#all members having a magazine feature.. crazy

[tomorrowxtogether]

Soobin Is Leading TOMORROW X TOGETHER with Positivity

The leader of TXT opens up about the group's current chapter

This week, in compliment with our TOMORROW X TOGETHER cover story, we’ll be rolling out individual spotlights on each member of the K-pop act. Today, we spend some time with the group’s leader, Soobin. Don’t forget to get your copy of the limited edition magazine collector’s box featuring six exclusive TXT covers and more at the Consequence Shop.

Soobin, the leader of TOMORROW X TOGETHER, is a very tall young man. Most of the members of the group tower over their peers in the K-pop world — three of the band members clear six feet — and Soobin has them all beat.

Sitting in a hotel room in Osaka, Japan, it’s almost as if Soobin, cozy in black sweatpants and a matching T-shirt, is unaware of this fact. With his stature, he could presumably be intimidating if he wanted to be; instead, he’s unfailingly polite and remarkably sweet. He bows to shake my hand as he sits down, offering an off-the-record recommendation for an anime on Netflix as we get comfortable. Soobin is soft-spoken enough that the interpreter in the room with us sometimes has to lean in to catch his responses. He dips his head again when he gets up at the end of our conversation.

“I’m not usually the talkative type,” he says, smiling shyly. “I don’t know how to make things flowery and eloquent.”

According to his bandmates, though, Soobin’s leadership strength isn’t dependent on locution. “Soobin is in charge of communications, and we can look into each other’s eyes when we are rehearsing and tell just from that how we’re feeling,” fellow TXT member Taehyun explains. For the group, the concept of communication extends beyond public-facing comments and speaking responsibilities.

At 22 years old, Soobin is not the oldest member of the group — that would be 23-year-old Yeonjun — but when TXT debuted in 2019, he was introduced to the world as the leader nonetheless. This is not uncommon in K-pop, as this title and its responsibilities often have more to do with personality than age. Soobin seems to be a generally agreeable person who is comfortable with taking a backseat a lot of the time, as he does when his bandmates are in the room the day we all meet.

That laid back attitude extends to his downtime, as well. In the past, a day off for Soobin would involve a lot of “watching animation lying down.” Recently, though, free time means spending the day with friends, catching up on movies, or going swimming. He’s also trying to become a better cook; one of his more recent endeavors was dakbokkeumtang, a Korean dish of braised spicy chicken.

He strives for improvement onstage as well, growing more confident in areas he used to find more challenging. Particularly after completing TXT’s first world tour (2022’s “ACT: LOVE SICK”), Soobin says he’s noticeably refined his public speaking: “I feel so grateful to our fans and I feel so happy during the tour, but I always get nervous at the end when I’m talking,” he notes. “But, recently, I realized my words and speeches became more organized.” He laughs. “I think I became kind of cool.”

With his bandmates, however, coolness also means knowing when to hold things back. Despite the closeness between the members of TXT, Soobin reveals that he tries not to add more pressure on the members than is absolutely necessary. “There are actually things that I cannot tell my members because they’re my members,” he explains. “Being the leader, I sometimes worry about things that could make them feel pressured, and with such things, I tend to open up to my other friends.”

That includes adding to the weight of their upcoming headlining slot at Lollapalooza; but, rather than focus on the immensity of the stage, he’s reveling in the excitement these days. Soobin happily recalls that when he first told his songwriter and producer friends about their 2022 appearance at the festival, “They said, ‘I’m so jealous, it’s driving me crazy… But it was a cute jealousy. This time, when we heard the news that we were headlining, I couldn’t wait to tell them.”

As effortless as Soobin may appear as a performer, there’s no doubt he and the TXT team have put in the hard work to earn that Lollapalooza billing. Beyond detailed rehearsals, all the members are involved behind the scenes of the group’s ever-evolving musical direction, too. Soobin has a songwriting credit on the group’s most recent album, the bouncy, bright “Happy Fools” featuring Coi Leray, while “Tinnitus (Wanna be a rock)” and “Farewell, Neverland” are described by the members as group efforts thematically. The band’s longtime studio collaborator, HYBE producer Slow Rabbit, calls Soobin and his bandmates “pioneers for the next generation of artists and fans, especially for Gen Z.”

