You choked out, eyelids fluttering as you took in great big breaths of air, reveling in his wonderful scent, which was heightened by your sensitive nose. You stepped closer to him, knees buckling. He immediately stepped back. You whined in protest.

“Ya don’t want this.” He continued to reason. “Yer in heat. Yer not thinking straight.”

You shook your head furiously. “Always- always wanted you, Alpha.” You breathed. “Wanted you for so long. But you,” your lower lip wobbled. “You didn’t want me.”

Osamu’s eyebrows shot up, eyes widening in shock. He remained frozen in place as you moved closer to him, until you were right before him, standing on your tiptoes to nose at his neck, right on top of his scent gland. You heard him release a shaky exhale, hand dropping from his mouth as he finally breathed in your scent.

“Fuck.” His voice was strained, not protesting or stopping you as you moved forward, body pressing to his. Your tongue lapped over his neck, scenting him with fervor now that he wasn’t stopping you, and the Omega in you purred in satisfaction when your scent started mixing with his. And he was letting you.

“Omega…” His protest was weak, hands already brushing over your bare sides, fingers flexing as if he was holding himself back. So you decided to give him one final push.

“Why do you think my heat won’t go down?” You mumbled into his neck. “My Omega needs you, ‘Samu. Needs your knot. Give it to me, Alpha. Need it so bad.”

That’s all it took.

Osamu bent his head until his lips met yours, hard and rough. You keened into his mouth, one hand reaching up to tangle tightly in his hair while the other fisted his shirt to pull him even closer. Osamu’s hands were running wild over you, your waist, your hips, running down your back until they squeezed your ass. You arched into him, sighing when his fingers brushed over your clothed slit, groaning low.

“Yer soaking.” He whispered, voice low and thick with want. He pushed the crotch of your shorts aside, immediately shoving two long, thick fingers inside you. You cried out at the feeling, clenching desperately around him.

“What’d ya use?” He asked, his other hand gripping so tight at your waist it almost hurt. “Dildo? Vibrator? Tell me. What’d ya stuff this weepin’ cunt of yers with?”

You moaned at how filthy he sounded, at how prominent his accent got when he was turned on. You mumbled your answer into his neck, clinging to him as you ground your hips down on his fingers, trying to prolong the relief his fingers brought. He chuckled.

“Dirty little ‘Mega. Ya want me this bad? Look at ya, yer drippin’ down my whole hand.”

Your knees buckled again, and this time Osamu didn’t stop you. Instead, he lowered himself along with you, until you were sprawled right there, on the floor of your living room, legs spread and welcoming Osamu as he fit snugly there, his tongue running wildly over your entire neck, nosing at your scent gland. His throbbing erection pushed into your thigh, his fingers still working into you at a leisurely pace. You whined.

“Alpha, please.” You choked out, pleading with him through teary eyes. “Please.”

Osamu pulled away from your neck to look down at you, and you noticed how flushed he was. His hair was a mess, face red and eyes wild. His lips were swollen and bruised, and through his open mouth, you could see the faint beginnings of his canines. They were elongating. Your eyes widened.

Was your heat triggering Osamu’s rut?

You didn’t have it in you to think about it further because Osamu was sitting up, undressing quickly and doing the same to you until you were both bare before each other. You moaned at the sight of his cock, hard and throbbing, flushed to an angry maroon shade. The base was already a little swollen and your mouth watered at the sight. Your Omega keened. There it was. His knot. And you needed it inside you now.

Osamu seemed to be on the same page, because moments later he was pushing into you, taking advantage of the copious amounts of slick you were producing to slide straight in, groaning loud when his hips met yours, buried into you to the hilt. Your jaw went slack, immediately feeling your body temperature go down and the pain in your core settle slightly. Your Omega preened and settled, finally getting what it so desperately craved. Your Alpha on top of you, stuffing you full of his cock, the promise of getting his knot soon.

(Of course, he wasn’t your Alpha. You were pointedly ignoring that fact.)

Osamu was quick to set a punishing, fast pace, ramming his cock into your wet hole with all his might. You gasped and shook under him, eyes rolling up in your head at the feeling. It felt divine, after days and days of wanting exactly this, finally having it felt like an out of body experience. Your cunt was fluttering in delight, so happy to get what you wanted, and you felt your whole body sing at the feeling. You watched as Osamu smirked a little, smelling the shift in your scent.

“Feel good?” The question was rhetorical. How you were feeling was written all over your face, evident in the way your scent sweetened. Yet you still furiously nodded.

“So good, Alpha.” You whined, arching up off the floor, your breasts bouncing with each harsh thrust. “Fuck. Wanted this so bad. Wanted your cock in me for so long. God, need your knot. Please. Please.”

Osamu groaned, broken and shaky, cursing under his breath as he lifted your legs up to your chest, pressing down until you were folded into a mating press, his pace becoming even more rough and sloppy. You cried out at the feeling, eyes widening at how suddenly his demeanor had changed. You eyed Osamu curiously through your wet eyes, watched the gold specks appear in his eyes, watched his canines elongate until they were reaching below his bottom lip.

Osamu had just started his rut.

Your back arched up as your orgasm hit you full force, legs kicking and flailing as much as they could in Osamu’s bruising grip, feeling wave after wave of electricity zip through you. Osamu’s cock was swelling rapidly at the base, indicating how close he was to finishing too, the size of it catching on your abused hole with every thrust until he was moaning loud, pressing forward with force to make sure he could bully the knot into you. You cried out at the stretch, gasping when Osamu stilled and his cum started pouring into your cunt. He twitched and shook above you, riding out his orgasm as you ran a hand over his back, coaxing him through it.

All was silent except your heaving breaths. Osamu slowly lowered your legs until they were wrapped around his waist, knot still snug inside you. You sighed and wrapped your arms over his broad shoulders, eyelids fluttering shut. He carefully nosed at your neck.

“Feel better?” He asked, voice hoarse. You hummed and nodded in reply.

“What about you? I think I triggered your rut.” You looked down at him sheepishly, eyeing the sharp canines now prominent against his lips, and Osamu sighed, mouth twitching up into a smile.

“Ya did.” He relaxed into you even more, cock shifting inside you slightly. “Can’t say I’m mad about that. It was totally worth it.”

You giggled, leaning your cheek against Osamu’s hair as you both waited for his knot to go down.

“For what it’s worth, Y/N, I’ve always wanted ya too.”

Taglist:

@bxbyyyjocelyn @thisbicc @lazuliquartz @dreamayy @kuroosluthoe @true-form-hoe @akumakitsune21 @cham0mil3-and-h0n3y @samisfunky @universal-s1ut @msbyomimi @dohwaesu @leothesquishy @n0tmykays @tsukiran @reyofsunshinelol @bleach-your-panties @galaneiaeris @leyra-giovanni @erenspersonalwh0re @peachesncats @soapsoftheworld @iwannabecamiloshovel l @vintagevict0ria @smithieandy @moonlit-mizukage @snazzyturtles @argwein

A/N: For those whose tags arent working, im sorry! I tried and for some reason, your names wont show up in the mentions :( another way of being notified is to turn on my blog notifs for @teamatsumufics . I only reblog my fics there so it serves almost like being in a taglist!

[motazmohammed]

Hello my supporting friends ! 🇵🇸🍉❤

I am motaz Mohammed , 22 yrs , a Palestinian youngman, from Gaza, seeking to save my 20 _ member family from the hell of the war by moving to a safe place till the gruesome war ends.

Our suffering and hardship started on 14th October, 2023 when my family was forcibly displaced from the north to the south under a life-threatening situation. As a result, our houses were completely destroyed and demolished, and our business accordingly went with the wind. Nothing has been left to be a source of livelihood. No shelters to house us nor a livelihood source to live on.

We have been living miserably in tents since the early days of the war. Life had become very hard and tough. No means of life still exists. Getting the least level of life is now hard and impossible. All our hope is to secure the daily basic necessities but this seems more often impossible that is why we are suffering the hardship of life. You can't imagine how hard it is to get food, drink water, medicine and other facilities. Life has become dire and sad in addition to the hot weather inside the hot tents that adds to our pain and unbelievable sufferings. Words can't show the miserable situations and circumstances we are experiencing nowadays due to the unfair war.

A part of our daily sufferings to get the least of what we need. Imagine how you feel when you wait for at least four hours in queue .Things are the worst one has ever

experienced. That is why I am asking for you generous contribution to help me secure the least of what we daily need and to find safety and peace for the twenty-member family who are now tasting all forms of torture and sorrow.

Every day we wake up to find things move from bad to worse. No sign is there for the war to end and this add to our unhappiness and miserable life. Despair and hopelessness have become new forms of our life as we are now homeless , displaced and jobless.

Please don't spare this moment of helping a family in bad need. You add happiness and hope to people who lost every single thing in their life. You can help us by donating whatever you can or by sharing my link to other generous donors.

Thank you so much for supporting us in these dire times.❤

@muminshoom @thedigitalbard @therottenkingsreckoning @timogsilangan

@brutaliakhoa @brokenbackmountain @breathtakinglandscapes @cockworkangels

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@shamelessshepherd @1tsny4nc4t @fairycandles @girlinafairytale

[putschki1969]

【Kichijoji】 Walking by Myself and Eating Part 2

Hello, this is Hikaru. Thank you for watching! This time, it's already my fourth attempt at doing a location shoot all by myself… with my heart pounding, I had the camera in one hand, my food in the other. I apologise for the poor angles😂 On July 23 I will be performing at CLUB SEATA in Kichijoji. So this is part 2 of me checking out the area of Kichijoji and trying different foods! I ate a lot, from side dishes to desserts. If you have a chance, please check out the places I visited🍀 If you have any video suggestions, please leave them in the comment section 📝 [Stores I went to] ・Taiwan Roryu Koshomochi ・PIECE OF BAKE ・PARM TREE ・Iseya ・chai break

Hikaru rehearsing for her upcoming Birthday Live

Tweet 1 | Tweet 2 | Instagram 1 | Instagram 2

[sluttsumu]

let me live my fratboy!inarizaki dream okay?

chars: ‘tsumu, osamu, suna, & kita

nsfw — mdni, tw: corruption

fratboy!atsumu who is literally the worst person alive, but he’s hot and a good fuck so it makes it okay, okay?

he’s fucked every girl from his fan club and every bimbo on campus but that’s not what satisfies him at all. prissy, hard-to-get girls with their hymens still intact really turns him on. why? because he enjoys the chase of a women who won’t instantly fall to her knees for him. secretly finding information about his next target so he could casually end up in the same study period, or walking along the same path just so he could talk to her. it could be labeled kind ‘stalkery’ but he labeled it as persistent, because at the end of the day once her manicure was clawing at his back it’s mission accomplished, and onto the next. “you didn’t think i actually wanted you? did you” he’d chuckle in the faces of the girls who looked at him with tears in their eyes, he figured that in the end they would end up blaming themselves for fucking a known whore anyway.

fratboy!suna whose an old money nepo-baby, in which he flashes his parents cash to attract gold digger, wannabe future housewives.

slut is an understatement, calculated whore is a better term. as a psyc major he’s the king of gaslighting and manipulation, AND THE GIRLS EAT IT UP. unlike atsumu he somewhat puts in the effort to finding a girlfriend, but there’s always a new one…every month. being sly and cunning is genetic according to him, it’s also the same way he manipulates girls into not wearing condoms. “c’mon pretty, how’re gonna give me an heir with latex in the way, hmm?” and it works every time. every selfish, greedy girlfriend he’s had falls for his antics in hopes to marry their way into his family, and give him a baby. let’s just say the only “compensation” they got was from a therapist or him buying them off to get a plan b the next morning.

fratboy!kita who is literally so smart he manages to y= m (x+d)^2 + k, girls into his bed.

it’s all so innocent at first when he offers to carry a certain girls books, and that turns into him sitting next to her in class. it’s cute from a far, isn’t it? when in reality he’s just singled out the classes bimbo in hopes to tutor her. day by day he’d observe while sitting next to her, as she’d glance over at him to catch him staring from time to time. she thought that he was maybe admiring how pretty she was or caught on to her perfume of the day, but that was never the case. in his mind he was practically drooling over the way her tits spilled out of her shirt, or when they had a test and he could tell she stayed up all night because she looked completely fucked out. after her whining a few times about her grades he offered to help, which just turned into him making her that much dumber by fucking her over his desk till she was babbling. “stupid girls fall into stupid traps” he’d say, and the fact that he did this every semester meant that he was always right.

fratboy!osamu who is literally the most nonchalant asshole known around the entire campus.

osamu was too persuasive for his own good. he could never hold a solid relationship or friendship with anyone of the opposing gender, why? because he ends up fucking all of his female friends, and then ghosting them not even 24 hours after. his tricks were the same with every girl, and a night out with him always turned into the walk of shame the following morning. the only notifications any girl would receive from him afterwards is a copy of their intoxicated sex tape which most don’t remember making and a follow up message saying “my friends think you look really good on camera btw”. confronting him after study hall the next day wouldn’t change a thing, simply because the only response he’d give was “do i know you?”