To Soobin, his ability to connect with people stems from the fact that he grew up a K-pop fan long before becoming a K-pop idol. That sentiment allows him to relate to TXT’s fans, known as MOA, and it’s a connection Soobin doesn’t take lightly. “Being a fan turned me into a positive person, and I only experienced positive changes as a K-pop fan,” he explains. “So to our fans, and the people who like me, I want only positive things to happen to them. I hope that they can experience positive changes.”

It’s only been four years since TXT debuted, and the group has already achieved headliner status at a major American music festival. If he were to chat with Soobin of 2019, back when TOMORROW X TOGETHER were freshly debuted, he says that he wouldn’t want to change a thing about their story so far: “I did the best I could at that time,” he recalls. “I wouldn’t want to do anything that would affect present me, because I’m so satisfied with present me. I just hope past Soobin walks the path that I walked, exactly the way I did.”

[90sloverwithinsomnia]

Switch Rivals - Chapter 6/21

This is one of many archived fanfics featuring 1st and 2nd generation K-pop acts that I've come across recently. It's all in good fun, and maybe a bit cringeworthy! Just to clarify, I don't post fanfics, so I hope to the people that post and read K-pop fanfics makes sense.Credits go out to the original creator 90s_love.

*Note: Nothing in their post will change (unless necessary), other than being posted here, and the (Link) will be provided to the page that i found it on.

Characters:

Kim Jaeduck, An Seungho (Tony), Moon Heejoon, Jang Woohyuk, Ahn Chilhyun (Kangta), Lee Jaewon (H.O.T.), Eun Jiwon, Lee Jaijin, Kang Sunghoon, Ko Jiyong, Jang Suwon

Summary:

Jaeduck's first H.O.T concert and Tony's suggestion.

Chapter 6: Concert and Suggestion No. 1

Jaeduck was getting nervous. It's his first concert since the switch happened. He and the others practices for days for the concert. He had to learn all of Tony's parts because he didn't know any of them. He (Tony to them) had no idea that it was this hard both rap and sing. But after a while, he was able to manage. He even had to learn Tony's signature just in case he had to sign some things.

Finally, it was concert night. The audience seats are packed as usual with the H.O.T concerts. Jaeduck had never seen the audience in white because his group's colour is yellow. 

"Hyung, are you okay?" (Jaewon)

"Y-yeah... I'm okay. Just a little excited." (Jaeduck)

"Okay. If you say so." (Jaewon)

They went to the stage to see a packed audience. Everyone had white balloons and wearing white raincoats. The fans were cheering for H.O.T. They sung and danced the night away. As they were performing Jaeduck noticed someone was wearing all black looking at him.

After the concert, there was a fan signing that wasn't even planned. But the fans wanted it so they did it anyways. Jaeduck was overwhelmed by how many fans were in front of him. He originally had about 100 people in front of him. Now he has about 10 times as many as he did in Sechskies.

"Oppa, you were great today." (Fangirl)

"Oh, yes. Thank you." (Jaeduck)

There were a lot of people in front of him. So many that he couldn't even count. There were about 2,370 people in his row and he couldn't imagine that many people when he was in Sechskies. He got a lot of compliments and signed a lot of the fangirls stuff. It was lucky he practiced signing because he would have hesitated to sign them since he didn't know Tony's signature.

"Okay, that's a wrap." (Staff)

"Finally, it's over." (Kangta)

"Two day break, here we come." (Woohyuk)

"Don't forget we have a magazine photoshoot at the end of the week." (Heejun)

The group disasembled and Jaeduck was about to go home. When suddenly, he felt someone grabbing his arm. He turned to see Tony in disguise in all black. 

"Hyung, why are you here?" (Jaeduck)

"I came to see the show. It's your first as me so I wanted to see if you can do it." (Tony)

"Oh. So, did I do well?" (Jaeduck)

"You did great! And I have a suggestion." (Tony)

"A suggestion? What is it?" (Jaeduck)

"I think we should live together." (Tony)

"Hyung, are you crazy? Our members and fans won't like it." (Jaeduck)

"That's why we're keeping it a secret." (Tony)

"A secret? Like secretly live together? Just the two of us?" (Jaeduck)

"Yes. That way we can keep up each other's schedules and help each other when we need it." (Tony)

"Okay, then. I would love to live with you." (Jaeduck)

[panfritoo]

Ozempic Bitches

In the 90's fashion magazines were the authoritative voice behind fashion and beauty trends, but behind the aspirational glossy spreads there lies a less glamorous ascetic lifestyle. Coke, Cigarettes, and coffee were the ultimate diet of the decade. This nihilistic breakfast, with stimulants at the top of the food pyramid, kept Manhattan energized and in shape.

During the 90s heroin had increasingly become more accessible and the fashion industry was controversially involved in glamorizing drug use by praising models with the gaunt, hollow- cheeked appearance associated with drug addiction. Iconic models like Kate Moss and Jaime King epitomized this era of "heroin chic.” Emaciated features, pale skin, and boyish lean bodies became the ideal standard of beauty in the fashion industry promoting toxic beauty expectations and trivializing drug addiction. Although these beauty norms were prominent in the modelling world, they had trickle-down effects on generations to come as pictures from that era continued to circulate through the internet decades after. I should quote the infamous Kate Moss line which traumatized a generation of girls with eating disorders: “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”. The first time I hopped on a scale was at the age of 9 at the dietitian's office. I was raised by my grandmother whose tragic wartime experiences gave her the habit of overfeeding me 'for when the bad times come'. This made me a chubby kid, and painfully self-aware of my body from a young age. Since then, I have taken part in every form of diet, exercise and method of losing weight. I remember searching for the word 'thinspo' on Tumblr before going to bed. The vast array of images of thigh gaps and slender girls in Brandy Melville's 'one size' clothing soothed my hunger and encouraged restricting eating behavior. To this day I cannot erase the knowledge I gained about calories, every time I sit down to eat, I see numbers, not food.

In 2015, there was a significant change in the ideal body type. It all started with Kim Kardashian's iconic 2015 Paper magazine cover, which featured her naked resting a champagne glass on her ass. This sparked what is now known as the Kardashian effect, which brought black-body types and extreme hourglass shapes into the spotlight. As a result, social media went crazy about slim-thick aesthetics, full breasts, and booties. It's worth noting that Brazilian Butt Lift surgeries (BBLs) rose in popularity to unprecedented levels in 2015. That is not to say that although this trend celebrated women's curves it was healthy. Like any other trend, it sets high expectations for women on how to look and many young women felt the need to go through cosmetic procedures to fit the beauty standards.

Fast forward to 2022, the New York Post made headlines with its controversial article "Bye Bye Booty: Heroin Chic is Back" commenting on how celebrities and YK2 fashion are bringing back skinny silhouettes. The article created an outcry on Twitter for wrongly treating female bodies as trends perpetuating body-image issues for each generation of women.

Most of social media platforms have banned the search 'thinspo', but similar trends on TikTok such as ‘fitspo’, ‘what I eat in a day’, and ‘girl dinner’ continue to promote toxic diet culture. Additionally, the reemergence of "Tumblr girls" and "indie sleaze" aesthetic idolizes pre- adolescent bodies and messy makeup of the heroin chic era. Even members of the Kardashian klan seem to have embarked on a simultaneous weight loss journey and there are speculations of them removing their implants even if they deny having gotten any procedures in the first place. For instance, before the 2023 Met Gala, Kim Kardashian openly spoke on the red carpet about all the dietary decisions she had to undergo to lose 16 pounds in three weeks to fit into the famous Marlin Monroe's 'Happy Birthday dress'. Or this year's Schiaparelli show, Kylie Jenner stunned in a V-neck dress that accentuated her trimmed-down silhouette.

Besides the tabloid commentary, there is something critical to be examined about the changes in the Kardashian body. Scott Disick famously said in a KUWTK episode that if the Kardashians lose their butts, they lose their money, signifying the relevance of their looks to their brand identity. Changes in the appearance of the Kardashians have societal repercussions on what we choose as the feminine ideal body type.