SLUTTSUMU 2023

[turnstileskyline]

The Oral History of Take This To Your Grave – transcription under the cut

The pages that are just photographs, I haven't included. This post is already long enough.

Things that happened in 2003: Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor of California. Teen Vogue published its first issue. The world lost Johnny Cash. Johnny Depp appeared as Captain Jack Sparrow for the first time. A third Lord of the Rings movie arrived. Patrick Stump, Pete Wentz, Joe Trohman, and Andy Hurley released Take This To Your Grave.

"About 21 years ago or so, as I was applying to colleges I would ultimately never go to, Fall Out Boy began as a little pop-punk side project of what we assumed was Pete's more serious band, Arma Angelus," Patrick wrote in a May 2023 social media post.

"We were sloppy and couldn't solidify a lineup, but the three of us (Pete, Joe, and I) were having way too much fun to give up on it."

"We were really rough around the edges. As an example of how rough, one of my favorite teachers pulled me aside after hearing the recording that would eventually become Evening Out With Your Girlfriend and tactfully said, 'What do you think your best instrument is, Patrick? Drums. It's drums. Probably not singing, Patrick.'"

"We went into Smart Studios with the Sean O'Keefe... So, there we were, 3/5 of a band with a singer who'd only been singing a year, no drummer, and one out of two guitarists. But we had the opportunity to record with Sean at Butch Vig's legendary studio.

"Eight or so months later, Fueled by Ramen would give us a contract to record the remaining songs. We'd sleep on floors, eat nothing but peanut butter and jelly, live in a van for the next three years, and somehow despite that, eventually play with Elton John and Taylor Swift and Jay-Z and for President Obama and the NFC championship, and all these other wildly unpredictable things. But none of that would ever come close to happening if Andy hadn't made it to the session and Joe hadn't dragged us kicking and screaming into being a band."

Two decades after its release, Take This To Your Grave sits comfortable in the Top 10 of Rolling Stone's 50 Greatest Pop-Punk Albums, edging out landmark records from Buzzcocks, Generation X, Green Day, The Offspring, Blink-182, and The Ramones.

It even ranked higher than Through Being Cool by Saves The Day and Jersey's Best Dancers from Lifetime, two records the guys in Fall Out Boy particularly revere.

Fall Out Boy's proper full-length debut on Fueled by Ramen is a deceptively smart, sugar-sweet, raw, energetic masterpiece owing as much to the bass player's pop culture passions, the singers deep love of R&B and soul, and their shared history in the hardcore scene as any pioneering punk band. Fall Out Boy's creative and commercial heights were still ahead, but Take This To Your Grave kicked it off, a harbinger for the enduring songwriting partnership between Patrick Stump and Pete Wentz, the eclectic contributions from Joe Trohman, and the propulsive powerhouse that is Andy Hurley.

The recordings document a special moment when Fall Out Boy was big in "the scene" but a "secret" from the mainstream. The band (and some of their friends) first sat down for an Oral History (which doubled as an Oral History of their origin story) with their old friend Ryan J. Downey, then Senior Editor for Alternative Press, upon the occasion of the album's 10th anniversary. What follows is an updated, sharper, and expanded version of that story, newly re-edited in 2023. As Patrick eloquently said: "Happy 20th birthday, Take This To Your Grave, you weird brilliant lightning strike accident of a record."

– Ryan J. Downey.

A Weird, Brilliant Lightning Strike Of A Record. The Oral History Of Fall Out Boy's Take This To Your Grave.

As told by:

Patrick Stump

Pete Wentz

Joe Trohman

Andy Hurley

Bob McLynn - Crush Music

Sean O'Keefe - Producer/Mixer

John Janick - Fueled By Ramen

Tim McIlrath - Rise Against

Mani Mostofi - Racetraitor

Chris Gutierrez - Arma Angelus

Mark Rose - Spitalfield

Sean Muttaqi - Uprising Records

Rory Felton - The Militia Group

Richard Reines - Drive-Thru Records

"To Feel No More Bitterness Forever" - From Hardcore to Softcore, 1998-2000

PETE WENTZ: When I got into hardcore, it was about discovering the world beyond yourself. There was a culture of trying to be a better person. That was part of what was so alluring about hardcore and punk for me. But for whatever reason, it shifted. Maybe this was just in Chicago, but it became less about the thought process behind it and more about moshing and breakdowns. There was a close-mindedness that felt very reactive.

TIM MCILRITH: I saw First Born many years ago, which was the first time I saw Pete and met him around then. This was '90s hardcore - p.c., vegan, activist kind of hardcore music. Pete was in many of those bands doing that kind of thing, and I was at many of those shows. The hardcore scene in Chicago was pretty small, so everyone kind of knew each other. I knew Andy Hurley as the drummer in Racetraitor. I was in a band called Baxter, so Pete always called me 'Baxter.' I was just 'Baxter' to a lot of those guys.

JOE TROHMAN: I was a young hardcore kid coming to the shows. The same way we all started doing bands. You're a shitty kid who goes to punk and hardcore shows, and you see the other bands playing, and you want to make friends with those guys because you want to play in bands too. Pete and I had a bit of a connection because we're from the same area. I was the youngest dude at most shows. I would see Extinction, Racetraitor, Burn It Down, and all the bands of that era.

WENTZ: My driver's license was suspended then, so Joe drove me everywhere. We listened to either Metalcore like Shai Hulud or pop-punk stuff like Screeching Weasel.

MCILRITH: I was in a band with Pete called Arma Angelus. I was like their fifth or sixth bass player. I wasn't doing anything musically when they hit me up to play bass, so I said, 'Of course.' I liked everyone in the band. We were rehearsing, playing a few shows here and there, with an ever-revolving cast of characters. We recorded a record together at the time. I even sing on that record, believe it or not, they gave me a vocal part. Around that same time, I began meeting with [bassist] Joe [Principe] about starting what would become Rise Against.

CHRIS GUTIERREZ: Wentz played me the Arma Angelus demo in the car. He said he wanted it to be a mix of Despair, Buried Alive, and Damnation A.D. He told me Tim was leaving to start another band - which ended up being Rise Against - and asked if I wanted to play bass.

TROHMAN: Pete asked me to fill in for a tour when I was 15. Pete had to call my dad to convince him to let me go. He did it, too. It was my first tour, in a shitty cargo van, with those dudes. They hazed the shit out of me. It was the best and worst experience. Best overall, worst at the time.

GUTIERREZ: Enthusiasm was starting to wane in Arma Angelus. Our drummer was really into cock-rock. It wasn't an ironic thing. He loved L.A. Guns, Whitesnake, and Hanoi Rocks. It drove Pete nuts because the scene was about Bleeding Through and Throwdown, not cock rock. He was frustrated that things weren't panning out for the band, and of course, there's a ceiling for how big a metalcore band can get, anyway.

MANI MOSTOFI: Pete had honed this tough guy persona, which I think was a defense mechanism. He had some volatile moments in his childhood. Underneath, he was a pretty sensitive and vulnerable person. After playing in every mosh-metal band in the Midwest and listening exclusively to Earth Crisis, Damnation A.D., Chokehold, and stuff like that for a long time, I think Pete wanted to do something fresh. He had gotten into Lifetime, Saves The Day, The Get Up Kids, and bands like that. Pete was at that moment where the softer side of him needed an outlet, and didn't want to hide behind mosh-machismo. I remember him telling me he wanted to start a band that more girls could listen to.

MCILRATH: Pete was talking about starting a pop-punk band. Bands like New Found Glory and Saves The Day were successful then. The whole pop-punk sound was accessible. Pete was just one of those guys destined for bigger things than screaming for mediocre hardcore bands in Chicago. He's a smart guy, a brilliant guy. All the endeavors he had taken on, even in the microcosm of the 1990s Chicago hardcore world, he put a lot of though into it. You could tell that if he were given a bigger receptacle to put that thought into, it could become something huge. He was always talented: lyrics, imagery, that whole thing. He was ahead of the curve. We were in this hardcore band from Chicago together, but we were both talking about endeavors beyond it.

TROHMAN: The drummer for Arma Angelus was moving. Pete and I talked about doing something different. It was just Pete and me at first. There was this thuggishness happening in the Chicago hardcore scene at that time that wasn't part of our vibe. It was cool, but it wasn't our thing.

MCILRITH: One day at Arma Angelus practice, Pete asked me, 'Are you going to do that thing with Joe?' I was like, 'Yeah, I think so.' He was like, 'You should do that, dude. Don't let this band hold you back. I'll be doing something else, too. We should be doing other things.' He was really ambitious. It was so amazing to me, too, because Pete was a guy who, at the time, was kind of learning how to play the bass. A guy who didn't really play an instrument will do down in history as one of the more brilliant musicians in Chicago. He had everything else in his corner. He knew how to do everything else. He needed to get some guys behind him because he had the rest covered. He had topics, themes, lyrics, artwork, this whole image he wanted to do, and he was uncompromising. He also tapped into something the rest of us were just waking up to: the advent of the internet. I mean, the internet wasn't new, but higher-speed internet was.

MOSTOFI: Joe was excited to be invited by Pete to do a band. Joe was the youngest in our crew by far, and Pete was the 'coolest' in a Fonzie sort of way. Joe deferred to Pete's judgement for years. But eventually, his whole life centered around bossy big-brother Pete. I think doing The Damned Things was for Joe what Fall Out Boy was for Pete, in a way. It was a way to find his own space within the group of friends. Unsurprisingly, Joe now plays a much more significant role in Fall Out Boy's music.

WENTZ: I wanted to do something easy and escapist. When Joe and I started the band, it was the worst band of all time. I feel like people said, 'Oh, yeah, you started Fall Out Boy to get big.' Dude, there was way more of a chance of every other band getting big in my head than Fall Out Boy. It was a side thing that was fun to do. Racetraitor and Extinction were big bands to me. We wanted to do pop-punk because it would be fun and hilarious. It was definitely on a lark. We weren't good. If it was an attempt at selling out, it was a very poor attempt.

MCILRITH: It was such a thing for people to move from hardcore bands to bands called 'emo' or pop-punk, as those bands were starting to get some radio play and signed to major labels. Everyone thought it was easy, but it's not as easy as that. Most guys we knew who tried it never did anything more successful than their hardcore bands. But Pete did it! And if anyone was going to, it was going to be him. He never did anything half-assed. He ended up playing bass in so many bands in Chicago, even though he could barely play the bass then, because simply putting him in your band meant you'd have a better show. He was just more into it. He knew more about dynamics, about getting a crowd to react to what you're doing than most people. Putting Pete in your band put you up a few notches.

"I'm Writing You A Chorus And Here Is Your Verse" - When Pete met Patrick, early 2001.

MARK ROSE: Patrick Stump played drums in this grindcore band called Grinding Process. They had put out a live split cassette tape.

PATRICK STUMP: My ambition always outweighed my ability or actual place in the world. I was a drummer and played in many bands and tried to finagle my way into better ones but never really managed. I was usually outgunned by the same two guys: this guy Rocky Senesce; I'm not sure if he's playing anymore, but he was amazing. And this other guy, De'Mar Hamilton, who is now in Plain White T's. We'd always go out for the same bands. I felt like I was pretty good, but then those guys just mopped the floor with me. I hadn't been playing music for a few months. I think my girlfriend dumped me. I was feeling down. I wasn't really into pop-punk or emo. I think at the time I was into Rhino Records box sets.

TROHMAN: I was at the Borders in Eden's Plaza in Wilmette, Illinois. My friend Arthur was asking me about Neurosis. Patrick just walked up and started talking to me.

STUMP: I was a bit arrogant and cocky, like a lot of young musicians. Joe was talking kind of loudly and I overheard him say something about Neurosis, and I think I came in kind of snotty, kind of correcting whatever they had said.

TROHMAN: We just started talking about music, and my buddy Arthur got shoved out of the conversation. I told him about the band we were starting. Pete was this local hardcore celebrity, which intrigued Patrick.

STUMP: I had similar conversations with any number of kids my age. This conversation didn't feel crazy special. That's one of the things that's real about [Joe and I meeting], and that's honest about it, that's it's not some 'love at first sight' thing where we started talking about music and 'Holy smokes, we're going to have the best band ever!' I had been in a lot of bands up until then. Hardcore was a couple of years away from me at that point. I was over it, but Pete was in real bands; that was interesting. Now I'm curious and I want to do this thing, or at least see what happens. Joe said they needed a drummer, guitar player, or singer, and I kind of bluffed and said I could do any one of those things for a pop-punk band. I'd had a lot of conversations about starting bands where I meet up with somebody and maybe try to figure out some songs and then we'd never see each other again. There were a lot of false starts and I assumed this would be just another one of those, but it would be fun for this one to be with the guy from Racetraitor and Extinction.

TROHMAN: He gave me the link to his MP3.com page. There were a few songs of him just playing acoustic and singing. He was awesome.

WENTZ: Joe told me we were going to this kid's house who would probably be our drummer but could also sing. He sent me a link to Patrick singing some acoustic thing, but the quality was so horrible it was hard to tell what it was. Patrick answered the door in some wild outfit. He looked like an emo kid but from the Endpoint era - dorky and cool. We went into the basement, and he was like, trying to set up his drums.

TROHMAN: Patrick has said many times that he intended to try out on drums. I was pushing for him to sing after hearing his demos. 'Hey! Sing for us!' I asked him to take out his acoustic guitar. He played songs from Saves The Day's Through Being Cool. I think he sang most of the record to us. We were thrilled. We had never been around someone who could sing like that.

WENTZ: I don't think Patrick thought we were cool at all. We were hanging out, and he started playing acoustic guitar. He started singing, and I realized he could sing any Saves The Day song. I was like, 'Wow, that's the way those bands sound! We should just have you sing.' It had to be serendipity because Patrick drumming and Joe singing is not the same band. I never thought about singing. It wasn't the type of thing I could sing. I knew I'd be playing bass. I didn't think it'd even go beyond a few practices. It didn't seem like the thing I was setting myself up to do for the next several years of my life in any way. I was going to college. It was just a fun getaway from the rest of life kind of thing to do.

STUMP: Andy was the first person we asked to play drums. Joe even brought him up in the Borders conversation. But Andy was too busy. He wasn't really interested, either, because we kind of sucked.

WENTZ: I wanted Hurley in the band, I was closest to him at the time, I had known him for a long time. I identified with him in the way that we were the younger dudes in our larger group. I tried to get him, but he was doing another band at the time, or multiple bands. He was Mani's go-to guy to play drums, always. I had asked him a few times. That should clue people into the fact that we weren't that good.

ANDY HURLEY: I knew Joe as 'Number One Fan.' We called him that because he was a huge fan of a band I was in, Kill The Slavemaster. When Fall Out Boy started, I was going to college full-time. I was in the band Project Rocket and I think The Kill Pill then, too.

MOSTOFI: After they got together the first or second time, Pete played me a recording and said, 'This is going to be big.' They had no songs, no name, no drummer. They could barely play their instruments. But Pete knew, and we believed him because we could see his drive and Patrick's potential. Patrick was prodigy. I imagine the first moment Pete heard him sing was probably like when I heard 15-year-old Andy Hurley play drums.

GUTIERREZ: One day at practice, Pete told me he had met some dudes with whom he was starting a pop-punk band. He said it would sound like a cross between New Found Glory and Lifetime. Then the more Fall Out Boy started to practice, the less active Arma Angelus became.

TROHMAN: We got hooked up with a friend named Ben Rose, who became our original drummer. We would practice in his parents' basement. We eventually wrote some pretty bad songs. I don't even have the demo. I have copies of Arma's demo, but I don't have that one.

MOSTOFI: We all knew that hardcore kids write better pop-punk songs than actual pop-punk kids. It had been proven. An experienced hardcore musician could bring a sense of aggression and urgency to the pop hooks in a way that a band like Yellowcard could never achieve. Pete and I had many conversations about this. He jokingly called it 'Softcore,' but that's precisely what it was. It's what he was going for. Take This To Your Grave sounds like Hot Topic, but it feels like CBGBs.

MCILRITH: Many hardcore guys who transitioned into pop-punk bands dumbed it down musically and lyrically. Fall Out Boy found a way to do it that wasn't dumbed down. They wrote music and lyrics that, if you listened closely, you could tell came from people who grew up into hardcore. Pete seemed to approach the song titles and lyrics the same way he attacked hardcore songs. You could see his signature on all of that.

STUMP: We all had very different ideas of what it should sound like. I signed up for Kid Dynamite, Strike Anywhere, or Dillinger Four. Pete was very into Lifetime and Saves The Day. I think both he and Joe were into New Found Glory and Blink-182. I still hadn't heard a lot of stuff. I was arrogant; I was a rock snob. I was over most pop-punk. But then I had this renaissance week where I was like, 'Man, you know what? I really do like The Descendents.' Like, the specific week I met Joe, it just happened to be that I was listening to a lot of Descendents. So, there was a part of me that was tickled by that idea. 'You know what? I'll try a pop-punk band. Why not?'

MOSTOFI: To be clear, they were trying to become a big band. But they did it by elevating radio-friendly pop punk, not debasing themselves for popularity. They were closely studying Drive-Thru Records bands like The Starting Line, who I couldn't stand. But they knew what they were doing. They extracted a few good elements from those bands and combined them with their other influences. Patrick never needed to be auto-tuned. He can sing. Pete never had to contrive this emotional depth. He always had it.

STUMP: The ideas for band names were obnoxious. At some point, Pete and I were arguing over it, and I think our first drummer, Ben Rose, who was in the hardcore band Strength In Numbers, suggested Fall Out Boy. Pete and I were like, 'Well, we don't hate that one. We'll keep it on the list.' But we never voted on a name.

"Fake It Like You Matter" - The Early Shows, 2001

The name Fall Out Boy made their shortlist, but their friends ultimately chose it for them. The line-up at the band's first show was Patrick Stump (sans guitar), Pete Wentz, Joe Trohman, drummer Ben Rose, and guitarist John Flamandan in his only FOB appearance.

STUMP: We didn't have a name at our two or three shows. We were basically booked as 'Pete's new band' as he was the most known of any of us. Pete and I were the artsy two.

TROHMAN: The rest of us had no idea what we were doing onstage.

STUMP: We took ourselves very seriously and completely different ideas on what was 'cool.' Pete at the time was somewhere between maybe Chuck Palahniuk and Charles Bukowski, and kind of New Romantic and Manchester stuff, so he had that in mind. The band names he suggested were long and verbose, somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I was pretty much only into Tom Waits, so I wanted everything to be a reference to Tom Waits. The first show was at DePaul [University] in some cafeteria. The room looked a lot nicer than punk rock shows are supposed to look, like a room where you couldn't jump off the walls. We played with a band called Stillwell. I want to say one of the other bands played Black Sabbath's Black Sabbath in its entirety. We were out of place. We were tossing a few different names around. The singer for Stillwell was in earshot of the conversation so I was like 'Hey, settle this for us,' and told him whatever name it was, which I can't remember. 'What do you think of this name?' He goes, 'It sucks.' And the way he said it, there was this element to it, like, 'You guys probably suck, too, so whatever.' That was our first show. We played first and only had three songs. That was John's only show with us, and I never saw him again. I was just singing without a guitar, and I had never just sung before; that was horrifying. We blazed through those songs.

ROSE: Patrick had this shoulder-length hair. Watching these guys who were known for heavier stuff play pop-punk was strange. Pete was hopping around with the X's on his hands. Spitalfield was similar; we were kids playing another style of music who heard Texas Is The Reason and Get Up Kids and said, 'We have to start a band like this.'

MOSTOFI: The first show was a lot of fun. The musical side wasn't there, but Pete and Patrick's humor and charisma were front and center.

TROHMAN: I remember having a conversation with Mani about stage presence. He was telling me how important it was. Coalesce and The Dillinger Escape Plan would throw mic stands and cabinets. We loved that visual excitement and appeal. Years later, Patrick sang a Fall Out Boy song with Taylor Swift at Giants Stadium. It was such a great show to watch that I was reminded of how wise Mani was to give me that advice back then. Mani was like a mentor for me, honestly. He would always guide me through stuff.

MOSTOFI: Those guys grew up in Chicago, either playing in or seeing Extinction, Racetraitor, Los Crudos, and other bands that liked to talk and talk between songs. Fall Out Boy did that, and it was amazing. Patrick was awkward in a knowing and hilarious way. He'd say something odd, and then Pete would zing him. Or Pete would try to say something too cool, and Patrick would remind him they were nerds. These are very personal memories for me. Millions of people have seen the well-oiled machine, but so few of us saw those guys when they were so carefree.

TROHMAN: We had this goofy, bad first show, but all I can tell you was that I was determined to make this band work, no matter what.

STUMP: I kind of assumed that was the end of that. 'Whatever, on with our lives.' But Joe was very determined. He was going to pick us up for practice and we were going to keep playing shows. He was going to make the band happen whether the rest of us wanted to or not. That's how we got past show number one. John left the band because we only had three songs and he wasn't very interested. In the interim, I filled in on guitar. I didn't consider myself a guitar player. Our second show was a college show in Southern Illinois or something.

MCILRITH: That show was with my other band, The Killing Tree.

STUMP: We showed up late and played before The Killing Tree. There was no one there besides the bands and our friends. I think we had voted on some names. Pete said 'Hey, we're whatever!'; probably something very long. And someone yells out, 'Fuck that, no, you're Fall Out Boy!' Then when The Killing Tree was playing, Tim said, 'I want to thank Fall Out Boy.' Everyone looked up to Tim, so when he forced the name on us, it was fine. I was a diehard Simpsons fan, without question. I go pretty deep on The Simpsons. Joe and I would just rattle off Simpsons quotes. I used to do a lot of Simpsons impressions. Ben was very into Simpsons; he had a whole closet full of Simpsons action figures.

"If Only You Knew I Was Terrified" - The Early Recordings, 2002-2003

Wentz's relationships in the hardcore scene led to Fall Out Boy's first official releases. A convoluted and rarely properly explained chain of events resulted in the Fall Out Boy/Project Rocket split EP and Fall Out Boy's Evening Out with Your Girlfriend. Both were issued by California's Uprising Records, whose discography included Racetraitor's first album and the debut EP by Burn It Down. The band traveled to Wisconsin to record their first proper demo with engineer Jared Logan, drummer for Uprising's 7 Angels 7 Plagues.