But the Kardashians are not the only ones shrinking, the cause for many of the celebrity weight loss transformations is due to Ozempic. In a short period of time, this medication has become a buzzword on social media and probably the elixir Hollywood has been longing for. Ozempic is a drug used to treat type-2 diabetes, but it also is a miracle drug for weight loss due to its appetite-suppressant effects. I was prescribed Ozempic in 2021 before its massive commercialization, its effects were extreme appetite reduction, I could go 7 hours or more without experiencing hunger and become instantly full after one bite. Although this might seem like a relief to some people, the fact is that I missed being hungry. So much of our culture revolves around eating and I missed being able to enjoy food. Nevertheless, Ozempic is a hot and heavy drug in places like Los Angeles, and many people are getting it prescribed off-label or in the black market for vanity purposes. Public figures such as Oprah Winfrey and Elon Musk have been open about their usage of

Ozempic or Wegovy, an alternative brand. After years of recognizing that larger bodies are also beautiful, this drug offers the miracle of easily losing weight and ignoring what is so difficult to accept.

The effects of this trend on skinnier bodies is already having negative effects. Tom Quinn, Director of External Affairs at Beat Eating Disorders organizations stated in an article “Between April 2021 and March 2022, Beat provided 3 times the amount of support sessions in comparison to pre- pandemic levels”. And in 2023 the UK saw a 50% increase in the number of young women going to the hospital for eating disorders.

The treatment of bodies as trends is a concerning aspect of society. There seems to be a pendulum effect in which standards of beauty and desirability constantly shift, often swinging from one extreme to another. This phenomenon leads to the rejection of previous ideals and the adoption of new ones, perpetuating a cycle of unrealistic and ever-changing expectations leaving women feeling pressured to conform to the latest standards. We are at a point where women are no longer buying these fads. We have continuously seen female bodies being categorized as either 'celebrated' or 'shamed' by arbitrary canons. Photoshopped curves and Face App faces will continue to roam on our feeds, but social media has also helped with the democratization of media representation, bringing into the spotlight different kinds of bodies. It is important that we take responsibility for the kind of content we consume and support brands, models and influencers making a difference by actually keeping it real.

[everythingbap]

🎤 Timid Magazine: Bang Yongguk on the road to 3: his third EP, from studio to stage

Bang Yongguk

On the road to 3: his third EP, from studio to stage

-

Talent: Bang Yongguk @bangstergram

Photos: My Music Taste @mymusictaste.official, YY Entertainment @yy_ent

By Jiselle Liu

Bang Yongguk (also stylized as BANG YONGGUK) is perhaps best known as a member of South Korean boy group B.A.P, where he served as their leader and main rapper. But even before that, he was already making waves in the music industry, releasing his single album “I Remember” and featuring in Song Ji-Eun’s number one single, “Going Crazy” in 2011. Over the years, he continued to explore solo work with tracks like “AM 4:44” and “Yamazaki,” and in 2019, he released his full album, BANGYONGGUK.

Following the release of his first two EPs, 2 in 2022 and The Colors of Love in 2023, his latest, titled 3, dropped on a significant date for the artist this year. “When we decided to release the album 3 in March, I wondered what the most special day in March would be,” Bang says. “I thought that my birthday, which is on the last day of March, would be the most meaningful.”

Admittedly, as someone relatively new to the world of K-pop, I had not been familiar with Bang’s work, both under B.A.P and as a soloist. Nevertheless, it was easy to get drawn into his latest mini album, especially with the accompanying official videos that were released with each song.

3 features six tracks, with “MOVIMENTO” and “BAD” serving as the title tracks. “BAD,” which features artist YOUHA, in particular, stood out to me with how they contrasted each other lyrically, vocally, and visually in the song and music video.

Wrapped in a brightly colored blanket, Bang sings repeatedly in the chorus, "I'm feeling bad, bad, ba-a-ad." His glum demeanor is particularly striking against his more vibrant surroundings, amplifying his sense of loneliness rather than offering comfort. He laments being interested in a girl who seems keen on playing games, spending much of the song staring into space. The one time he cracks a smile is when YOUHA’s vocals first enter the song. YOUHA, who only appears via a video call on his tablet, looks more confident and playful, singing “I know you want me, but I'm kind of busy.” Although visually, it seems as if viewers are invited into his perspective, the upbeat melody pulls us into hers as well.

This recent release explores new sounds, and some have noted that both title tracks are a bit of a departure from Bang’s signature broodier style. But while his new music has surprised, it has not disappointed. “I feel like the range of my music has expanded a lot,” says Bang, reflecting on his music evolution since he began his solo career. “By incorporating various genres, tempos, and different stories from my life, I now have solo tracks that cover a wide range of themes.”