TROHMAN: This isn't to be confused with the demo we did in Ben's basement, which was like a tape demo. This was our first real demo.

STUMP: Between booking the demo and recording it, we lost Ben Rose. He was the greatest guy, but it wasn't working out musically. Pete and Joe decided I should play drums on the demo. But Jared is a sick drummer, so he just did it.

TROHMAN: We had gotten this great singer but went through a series of drummers that didn't work out. I had to be the one who kicked Ben out. Not long after, our friend Brett Bunting played with us. I don't think he really wanted to do it, which was a bummer.

STUMP: I showed up to record that demo, feeling pulled into it. I liked hanging out with the guys, but I was a rock snob who didn't really want to be making that type of music. The first few songs were really rough. We were sloppy. We barely practiced. Pete was in Arma Angelus. Joe was the guy determined to make it happen. We couldn't keep a drummer or guitar player, and I could barely play guitar. I didn't really want to be in Fall Out Boy. We had these crappy songs that kind of happened; it didn't feel like anything. Joe did the guitars. I go in to do the vocals, I put on the headphones, and it starts playing and was kind of not bad! It was pretty good, actually. I was shocked. That was the first time I was like, 'Maybe I am supposed to be in this band.' I enjoyed hearing it back.

SEAN MUTTAQI: Wentz and I were pretty tight. He sent me some demos, and while I didn't know it would get as big as it did, I knew it was special. Wentz had a clear vision. Of all the guys from that scene, he was the most singularly focused on taking things to the next level. He was ahead of the game with promotion and the early days of social media.

STUMP: Arma Angelus had been on Eulogy. We talked to them a bit and spoke to Uprising because they had put out Racetraitor. At some point, the demo got to Sean, and he decided to make it half of a split with Andy's band, Project Rocket. We were pretty happy with that.

HURLEY: It was kind of competitive for me at the time. Project Rocket and Fall Out Boy were both doing pop-punk/pop-rock, I met Patrick through the band. I didn't really know him before Fall Out Boy.

TROHMAN: We got this drummer, Mike Pareskuwicz, who had been in a hardcore band from Central Illinois called Subsist.

STUMP: Uprising wanted us to make an album. We thought that was cool, but we only had those three songs that were on the split. We were still figuring ourselves out. One of the times we were recording with Jared in the studio, for the split or the album, this guy T.J. Kunasch was there. He was like, 'Hey, do you guys need a guitarist?' And he joined.

MUTTAQI: I borrowed some money to get them back in the studio. The songwriting was cool on that record, but it was all rushed. The urgency to get something out led to the recording being subpar. Their new drummer looked the part but couldn't really play. They had already tracked the drums before they realized it didn't sound so hot.

STUMP: The recording experience was not fun. We had two days to do an entire album. Mike was an awesome dude, but he lived crazy far away, in Kanakee, Illinois, so the drive to Milwaukee wasn't easy for him. He had to work or something the next day. So, he did everything in one take and left. He played alone, without a click, so it was a ness to figure out. We had to guess where the guitar was supposed to go. None of us liked the songs because we had slapped them together. We thought it all sucked. But I thought, 'Well, at least it'll be cool to have something out.' Then a lot of time went by. Smaller labels were at the mercy of money, and it was crazy expensive to put out a record back then.

MUTTAQI: Our record was being rushed out to help generate some interest, but that interest was building before we could even get the record out. We were beholden to finances while changing distribution partners and dealing with other delays. The buck stops with me, yes, but I didn't have that much control over the scheduling.

WENTZ: It's not what I would consider the first Fall Out Boy record. Hurley isn't on it and he's an integral part of the Fall Out Boy sound. But it is part of the history, the legacy. NASA didn't go right to the moon. They did test flights in the desert. Those are our test flights in the desert. It's not something I'm ashamed of or have weird feelings about.

STUMP: It's kind of embarrassing to me. Evening Out... isn't representative of the band we became. I liked Sean a lot, so it's nothing against him. If anybody wants to check out the band in that era, I think the split EP is a lot cooler. Plus, Andy is on that one.

TROHMAN: T.J. was the guy who showed up to the show without a guitar. He was the guy that could never get it right, but he was in the band for a while because we wanted a second guitar player. He's a nice dude but wasn't great to be in a band with back then. One day he drove unprompted from Racine to Chicago to pick up some gear. I don't know how he got into my parents' house, but the next thing I knew, he was in my bedroom. I didn't like being woken up and kicked him out of the band from bed.

STUMP: Our friend Brian Bennance asked us to do a split 7" with 504 Plan, which was a big band to us. Brian offered to pay for us to record with Sean O'Keefe, which was also a big deal. Mike couldn't get the time off work to record with us. We asked Andy to play on the songs. He agreed to do it, but only if he could make it in time after recording an entire EP with his band, The Kill Pill, in Chicago, on the same day.

MOSTOFI: Andy and I started The Kill Pill shortly after Racetraitor split up, not long after Fall Out Boy had formed. We played a bunch of local shows together. The minute Andy finished tracking drums for our EP in Chicago, he raced to the other studio in Madison.

STUMP: I'm getting ready to record the drums myself, getting levels and checking the drums, pretty much ready to go. And then in walks Andy Hurley. I was a little bummed because I really wanted to play drums that day. But then Andy goes through it all in like two takes and fucking nailed the entire thing. He just knocked it out of the park. All of us were like, 'That's crazy!'

WENTZ: When Andy came in, It just felt different. It was one of those 'a-ha' moments.

STUMP: Sean leaned over to us and said, 'You need to get this guy in the band.'

SEAN O'KEEFE: We had a blast. We pumped It out. We did it fast and to analog tape. People believe it was very Pro Tools oriented, but it really was done to 24-track tape. Patrick sang his ass off.

STUMP: The songs we had were 'Dead On Arrival,' 'Saturday,' and 'Homesick at Space Camp. There are quite a few songs that ended up on Take This To You Grave where I wrote most of the lyrics but Pete titled them.

WENTZ: 'Space Camp' was a reference to the 1986 movie, SpaceCamp, and the idea of space camp. Space camp wasn't something anyone in my area went to. Maybe they did, but it was never an option for me. It seems like the little kid version of meeting Jay-Z. The idea was also: what if you, like Joaquin Phoenix in the movie, took off to outer space and wanted to get home? 'I made it to space and now I'm just homesick and want to hang out with my friends.' In the greater sense, it's about having it all, but it's still not enough. There's a pop culture reference in 'Saturday' that a lot of people miss. 'Pete and I attack the lost Astoria' was a reference to The Goonies, which was filmed in Astoria, Oregon.

HURLEY: I remember hearing those recordings, especially 'Dead on Arrival,' and Patrick's voice and how well written those songs were, especially relative to anything else I had done - I had a feeling that this could do something.

WENTZ: It seemed like it would stall out if we didn't get a solid drummer in the band soon. That was the link that we couldn't nail down. Patrick was always a big musical presence. He thinks and writes rhythmi-cally, and we couldn't get a drummer to do what he wanted or speak his language. Hurley was the first one that could. It's like hearing two drummers talk together when they really get it. It sounds like a foreign language because it's not something I'm keyed into. Patrick needed someone on a similar musical plane. I wasn't there. Joe was younger and was probably headed there.

HURLEY: When Patrick was doing harmonies, it was like Queen. He's such a brilliant dude. I was always in bands that did a record and then broke up. I felt like this was a band that could tour a lot like the hardcore bands we loved, even if we had to have day jobs, too.

"(Four) Tired Boys And A Broken Down Van" - The Early Tours, 2002-2003

STUMP: We booked a tour with Spitalfield, another Chicago band, who had records out, so they were a big deal to us. We replaced T.J. with a guy named Brandon Hamm. He was never officially in the band. He quit when we were practicing 'Saturday.' He goes, 'I don't like that. I don't want to do this anymore.' Pete talked with guitarist Chris Envy from Showoff, who had just broken up. Chris said, 'Yeah, I'll play in your band.' He came to two practices, then quit like two days before the tour. It was only a two-week tour, but Mike couldn't get the time off work from Best Buy, or maybe it was Blockbuster. We had to lose Mike, which was the hardest member change for me. It was unpleasant.

TROHMAN: We had been trying to get Andy to join the band for a while. Even back at that first Borders conversation, we talked about him, but he was too busy at the time.

STUMP: I borrowed one of Joe's guitars and jumped in the fire. We were in this legendarily shitty used van Pete had gotten. It belonged to some flower shop, so it had this ominously worn-out flower decal outside and no windows [except in the front]. Crappy brakes, no A/C, missing the rearview mirror, no seats in the back, only the driver's seat. About 10 minutes into the tour, we hit something. A tire exploded and slingshot into the passenger side mirror, sending glass flying into the van. We pulled over into some weird animal petting zoo. I remember thinking, 'This is a bad omen for this tour.' Spitalfield was awesome, and we became tight with them. Drew Brown, who was later in Weekend Nachos, was out with them, too. But most of the shows were canceled.

WENTZ: We'd end up in a town, and our show was canceled, or we'd have three days off. 'Let's just get on whatever show we can. Whatever, you can pay us in pizza.'

STUMP: We played in a pizza place. We basically blocked the line of people trying to order pizza, maybe a foot away from the shitty tables. Nobody is trying to watch a band. They're just there to eat pizza. And that was perhaps the biggest show we played on that tour. One of the best moments on the Spitalfied tour was in Lincoln, Nebraska. The local opener wasn't even there - they were at the bar across the street and showed up later with two people. Fall Out Boy played for Spitalfield, and Spitalfield played for Fall Out Boy. Even the sound guy had left. It was basically an empty room. It was miserable.

HURLEY: Even though we played a ton of shows in front of just the other bands, it was awesome. I've known Pete forever and always loved being in bands with him. After that tour, it was pretty much agreed that I would be in the band. I wanted to be in the band.

WENTZ: We would play literally any show in those days for free. We played Chain Reaction in Orange County with a bunch of metalcore bands. I want to say Underoath was one of them. I remember a lot of black shirts and crossed arms at those kinds of shows. STUMP: One thing that gets lost in the annals of history is Fall Out Boy, the discarded hardcore band. We played so many hardcore shows! The audiences were cool, but they were just like, 'This is OK, but we'd really rather be moshing right now.' Which was better than many of the receptions we got from pop-punk kids.

MOSTOFI: Pete made sure there was little division between the band and the audience. In hardcore, kids are encouraged to grab the mic. Pete was very conscious about making the crowd feel like friends. I saw them in Austin, Texas, in front of maybe ten kids. But it was very clear all ten of those kids felt like Pete's best friends. And they were, in a way.

MCILRITH: People started to get into social networking. That kind of thing was all new to us, and they were way ahead. They networked with their fans before any of us.

MOSTOFI: Pete shared a lot about his life online and was intimate as hell. It was a new type of scene. Pete extended the band's community as far as fiber optics let him.

ROSE: Pete was extremely driven. Looking back, I wish I had that killer instinct. During that tour; we played a show in Colorado. On the day of the show, we went to Kinko's to make flyers to hand out to college kids. Pete put ‘members of Saves The Day and Screeching Weasel’ on the flyer. He was just like, 'This will get people in.'

WENTZ: We booked a lot of our early shows through hardcore connections, and to some extent, that carries through to what Fall Out Boy shows are like today. If you come to see us play live, we're basically Slayer compared to everyone else when we play these pop radio shows. Some of that carries back to what you must do to avoid being heckled at hardcore shows. You may not like our music, but you will leave here respecting us. Not everyone is going to love you. Not everyone is going to give a shit. But you need to earn a crowd's respect. That was an important way for us to learn that.

MOSTOFI: All those dudes, except Andy, lived in this great apartment with our friend Brett Bunting, who was almost their drummer at one point. The proximity helped them gel.

STUMP: There were a lot of renegade last-minute shows where we'd just call and get added. We somehow ended up on a show with Head Automatica that way.

MCILRITH: At some point early on, they opened for Rise Against in a church basement in Downers Grove. We were doing well then; headlining that place was a big deal. Then Pete's band was coming up right behind us, and you could tell there was a lot of chatter about Fall Out Boy. I remember getting to the show, and there were many people there, many of whom I had never seen in the scene before. A lot of unfamiliar faces. A lot of people that wouldn't have normally found their way to the seedy Fireside Bowl in Chicago. These were young kids, and I was 21 then, so when I say young, I mean really young. Clearly, Fall Out Boy had tapped into something the rest of us had not. People were super excited to see them play and freaked out; there was a lot of enthusiasm at that show. After they finished, their fans bailed. They were dedicated. They wanted to see Fall Out Boy. They didn't necessarily want to see Rise Against play. That was my first clue that, 'Whoa, what Pete told me that day at Arma Angelus rehearsal is coming true. He was right.' Whatever he was doing was working.

"My Insides Are Copper, And I'd Like To Make Them Gold" - The Record Labels Come Calling, 2002

STUMP: The split EP was going to be a three-way split with 504 Plan, August Premier, and us at one point. But then the record just never happened. Brian backed out of putting it out. We asked him if we could do something else with the three songs and he didn't really seem to care. So, we started shopping the three songs as a demo. Pete ended up framing the rejection letters we got from a lot of pop-punk labels. But some were interested.

HURLEY: We wanted to be on Drive-Thru Records so bad. That was the label.

RICHARD REINES: After we started talking to them, I found the demo they had sent us in the office. I played it for my sister. We decided everything together. She liked them but wasn't as crazy about them as I was. We arranged with Pete to see them practice. We had started a new label called Rushmore. Fall Out Boy wasn't the best live band. We weren't thrilled [by the showcase]. But the songs were great. We both had to love a band to sign them, so my sister said, 'If you love them so much, let's sign them to Rushmore, not Drive Thru.'

HURLEY: We did a showcase for Richard and Stephanie Reines. They were just kind of like, 'Yeah, we have this side label thing. We'd be interested in having you on that.' I remember them saying they passed on Saves The Day and wished they would have put out Through Being Cool. But then they [basically] passed on us by offering to put us on Rushmore. We realized we could settle for that, but we knew it wasn't the right thing.

RORY FELTON: Kevin Knight had a website, TheScout, which always featured great new bands. I believe he shared the demo with us. I flew out to Chicago. Joe and Patrick picked me up at the airport. I saw them play at a VFW hall, Patrick drank an entire bottle of hot sauce on a dare at dinner, and then we all went to see the movie The Ring. I slept on the couch in their apartment, the one featured on the cover of Take This To Your Grave. Chad [Pearson], my partner, also flew out to meet with the band.

STUMP: It was a weird time to be a band because it was feast or famine. At first, no one wanted us. Then as soon as one label said, 'Maybe we'll give 'em a shot,' suddenly there's a frenzy of phone calls from record labels. We were getting our shirts printed by Victory Records. One day, we went to pick up shirts, and someone came downstairs and said, 'Um, guys? [Owner] Tony [Brummel] wants to see you.' We were like, 'Did we forget to pay an invoice?' He made us an offer on the spot. We said, 'That's awesome, but we need to think about it.' It was one of those 'now or never' kinds of things. I think we had even left the van running. It was that kind of sudden; we were overwhelmed by it.

HURLEY: They told me Tony said something like, 'You can be with the Nike of the record industry or the Keds of the record industry.'

STUMP: We'd get random calls at the apartment. 'Hey, I'm a manager with so-and-so.' I talked to some boy band manager who said, 'We think you'll be a good fit.'

TROHMAN: The idea of a manager was a ‘big-time' thing. I answered a call one day, and this guy is like, 'I'm the manager for the Butthole Surfers, and I'd really like to work with you guys.' I just said, Yeah, I really like the Butthole Surfers, but I'll have to call you back.' And I do love that band. But I just knew that wasn't the right thing.

STUMP: Not all the archetypes you always read about are true. The label guys aren't all out to get you. Some are total douchebags. But then there are a lot who are sweet and genuine. It's the same thing with managers. I really liked the Militia Group. They told us it was poor form to talk to us without a manager. They recommended Bob McLynn.

FELTON: We knew the guys at Crush from working with Acceptance and The Beautiful Mistake. We thought they'd be great for Fall Out Boy, so we sent the music to their team.

STUMP: They said Crush was their favorite management company and gave us their number. Crush's biggest band at the time was American Hi-Fi. Jonathan Daniels, the guy who started the company, sent a manager to see us. The guy was like, "This band sucks!' But Jonathan liked us and thought someone should do something with us. Bob was his youngest rookie manager. He had never managed anyone, and we had never been managed.

BOB MCLYNN: Someone else from my office who isn't with us anymore had seen them, but I hadn't seen them yet. At the time, we'd tried to manage Brand New; they went elsewhere, and I was bummed. Then we got the Fall Out Boy demo, and I was like, Wow. This sounds even better. This guy can really sing, and these songs are great.' I remember going at it hard after that whole thing. Fall Out Boy was my consolation prize. I don't know if they were talking to other managers or not, but Pete and I clicked.

TROHMAN: In addition to being really creative, Pete is really business savvy. We all have a bullshit detector these days, but Pete already had one back then. We met Bob, and we felt like this dude wouldn't fuck us over.

STUMP: We were the misfit toy that nobody else wanted. Bob really believed in us when nobody else did and when nobody believed in him. What's funny is that all the other managers at Crush were gone within a year. It was just Bob and Jonathan, and now they're partners. Bob was the weird New York Hardcore guy who scared me at the time.

TROHMAN: We felt safe with him. He's a big, hulking dude.

MCLYNN: We tried to make a deal with The Militia Group, but they wouldn't back off on a few things in the agreement. I told them those were deal breakers, opening the door to everyone else. I knew this band needed a shot to do bigger and better things.

TROHMAN: He told us not to sign with the label that recommended him to us. We thought there was something very honest about that.

MCLYNN: They paid all their dues. Those guys worked harder than any band I'd ever seen, and I was all about it. I had been in bands before and had just gotten out. I was getting out of the van just as these guys got into one. They busted their asses.

STUMP: A few labels basically said the same thing: they wanted to hear more. They weren't convinced we could write another song as good as 'Dead On Arrival.' I took that as a challenge. We returned to Sean a few months after those initial three songs, this time at Gravity Studios in Chicago. We recorded ‘Grenade Jumper' and 'Grand Theft Autumn/Where is Your Boy' in a night or two. 'Where is Your Boy' was my, 'Fine, you don't think I can write a fucking song? Here's your hit song, jerks!' But I must have pushed Pete pretty hard [arguing about the songs]. One night, as he and I drove with Joe, Pete said, 'Guys, I don't think I want to do this band anymore.' We talked about it for the rest of the ride home. I didn't want to be in the band in the first place! I was like, 'No! That's not fair! Don't leave me with this band! Don't make me kind of like this band, and then leave it! That's bullshit!' Pete didn't stay at the apartment that night. I called him at his parent's house. I told him I wasn't going to do the band without him. He was like, 'Don't break up your band over it.' I said, 'It's not my band. It's a band that you, Joe, and I started.' He was like, 'OK, I'll stick around.' And he came back with a vengeance.

WENTZ: It was maybe the first time we realized we could do these songs titles that didn't have much do with the song from the outside. Grand Theft Auto was such a big pop culture franchise. If you said the phrase back then, everyone recognized it. The play on words was about someone stealing your time in the fall. It was the earliest experimentation with that so it was a little simplistic compared to the stuff we did later. At the time, we'd tell someone the song title, and they'd say, 'You mean "Auto"'?

JOHN JANICK: I saw their name on fliers and thought it was strange. But I remembered it. Then I saw them on a flyer with one of our bands from Chicago, August Premier. I called them and asked about this band whose name I had seen on a few flyers now. They told me they were good and I should check it out. I heard an early version of a song online and instantly fell in love with it. Drive-Thru, The Militia Group, and a few majors tried to sign them. I was the odd man out. But I knew I wanted them right away.

HURLEY: Fueled By Ramen was co-owned by Vinnie [Fiorello] from Less Than Jake. It wasn't necessarily a band I grew up loving, but I had so much respect for them and what they had done and were doing.

JANICK: I randomly cold-called them at the apartment and spoke to Patrick. He told me I had to talk to Pete. I spoke to Pete later that day. We ended up talking on the phone for an hour. It was crazy. I never flew out there. I just got to know them over the phone.

MCLYNN: There were majors [interested], but I didn't want the band on a major right away. I knew they wouldn't understand the band. Rob Stevenson from Island Records knew all the indie labels were trying to sign Fall Out Boy. We did this first-ever incubator sort of deal. I also didn't want to stay on an indie forever; I felt we needed to develop and have a chance to do bigger and better things, but these indies didn't necessarily have radio staff. It was sort of the perfect scenario. Island gave us money to go on Fueled By Ramen, with whom we did a one-off. No one else would offer a one-off on an indie.

STUMP: They were the smallest of the labels involved, with the least 'gloss.' I said, 'I don't know about this, Pete.' Pete was the one who thought it was the smartest move. He pointed out that we could be a big fish in a small pond. So, we rolled the dice.

HURLEY: It was a one-record deal with Fueled By Ramen. We didn't necessarily get signed to Island, but they had the 'right of first refusal' [for the album following Take This To Your Grave]. It was an awesome deal. It was kind of unheard of, maybe, but there was a bunch of money coming from Island that we didn't have to recoup for promo type of things.

JANICK: The company was so focused on making sure we broke Fall Out Boy; any other label probably wouldn't have had that dedication. Pete and I talked for at least an hour every day. Pete and I became so close, so much so that we started Decaydance. It was his thing, but we ended up signing Panic! At The Disco, Gym Class Heroes, Cobra Starship.

GUTIERREZ: Who could predict Pete would A&R all those bands? There's no Panic! At The Disco or Gym Class Heroes without Wentz. He made them into celebrities.

"Turn This Up And I'll Tune You Out" - The Making of Take This To You Grave, 2003

The versions of "Dead on Arrival," "Saturday," and "Homesick at Space Camp" from the first sessions with Andy on drums are what appear on the album. "Grand Theft Autumn/Where is Your Boy" and "Grenade Jumper" are the demo versions recorded later in Chicago. O'Keefe recorded the music for the rest of the songs at Smart Studios once again. They knocked out the remaining songs in just nine days. Sean and Patrick snuck into Gravity Studios in the middle of the night to track vocals in the dead of winter. Patrick sang those seven songs from two to five in the morning in those sessions.

STUMP: John Janick basically said, ‘I'll buy those five songs and we'll make them part of the album, and here's some money to go record seven more.'

MCLYNN: It was a true indie deal with Fueled by Ramen. I think we got between $15,000 and $18,000 all-in to make the album. The band slept on the studio floor some nights.

STUMP: From a recording standpoint, it was amazing. It was very pro, we had Sean, all this gear, the fun studio accoutrements were there. It was competitive with anything we did afterward. But meanwhile, we're still four broke idiots.

WENTZ: We fibbed to our parents about what we were doing. I was supposed to be in school. I didn't have access to money or a credit card. I don't think any of us did.

STUMP: I don't think we slept anywhere we could shower, which was horrifying. There was a girl that Andy's girlfriend at the time went to school with who let us sleep on her floor, but we'd be there for maybe four hours at a time. It was crazy.

HURLEY: Once, Patrick thought it would be a good idea to spray this citrus bathroom spray under his arms like deodorant. It just destroyed him because it's not made for that. But it was all an awesome adventure.