Bang actively participated in writing, composing, and arranging all six tracks in 3. “This EP was inspired a lot by the recent world tour,” he says. “I wanted to enjoy the performances with more audiences in a more exciting way. That's why I decided to challenge myself with genres and tempos of music that I hadn't tried before.”

Not wasting any time after the release, Bang embarked on his US tour, III. He performed in 11 cities across the month of April, starting in Brooklyn and concluding in Los Angeles. Fresh off his tour, he shares his thoughts on his latest mini album, his creative process, and his experiences on the road.

Timid Magazine: Congratulations on the comeback and tour! Looking back on your US tour, what was a memorable moment—on or off stage—that you can share with us?

Bang Yongguk: It was a tour that started right after releasing the new album 3, and the most memorable moment on stage was when the fans sang along to the songs from the new album. It was a moment where I could feel the love.

TM: What inspired you to release a video for each track on the album?

BYG: I always try to focus on both music and visualizers. This is because I believe that music has become not only something to listen to but also something to see and a part of the performance on stage. Therefore, I wanted to create a visualizer for every song on the album. Just like the process of making music, we spent a considerable amount of time with the team preparing for overseas locations, and I feel that we have created a great piece of work.

TM: During filming the videos, was there a specific experience, challenge, or highlight that stands out for you?

BYG: The moments preparing for the shoot by going to France ahead of the music video filming date and scouting the location in Nantes are still vivid in my memory. After finishing the location scouting, we would always have long meetings with the team to decide on the filming concepts. Sometimes, we would share our opinions and work on creating a piece of art together until the sun rose. Even though it was tough, those times made me feel alive.

TM: Can you elaborate on your creative process? Do the lyrics typically come first, or does the melody? Does your approach differ depending on the song?

BYG: When making music, I don't focus more on either writing lyrics, composing, or arranging. Each of these tasks requires significant choices and concentration. I think the process of building up each part like constructing a building day by day is more important. In fact, I often tend to give up personal time or hobbies. Music has become both my work and a companion in life.

TM: My favorite track on the album is one of the title tracks, “BAD.” Can you tell us a bit about how this collaboration with YOUHA came about?

BYG: When I needed a female vocalist for “BAD,” YOUHA was the first person who came to mind. I often listen to YOUHA's music and really wanted to work with her at least once. Considering the theme of the song, as well as the visual aspects and vocal skills, I thought YOUHA would be the perfect fit for this song, so I reached out to her. I trusted my intuition, and as expected, we completed an excellent track. I would like to take this opportunity to thank YOUHA once again.

TM: The track “NUMB” stands out with all-English lyrics, while your other title track “MOVIMIENTO” incorporates a little bit of Spanish in the lyrics. During your songwriting process, what factors influence which language you use in a song?

BYG: After finishing the track, I usually decide on the language based on the feel of the track. When I used Spanish with the garage sound, it felt mysteriously fitting. Rather than planning it out in advance, I tend to follow the feeling during the work process. It would be great if I had the opportunity to perform it during a South American tour.

TM: Beyond live shows, what are some ways you hope to connect with your fans this year?

BYG: I want to tell you a lot of good news that fans will enjoy. The biggest plan of the year is to prepare a project that I have to wrap up personally and give you some surprising news.

TM: Looking back on your career so far, what has been the most rewarding experience for you as an artist?

BYG: When I was younger working part-time, I told my friends that I would definitely take the music I made to America and play it for them. Who would have thought it would come true? Rather than being sure about that dream, I trusted myself and tried harder. I think it's very rewarding to be traveling around the world and achieving those dreams right now.

TM: Is there any message you’d like to share with your fans?

BYG: Dear and respected fans. I would not have grown this far without you. Thank you for your support and love. I will try my best to repay you.

TM: Now that you’re back from touring, what’s next for you that you can share with us?

BYG: I want to complete my summer plans and go on a long trip alone. I haven't had a particularly relaxing day this year. I feel I need a long time to reflect on myself again. I look forward to the day I will greet you again with new news. Thank you!

‍

Disclaimer: This interview was edited for length and clarity.