WENTZ: We were so green we didn't really know how studios worked. Every day there was soda for the band. We asked, 'Could you take that soda money and buy us peanut butter, jelly, and bread?' which they did. I hear that stuff in some ways when I listen to that album.

HURLEY: Sean pushed us. He was such a perfectionist, which was awesome. I felt like, ‘This is what a real professional band does.' It was our first real studio experience.

WENTZ: Seeing the Nirvana Nevermind plaque on the wall was mind-blowing. They showed us the mic that had been used on that album.

HURLEY: The mic that Kurt Cobain used, that was pretty awesome, crazy, legendary, and cool. But we didn't get to use it.

WENTZ: They said only Shirley Manson] from Garbage could use it.

O'KEEFE: Those dudes were all straight edge at the time. It came up in conversation that I had smoked weed once a few months before. That started this joke that I was this huge stoner, which obviously I wasn't. They'd call me 'Scoobie Snacks O'Keefe' and all these things. When they turned in the art for the record, they thanked me with like ten different stoner nicknames - 'Dimebag O'Keefe' and stuff like that. The record company made Pete take like seven of them out because they said it was excessively ridiculous.

WENTZ: Sean was very helpful. He worked within the budget and took us more seriously than anyone else other than Patrick. There were no cameras around. There was no documentation. There was nothing to indicate this would be some ‘legendary' session. There are 12 songs on the album because those were all the songs we had. There was no pomp or circumstance or anything to suggest it would be an 'important’ record.

STUMP: Pete and I were starting to carve out our niches. When Pete [re-committed himself to the band], it felt like he had a list of things in his head he wanted to do right. Lyrics were on that list. He wasn't playing around anymore. I wrote the majority of the lyrics up to that point - ‘Saturday,' 'Dead on Arrival,' ‘Where's Your Boy?,’ ‘Grenade Jumper,' and ‘Homesick at Space Camp.' I was an artsy-fartsy dude who didn't want to be in a pop-punk band, so I was going really easy on the lyrics. I wasn't taking them seriously. When I look back on it, I did write some alright stuff. But I wasn't trying. Pete doesn't fuck around like that, and he does not take that kindly. When we returned to the studio, he started picking apart every word, every syllable. He started giving me [notes]. I got so exasperated at one point I was like, ‘You just write the fucking lyrics, dude. Just give me your lyrics, and I'll write around them.' Kind of angrily. So, he did. We hadn't quite figured out how to do it, though. I would write a song, scrap my lyrics, and try to fit his into where mine had been. It was exhausting. It was a rough process. It made both of us unhappy.

MCLYNN: I came from the post-hardcore scene in New York and wasn't a big fan of the pop-punk stuff happening. What struck me with these guys was the phenomenal lyrics and Patrick's insane voice. Many guys in these kinds of bands can sing alright, but Patrick was like a real singer. This guy had soul. He'd take these great lyrics Pete wrote and combine it with that soul, and that's what made their unique sound. They both put their hearts on their sleeves when they wrote together.

STUMP: We had a massive fight over 'Chicago is So Two Years Ago.' I didn't even want to record that song. I was being precious with things that were mine. Part of me thought the band wouldn't work out, and I'd go to college and do some music alone. I had a skeletal version of 'Chicago...'. I was playing it to myself in the lobby of the studio. I didn't know anyone was listening. Sean was walking by and wanted to [introduce it to the others]. I kind of lost my song. I was very precious about it. Pete didn't like some of the lyrics, so we fought. We argued over each word, one at a time. 'Tell That Mick...' was also a pretty big fight. Pete ended up throwing out all my words on that one. That was the first song where he wrote the entire set of lyrics. My only change was light that smoke' instead of ‘cigarette' because I didn't have enough syllables to say 'cigarette.' Everything else was verbatim what he handed to me. I realized I must really want to be in this band at this point if I'm willing to put up with this much fuss. The sound was always more important to me - the rhythm of the words, alliteration, syncopation - was all very exciting. Pete didn't care about any of that. He was all meaning. He didn't care how good the words sounded if they weren't amazing when you read them. Man, did we fight about that. We fought for nine days straight while not sleeping and smelling like shit. It was one long argument, but I think some of the best moments resulted from that.

WENTZ: In 'Calm Before the Storm,' Patrick wrote the line, 'There's a song on the radio that says, 'Let's Get This Party Started' which is a direct reference to Pink's 2001 song 'Get the Party Started.' 'Tell That Mick He Just Made My List of Things to Do Today' is a line from the movie Rushmore. I thought we'd catch a little more flack for that, but even when we played it in Ireland, there was none of that. It's embraced, more like a shoutout.

STUMP: Pete and I met up on a lot of the same pop culture. He was more into '80s stuff than I was. One of the first things we talked about were Wes Anderson movies.

WENTZ: Another thing driving that song title was the knowledge that our fanbase wouldn't necessarily be familiar with Wes Anderson. It could be something that not only inspired us but something fans could also go check out. People don't ask us about that song so much now, but in that era, we'd answer and tell them to go watch Rushmore. You gotta see this movie. This line is a hilarious part of it.' Hopefully some people did. I encountered Jason Schwartzman at a party once. We didn't get to talk about the movie, but he was the sweetest human, and I was just geeking out. He told me he was writing a film with Wes Anderson about a train trip in India. I wanted to know about the writing process. He was like, 'Well, he's in New York City, I'm in LA. It's crazy because I'm on the phone all the time and my ear gets really hot.' That's the anecdote I got, and I loved it.

O'KEEFE: They're totally different people who approach making music from entirely different angles. It's cool to see them work. Pete would want a certain lyric. Patrick was focused on the phrasing. Pete would say the words were stupid and hand Patrick a revision, and Patrick would say I can't sing those the way I need to sing this. They would go through ten revisions for one song. I thought I would lose my mind with both of them, but then they would find it, and it would be fantastic. When they work together, it lights up. It takes on a life of its own. It's not always happy. There's a lot of push and pull, and each is trying to get their thing. With Take This To Your Grave, we never let anything go until all three of us were happy. Those guys were made to do this together.

WENTZ: A lot of the little things weren't a big deal, but those were things that [felt like] major decisions. I didn't want 'Where Is Your Boy' on Take This To Your Grave.

JANICK: I freaked out. I called Bob and said, 'We must put this song on the album! It's one of the biggest songs.' He agreed. We called Pete and talked about it; he was cool about it and heard us out.

WENTZ: I thought many things were humongous, and they just weren't. They didn't matter one way or another.

"Our Lawyer Made Us Change The (Album Cover)" - That Photo On Take This To Your Grave, 2003

STUMP: The band was rooted in nostalgia from early on. The '80s references were very much Pete's aesthetic. He had an idea for the cover. It ended up being his girlfriend at the time, face down on the bed, exhausted, in his bedroom. That was his bedroom in our apartment. His room was full of toys, '80s cereals. If we ended up with the Abbey Road cover of pop-punk, that original one was Sgt. Pepper's. But we couldn't legally clear any of the stuff in the photo. Darth Vader, Count Chocula…

WENTZ: There's a bunch of junk in there: a Morrissey poster, I think a Cher poster, Edward Scissorhands. We submitted it to Fueled by Ramen, and they were like, 'We can't clear any of this stuff.’ The original album cover did eventually come out on the vinyl version.

STUMP: The photo that ended up being the cover was simply a promo photo for that album cycle. We had to scramble. I was pushing the Blue Note jazz records feel. That's why the CD looks a bit like vinyl and why our names are listed on the front. I wanted a live photo on the cover. Pete liked the Blue Note idea but didn't like the live photo idea. I also made the fateful decision to have my name listed as 'Stump' rather than Stumph.

WENTZ: What we used was initially supposed to be the back cover. I remember someone in the band being pissed about it forever. Not everyone was into having our names on the cover. It was a strange thing to do at the time. But had the original cover been used, it wouldn't have been as iconic as what we ended up with. It wouldn't have been a conversation piece. That stupid futon in our house was busted in the middle. We're sitting close to each other because the futon was broken. The exposed brick wall was because it was the worst apartment ever. It makes me wonder: How many of these are accidental moments? At the time, there was nothing iconic about it. If we had a bigger budget, we probably would have ended up with a goofier cover that no one would have cared about.

STUMP: One of the things I liked about the cover was that it went along with something Pete had always said. I'm sure people will find this ironic, but Pete had always wanted to create a culture with the band where it was about all four guys and not just one guy. He had the foresight to even think about things like that. I didn't think anyone would give a fuck about our band! At the time, it was The Pete Wentz Band to most people. With that album cover, he was trying to reject that and [demonstrate] that all four of us mattered. A lot of people still don't get that, but whatever. I liked that element of the cover. It felt like a team. It felt like Voltron. It wasn't what I like to call 'the flying V photo' where the singer is squarely in the center, the most important, and everyone else is nearest the camera in order of 'importance.' The drummer would be in the very back. Maybe the DJ guy who scratches records was behind the drummer.

"You Need Him. I Could Be Him. Where Is Your Boy Tonight?" - The Dynamics of Punk Pop's Fab 4, 2003

Patrick seemed like something of the anti-frontman, never hogging the spotlight and often shrinking underneath his baseball hat. Wentz was more talkative, more out front on stage and in interviews, in a way that felt unprecedented for a bass player who wasn't also singing. In some ways, Fall Out Boy operated as a two-headed dictatorship. Wentz and Stump are in the car's front seat while Joe and Andy ride in the back.

STUMP: There is a lot of truth to that. Somebody must be in the front seat, no question. But the analogy doesn't really work for us; were more like a Swiss Army knife. You've got all these different attachments, but they are all part of the same thing. When you need one specific tool, the rest go back into the handle. That was how the band functioned and still does in many ways. Pete didn't want anyone to get screwed. Some things we've done might not have been the best business decision but were the right human decision. That was very much Pete's thing. I was 19 and very reactionary. If someone pissed me off, I'd be like, 'Screw them forever!' But Pete was very tactful. He was the business guy. Joe was active on the internet. He wouldn't stop believing in this band. He was the promotions guy. Andy was an honest instrumentalist: ‘I'm a drummer, and I'm going to be the best fucking drummer I can be.' He is very disciplined. None of us were that way aside from him. I was the dictator in the studio. I didn't know what producing was at the time or how it worked, but in retrospect, I've produced a lot of records because I'm an asshole in the studio. I'm a nice guy, but I'm not the nicest guy in the studio. It's a lot easier to know what you don't want. We carved out those roles early. We were very dependent on each other.

MCLYNN: I remember sitting in Japan with those guys. None of them were drinking then, but I was drinking plenty. It was happening there, their first time over, and all the shows were sold out. I remember looking at Pete and Patrick and telling Pete, ‘You're the luckiest guy in the world because you found this guy.' Patrick laughed. Then I turned to Patrick and said the same thing to him. Because really, they're yin and yang. They fit together so perfectly. The fact that Patrick found this guy with this vision, Pete had everything for the band laid out in his mind. Patrick, how he can sing, and what he did with Pete's lyrics - no one else could have done that. We tried it, even with the Black Cards project in 2010. We'd find these vocalists. Pete would write lyrics, and they'd try to form them into songs, but they just couldn't do it the way Patrick could. Pete has notebooks full of stuff that Patrick turns into songs. Not only can he sing like that, but how he turns those into songs is an art unto itself. It's really the combination of those two guys that make Fall Out Boy what it is. They're fortunate they found each other.

"I Could Walk This Fine Line Between Elation And Success. We All Know Which Way I'm Going To Strike The Stake Between My Chest" - Fall Out Boy Hits the Mainstream, 2003

Released on May 6, 2003, Take This To Your Grave massively connected with fans. (Fall Out Boy's Evening Out with Your Girlfriend arrived in stores less than two months earlier.) While Take This To Your Grave didn't crack the Billboard 200 upon its release, it eventually spent 30 weeks on the charts. From Under the Cork Tree debuted in the Top 10 just two years later, largely on Grave's momentum. 2007's Infinity on High bowed at #1.

WENTZ: I remember noticing it was getting insane when we would do in-stores. We'd still play anywhere. That was our deal. We liked being able to sell our stuff in the stores, too. It would turn into a riot. We played a Hollister at the mall in Schaumburg, Illinois. A lot of these stores were pretty corporate with a lot of rules, but Hollister would let us rip. Our merch guy was wearing board shorts, took this surfboard off the wall, and started crowd-surfing with it during the last song. I remember thinking things had gotten insane right at that moment.

HURLEY: When we toured with Less Than Jake, there were these samplers with two of their songs and two of ours. Giving those out was a surreal moment. To have real promotion for a record... It wasn't just an ad in a 'zine or something. It was awesome.

MCLYNN: They toured with The Reunion Show, Knockout, and Punch-line. One of their first big tours as an opening act was with MEST. There would be sold-out shows with 1,000 kids, and they would be singing along to Fall Out Boy much louder than to MEST. It was like, 'What's going on here?' It was the same deal with Less Than Jake. It really started catching fire months into the album being out. You just knew something was happening. As a headliner, they went from 500-capacity clubs to 1500 - 2000 capacity venues.

WENTZ: We always wanted to play The Metro in Chicago. It got awkward when they started asking us to play after this band or that band. There were bands we grew up with that were now smaller than us. Headlining The Metro was just wild. My parents came.

MCLYNN: There was a week on Warped Tour, and there was some beel because these guys were up-and-comers, and some of the bands that were a little more established weren't too happy. They were getting a little shit on Warped Tour that week, sort of their initiation. They were on this little, shitty stage. So many kids showed up to watch them in Detroit, and the kids rushed the stage, and it collapsed. The PA failed after like three songs. They finished with an acapella, 'Where is Your Boy,’ and the whole crowd sang along.

WENTZ: That's when every show started ending in a riot because it couldn't be contained. We ended up getting banned from a lot of venues because the entire crowd would end up onstage. It was pure energy. We'd be billed on tour as the opening band, and the promoter would tell us we had to close the show or else everyone would leave after we played. We were a good band to have that happen to because there wasn't any ego. We were just like, "Oh, that's weird.' It was just bizarre. When my parents saw it was this wid thing, they said, 'OK, yeah, maybe take a year off from college.' That year is still going on.

MCLYNN: That Warped Tour was when the band's first big magazine cover, by far, hit the stands. I give a lot of credit to Norman Wonderly and Mike Shea at Alternative Press. They saw what was happening with Fall Out Boy and were like, 'We know it's early with you guys, but we want to give you a cover.' It was the biggest thing to happen to any of us. It really helped kick it to another level. It helped stoke the fires that were burning. This is back when bands like Green Day, Blink-182, and No Doubt still sold millions of records left and right. It was a leap of faith for AP to step out on Fall Out Boy the way they did.

STUMP: That was our first big cover. It was crazy. My parents flipped out. That wasn't a small zine. It was a magazine my mom could find in a bookstore and tell her friends. It was a shocking time. It's still like that. Once the surrealism starts, it never ends. I was onstage with Taylor Swift ten years later. That statement just sounds insane. It's fucking crazy. But when I was onstage, I just fell into it. I wasn't thinking about how crazy it was until afterward. It was the same thing with the AP cover. We were so busy that it was just another one of those things we were doing that day. When we left, I was like, 'Holy fuck! We're on the cover of a magazine! One that I read! I have a subscription to that!'

HURLEY: Getting an 'In The Studio' blurb was a big deal. I remember seeing bands 'in the studio' and thinking, Man, I would love to be in that and have people care that we're in the studio.' There were more minor things, but that was our first big cover.

STUMP: One thing I remember about the photo shoot is I was asked to take off my hat. I was forced to take it off and had been wearing that hat for a while. I never wanted to be the lead singer. I always hoped to be a second guitarist with a backup singer role. I lobbied to find someone else to be the proper singer. But here I was, being the lead singer, and I fucking hated it. When I was a drummer, I was always behind something. Somehow the hat thing started. Pete gave me a hat instead of throwing it away - I think it's the one I'm wearing on the cover of Take This To Your Grave. It became like my Linus blanket. I had my hat, and I could permanently hide. You couldn't see my eyes or much of me, and I was very comfortable that way. The AP cover shoot was the first time someone asked me to remove it. My mom has a poster of that cover in her house, and every time I see it, I see the fear on my face - just trying to maintain composure while filled with terror and insecurity. ‘Why is there a camera on me?'

JANICK: We pounded the pavement every week for two years. We believed early on that something great was going to happen. As we moved to 100,000 and 200,000 albums, there were points where everything was tipping. When they were on the cover of Alternative Press. When they did Warped for five days, and the stage collapsed. We went into Christmas with the band selling 2000 to 3000 a week and in the listening stations at Hot Topic. Fueled By Ramen had never had anything like that before.

MOSTOFI: Pete and I used to joke that if he weren't straight edge, he would have likely been sent to prison or worse at some point before Fall Out Boy. Pete has a predisposition to addictive behavior and chemical dependency. This is something we talked about a lot back in the day. Straight Edge helped him avoid some of the traps of adolescence.

WENTZ: I was straight edge at the time. I don't think our band would have been so successful without that. The bands we were touring with were partying like crazy. Straight Edge helped solidify the relationship between the four of us. We were playing for the love of music, not for partying or girls or stuff like that. We liked being little maniacs running around. Hurley and I were kind of the younger brothers of the hardcore kids we were in bands with. This was an attempt to get out of that shadow a little bit. Nobody is going to compare this band to Racetraitor. You know when you don't want to do exactly what your dad or older brother does? There was a little bit of that.

"Take This To Your Grave, And I'll Take It To Mine" - The Legacy of Take This To Your Grave, 2003-2023

Take This To Your Grave represents a time before the paparazzi followed Wentz to Starbucks, before marriages and children, Disney soundtracks, and all the highs and lows of an illustrious career. The album altered the course for everyone involved with its creation. Crush Music added Miley Cyrus, Green Day, and Weezer to their roster. Fueled By Ramen signed Twenty One Pilots, Paramore, A Day To Remember, and All Time Low.

STUMP: I'm so proud of Take This To Your Grave. I had no idea how much people were going to react to it. I didn't know Fall Out Boy was that good of a band. We were this shitty post-hardcore band that decided to do a bunch of pop-punk before I went to college, and Pete went back to opening for Hatebreed. That was the plan. Somehow this record happened. To explain to people now how beautiful and accidental that record was is difficult. It seems like it had to have been planned, but no, we were that shitty band that opened for 25 Ta Life.

HURLEY: We wanted to make a record as perfect as Saves The Day's Through Being Cool. A front-to-back perfect collection of songs. That was our obsession with Take This To Your Grave. We were just trying to make a record that could be compared in any way to that record. There's just something special about when the four of us came together.

WENTZ: It blows my mind when I hear people talking about Take This To Your Grave or see people including it on lists because it was just this tiny personal thing. It was very barebones. That was all we had, and we gave everything we had to it. Maybe that's how these big iconic bands feel about those records, too. Perhaps that's how James Hetfield feels when we talk about Kill 'Em All. That album was probably the last moment many people had of having us as their band that their little brother didn't know about. I have those feelings about certain bands, too. 'This band was mine. That was the last time I could talk about them at school without anyone knowing who the fuck I was talking about.' That was the case with Take This To Your Grave.

TROHMAN: Before Save Rock N' Roll, there was a rumor that we would come back with one new song and then do a Take This To Your Grave tenth-anniversary tour. But we weren't going to do what people thought we would do. We weren't going to [wear out] our old material by just returning from the hiatus with a Take This To Your Grave tour.

WENTZ: We've been asked why we haven't done a Take This To Your Grave tour. In some ways, it's more respectful not to do that. It would feel like we were taking advantage of where that record sits, what it means to people and us.

HURLEY: When Metallica released Death Magnetic, I loved the record, but I feel like Load and Reload were better in a way, because you knew that's what they wanted to do.

TROHMAN: Some people want us to make Grave again, but I'm not 17. It would be hard to do something like that without it being contrived. Were proud of those songs. We know that’s where we came from. We know the album is an important part of our history.

STUMP: There's always going to be a Take This To Your Grave purist fan who wants that forever: But no matter what we do, we cannot give you 2003. It'll never happen again. I know the feeling, because I've lived it with my favorite bands, too. But there's a whole other chunk of our fans who have grown with us and followed this journey we're on. We were this happy accident that somehow came together. It’s tempting to plagarize yourself. But it’s way more satisfying and exciting to surprise yourself.

MCILRITH: Fall Out Boy is an important band for so many reasons. I know people don't expect the singer of Rise Against to say that, but they really are. If nothing else, they created so much dialog and conversation within not just a scene but an international scene. They were smart. They got accused of being this kiddie pop punk band, but they did smart things with their success. I say that, especially as a guy who grew up playing in the same Chicago hardcore bands that would go on and confront be-ing a part of mainstream music. Mainstream music and the mainstream world are machines that can chew your band up if you don't have your head on straight when you get into it. It's a fast-moving river, and you need to know what direction you're going in before you get into it. If you don't and you hesitate, it'll take you for a ride. Knowing those guys, they went into it with a really good idea. That's something that the hardcore instilled in all of us. Knowing where you stand on those things, we cut our teeth on the hardcore scene, and it made us ready for anything that the world could throw at us, including the giant music industry.

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[uwmspeccoll]

Indigenous People's Day

DR. HENRIETTA MANN Cheyenne

On this Indigenous People’s Day, we are featuring Matika Wilbur’s recent publication Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America, published by Ten Speed Press in 2023. Wilbur (b. 1984) is a visual storyteller and member of the Swinomish and Tulalip peoples of coastal Washington. She holds a degree from the Brooks Institute of Photography alongside a teaching certificate that has shaped her style of educating through narrative portraits.  

Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America, a book born from a documentary project of the same name, resolves to share contemporary Native issues and culture. In 2012 Wilbur set out from Seattle to visit and photograph all 562 plus Native American sovereign territories in the United States.

Wilbur’s engagement with the communities she visited resulted in the creation of hundreds of dynamic portraits and documentation of conversations about “tribal sovereignty, self-determination, wellness, recovery from historical trauma, decolonization of the mind, and revitalization of culture.” She refers to her portraiture approach as “an indigenous photography method” that includes several hours and sometimes days of interaction with the participants, an exchange of energy and gifts, and asking sitters to choose their portrait location. The outcome is a stunning collection of Native narratives and portraits.  

GREG BISKAKONE JOHNSON Lac Du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians

HOLLY MITITQUQ NORDLUM  Iñupiaq

J. MIKO THOMAS Chickasaw Nation

MOIRA REDCORN Osage, Caddo

HELENA and PRESTON ARROW-WEED Taos Pueblo/Kwaatsaan, Kamia

STEPHEN YELLOWTAIL Apsáalooke (Crow Nation)

LEI'OHU and LA'AKEA CHUN Kānaka Maoli

ORLANDO BEGAY Diné

KALE NISSEN Colville Tribes

GRACE ROMERO PACHECO Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians

ISABELLA and ALYSSA KLAIN Diné

NANCY WILBUR Swinomish

DR. JEREMIAH "JERRY" WOLFE Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians

RUTH DEMMERT Tlingit

MARVA SII~XUUTESNA JONES Tolowa Dee-Ni' Nation, Yurok, Karuk, Wintu

Matika Wilbur will be speaking on UW-Milwaukee's campus Thursday, November 16 from 6-7p.m. in conjunction with her exhibition Seeds of Culture: The Portraits and Voices of Native American Women on view at the Union Art Gallery November 16 through December 15, 2023. 

-Jenna, Special Collections Graduate Intern 

We acknowledge that in Milwaukee we live and work on traditional Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk, and Menominee homelands along the southwest shores of Michigami, part of North America’s largest system of freshwater lakes, where the Milwaukee, Menominee, and Kinnickinnic rivers meet and the people of Wisconsin’s sovereign Anishinaabe, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Oneida, and Mohican nations remain present.

[typhlonectes]

Oroperipatus tiputini: A new species of Velvet Worm from the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Velvet Worms, Onychophora, are a unique group of elongate, soft bodied, many legged Animals, given phylum status and considered to be among the closest living relatives to the Arthropods. They are currently the only known phylum of Animals known entirely from terrestrial species, both living and fossil, although they may be related to the Lobopodans, an entirely marine group known only from Early Palaeozoic fossils. The 230 living Velvet Worm species are divided into two groups, the Peripatidae, found in the tropics of Central and South America, the Antilles Islands, Gabon, India, and Southeast Asia, and the Peripatopsidae, found in Chile, South Africa, Papua New Guinea, Australia, and New Zealand. All South American members of the Peripatidae are placed within a single clade, the Neopatida, which is further divided into two lineages, the 'Andean' genus Oroperipatus, and the 'Caribbean' lineage, comprising all other genera. Read the paper: (https://zse.pensoft.net/article/117952/) The new species is described from five male, three female, and three juvenile specimens collected in the vacinity of the Tiputini Biodiversity Station of the Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Orellana Province, Ecuador, between 2001 and 2023, as well as one youngling, which one of the female specimens gave birth to in captivity. The new species is named Oroperipatus tiputini, in reference to the location where it was discovered. Adult female specimens of Oroperipatus tiputini very between 46 and 65.3 mm in length, while the adult males are smaller at 22.7 to 39.8 mm. Females have between 37 and 40 pairs of legs, while the males have between 34 and 37, although one male specimen had a different number of legs on each side, with 35 legs on the right and 36 legs on the left. The species shows considable colour variation, with one adult male being a light brown colour with a faint rhomboid pattern, two adult males and one adult female being brown with orange diamonds, and another female (the one which produced a youngling) being a plain dark orange colour. The youngling itself was yellowish with a diamond pattern. All specimens were darked on their heads and antenae, had orange or brown legs, and a distinctive white band on the head. Most specimens of Oroperipatus tiputini were found on small herbaceous Plants within old growth, closed canopy upland forests around the Tiputini Biodiversity Station. Other specimens were found in leaf litter, or on the butress roots of trees to a height of about 70 cm above the ground. One specimen was found in a Bromiliad. The Worms were more active at night.

IMAGE: Colour variation in the life of Oroperipatus tiputini. (A) Adult male paratype, ZSFQ-i8270; (B) adult male paratype, ZSFQ-i5151; (C) adult female holotype, ZSFQ-i8248, and youngling paratype, ZSFQ-17794, a few days after being born. All photographs were taken at the Tiputini Biodiversity Station. Photographs by Pedro Peñaherrera (A), (C) and Diego Cisneros-Heredia (B).

[crystaldivination]

“𝐀𝐫𝐞 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐚 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠?”

Thιs ιs ᥲ ᥣᥱttᥱr/tᥱxt from ყoᥙr most dᥱsιrᥱd ρᥱrsoᥒ

Hᥱყ bᥲbᥱs! It’s bᥱᥱᥒ ᥲ ᥕhιᥣᥱ, ᥲ qᥙιtᥱ ᥣoᥒg ᥕhιᥣᥱ bᥙt ᥒoᥕ I’m hᥱrᥱ ᥕιth ᥲ ᥒᥱᥕ ριᥴk-ᥲ-ᥴᥲrd rᥱᥲdιᥒg. Todᥲყ I brιᥒg ყoᥙ ᥲᥒothᥱr romᥲᥒᥴᥱ toριᥴ. I oρtᥱd for somᥱthιᥒg I kᥒoᥕ ყoᥙ’d ᥣιkᥱ ᥲᥒd somᥱthιᥒg thᥲt’d rᥲdιᥲtᥱ ᥣovιᥒg ᥱᥒᥱrgყ to ᥱvᥱrყoᥒᥱ ᥕho fιᥒds thιs. I hoρᥱ ყoᥙ ᥲᥣᥣ fιᥒd ιt ᥱᥒjoყᥲbᥣᥱ! Lᥱt mᥱ kᥒoᥕ hoᥕ ιt rᥱsoᥒᥲtᥱs.

⣷ 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 ⣷ 𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐃 𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐕𝐈𝐂𝐄𝐒 ⣷ 𝐒𝐔𝐏𝐏𝐎𝐑𝐓 & 𝐃𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐄

Disclaimer: this is a general reading which may or may not resonate with you. Take what resonates and leave out anything that doesn't. Feel free to choose another pile if you'd like.

How to choose your pile? As always meditate or close your eyes before looking at each picture. Trust your intuition and pick out a picture you feel the most drawn to.

The piles

both rows from left -> right

© 2023 crystaldivination ── all rights reserved. do not copy, translate, edit, alter, or redistribute my work. Plagiarism in any form is prohibited.

1 🖤

—mყ oᥒᥱ

You! Yes, you. What are you doing? Letting your life passing by you like that… don’t make a habit of attempting to give up without even trying. Don’t you dare waste your precious time. It’s time to wake up my little honey bear. I don’t wanna see you like that. You got your passion to go after, a so amazing future ahead of you waiting for you to embrace.

Don’t you think you’re worth it? Worth your effort trying to make what you truly want happen even if you don’t know the outcome now? Because I think you are. I’m right here even if you can’t see me. You would know how frustrated I can be when you’re being so stubborn and fearful. That’s so not you, you know that *chuckle*. Where did the little fiery spirit go, hm? I get that, things are not that easy… everything used to be easier, dot dot dot but don’t you see that you’re just making it harder than it looks? What do you have to lose if you just make the first step, huh? Try it, right now! No one is standing in your way but yourself. I can speak from experience.

A not so good result? Chin up. Try it again! And again until you got the hang of it. It’s better than just living in dissatisfaction and getting by right? Master your bravery until you master your craft. Now take my hand and trust in the process. Believe in yourself and what you can. I’m always watching you from above. Don’t make me feel sad about not being able to guide you. I want you to enjoy yourself and your life. You got this! There’s nothing to worry about. Open your heart and your mind then you’ll see the magic happening right in front of you. Make a difference first and all will follow. I’m always beside you, loving and supporting you. We will find each other again. I’m the light at the end of the tunnel, always guiding you home. You’ve never lost me. You belong with me. If you miss me, look deep in your heart and you’ll see me there. Have hope my love.

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2 🖤

—sᥱᥲsoᥒ ᥴhᥲᥒgᥱ

It’s hard for me to say something or anything at all. I don’t know… I’m in pain right now. The darkest feelings from memories that I’ve always wanted to escape from are catching up to me. I can’t take this excruciating pain and agony anymore. People are cruel. Sometimes I ask myself if love really is out there, if it’s kind enough to wait for me to give me its sincere and beautiful magic like how they called it at all or if there’s nothing like that because if there is, would it betray me like this? What does it all mean? Is everything just love? What is love? Is it just a journey one must go to find themself again? It’s hard, it’s painful. I feel like losing myself. Why does one have to go through pain?

I can’t get these bitter feelings off of me. My world is falling apart with nothing to hold on to. You’re the one i want to avoid the most but at the end of the day I somehow always find myself holding on to you again. You’re the only one I can remember, the only one I can hold onto even if I don’t want it. The only thing I can do is to deny it so I won’t believe it but I know that’s not the truth. You’re keeping me from collapsing completely. I know it’s selfish if I say I want you to ease my pain, to take my pain away but right now you’re the only safe haven I have.

I want to be a sweet and friendly person for you but there’s all this anxiety. The horror and the fear from the past are holding me back. I’m scared. I’m scared to scare you. I’m triggered when I see your face. You need to stay out of my way. I don’t want to hurt you. I fear to make this mistake again. To trust and then being let down again. Loving you feel like a dream but I’m too unstable. What if I can’t ever get out of that dream although it’d be a beautiful thought but I’m scared to mess up. I used to have everything but you and now I have nothing but you to hold onto. Isn’t that sad or just a cliché? I do want to give you a love so pure and I want love you unconditionally but maybe love is not in it for me, maybe i just need to focus on myself. I’m just unlucky I guess, for a lack of a better word.

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3 🖤

—mooᥒᥣιght

I’ve been looking for you for way too long. We belong together, you and I. We're soulmates, I just know it. I know you’re right there. You’re just waiting for me like I am for you. It’s reassuring to know we both sit under the same sky looking at the same moon right? I can’t wait to meet you. I think we’re alike. You’re exactly what I’m looking for. Let me be the perfect missing puzzle to your picture and you can be the light that is shining on me. You’re my beautiful dream fever. You drive me wild and crazy.

Under the moonlight let me adore you. I can imagine your eyes sparkling when admiring the stars while I’m the one who’s admiring your beauty. Looking into your eyes must be magical. I don’t have to see through rose-colored glasses to recognize how you are the rosé world embellished with flower petals yourself that I seek. You’re a fascination to me. I can’t figure you out yet but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to know you more. I don’t actually know you but I feel like I do regardless. I don’t need to know the truth. My heart knows you’re perfect either way.

Your skin, the softness that you carry in you. I want to inhale your scent like it's some kind of drug I can’t get used to with its intensity but won’t be able to stop. You speak and understand me with all your body and soul, I know you do, thus this is why day by day I dive into you with my soul. Although my mortal eyes show and tell me something else it doesn’t matter. As long as I have you in my heart I know you’re already here with me and always. They say you’re a rare diamond that I, as an ordinary human, have no chance to earn but let me, a humble one, find you and treat you the way you’ve always deserved because you’re worthy of all good. You can decide once you see and know me if I’m worthy of your attention and love. I want to claim you as mine but not out of fear, instead I want you to claim me as yours as well.

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4 🖤

—thᥱ soᥙᥒd of ყoᥙ

Why are you so ridiculously beautiful? You’re so stunningly beautiful. You can do whatever you want to me, and I’ll let you. I care for you so much. You’re the softest sound from the most perfect lullaby I’ve ever known of but can’t seem to believe actually exists. I dream of you. I want to see you smile and make you happy.

Come here. I’m right here, sweetheart. I need you to stop beating yourself up. You won’t hurt yourself. You won’t give up. You can overcome anything because you’re strong. You can do it for yourself and me. Be happy and live your life to the fullest. You deserve it my little darling. You don’t know how special you are so don’t you dare lose your light because of anything or anyone trying to dim that light. Stay positive and be brave. I know you can.

Most of the times I don’t even know why my heart is longing for you. It’s like there’s an invisible draw that is pulling me towards you. A call for my other half. An important half that I feel is missing in me. Is there a chance that I’ve known you before because I feel like knowing you without knowing you before. You open up memories in me that I’ve never seen before but they are telling me they exist deep in my mind and were forgotten for a very long time. Do you believe in destiny? I don’t but I might get convinced.

With me you don’t have to be tough all the time or pretend to be. I can love you for who you are with all your strengths and weaknesses. If you’re really the right one for me and that can only my heart tells, I’ll love you with all that my heart can offer. And I promise you, I will stick around as long as I can. I won’t let you down.

Now wait for you? I can do that. Even if the world ends tomorrow my will would stay strong. I want to be able to see and touch you. I’m confused but this is somehow a good feeling. What do you say? I think I’m not ready for our union yet but I might get surprised by the universe by what it is conspiring for us, I guess?

♡ PS. to my followers who participated in my latest game — due to personal matters i won’t be able to answer your asks any time soon but I’ll try to queue them whenever I can. I apologize for the delay.

— you’ve reached the end of this post, thanks for reading!

signed, crystal.