[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

New THUNDERMOTHER Lineup Announces 2023 Tour Dates

The first official promotional photo of the new THUNDERMOTHER lineup can be seen above.

THUNDERMOTHER currently consists of guitarist Filippa Nässil, singer Linnéa Vikström (THERION, AT THE MOVIES),bassist Majsan Lindberg and drummer Joan Massing (HONEY CREEK).

Less than two months ago, it was announced that singer Guernica Mancini, drummer Emlee Johansson and bassist Mona Lindgren were exiting THUNDERMOTHER and were forming a new band together. At the same time, Nässil revealed that she would continue with a new THUNDERMOTHER lineup featuring Vikström and Lindberg.

In recent weeks, Mancini, who joined THUNDERMOTHER in 2017, gave several interviews in which she described her time with the group as "six tough years" and "a very bumpy ride". She also said that Filippa decided to fire her from the band without consulting the other members of THUNDERMOTHER, a move which they perceived as "very disrespectful towards them, being that they believed that we were a democracy and that we had a say in these things," according to Guernica.

Earlier this month, Nässil shared a six-minute video in which she addressed some of the questions surrounding the departures of Mancini, Johansson and Lindgren as well as her decision to carry on with a new lineup. She said in part: "Some stuff you read online and even now in some magazines is true and some stuff has more to it," she explained. "I mean, there's a depth to what happened and it's impossible to read in a few lines or a quote from someone. And I wanna assure you and tell you guys that I did my absolute best to work everything out between the old members. I think we should be conscious in what we're saying and trust that I have done my absolute best for peace, love and rock and roll and I did everything in my power to work it out with the previous bandmembers.

"I would never throw anybody under the bridge. I think that's another private matter. What happened has been behind the curtain, so to speak, so it's not everything that people need to know about or should know about because it's just unnecessary to throw stuff at each other, I think."

"I'm thrilled to have Majsan back, who's done hundreds of shows with me in THUNDERMOTHER. She's the THUNDERMOTHER bass player. And I'm thrilled to have Linnéa Vikström, my friend since many, many years, on vocals. And we have a great new drummer. She likes great bands like CLUTCH, FOO FIGHTERS, BLACK CROWES and stuff like that, so a really groovy drummer. And I can't wait for the future."

Nässil went on to say that all the previously announced THUNDERMOTHER concerts "will happen. Not a single canceled show. Everyone has faith in THUNDERMOTHER and so should you.

"We are super stoked to tour with the SCORPIONS in Europe again and doing our own shows," she added. "So that's something we're doing right now — rehearsing."

According to Filippa, she and her new bandmates are "hoping to release a new song before" they hit the road, but she acknowledged that this may be hard to pull off as "it's crazy hectic right now."

Earlier this month, Mancini, Johansson and Lindgren announced that they have launched a new band called THE GEMS. Mancini and Lindgren told Germany's Metal Hammer magazine that THE GEMS, which sees Lindgren returning to her original instrument, the guitar, is planning to release its debut single, "Phoenix", in April. Mancini and Lindgren also noted that THE GEMS' live performances will include material from THUNDERMOTHER's last two albums, 2020's "Heat Wave" and 2022's "Black And Gold", both of which featured songwriting contributions from Guernica and Emlee.

Following the release of their latest album, "Black And Gold", last summer and countless live shows alongside an extensive tour with iconic SCORPIONS in North America last fall, THUNDERMOTHER recently announced plans to team up with SCORPIONS for more European live dates, as well as headline gigs on the "Black And Gold" tour 2023.

"Black And Gold" was recorded at Baggpipe Studios in Stockholm, and was mixed and mastered by Søren Andersen at Medley Studios in Copenhagen.

[starlightxsvt]

3 dates | c.sc

pairing ➳ badboy!Seungcheol x female!reader

genre ➳ badboy au, romance, some fluff, angst, bad attempt at humour, gets spicy at the end.

word count ➳ 12.4k+ (i have NO idea how this became so long so strap in for a ride)

warnings ➳ cursing, mentions of killing, mentions criminal activities, slight violence(non explicit), smoking, ma man Seungcheol ain't your typical badboy, self doubt, blackmailing, reader does all sorts of risky things cuz she's a SIMP, blood(nothing explicit), kissing, marking, some breast worshipping, grinding, reader is horny lol. (Please lemme know if I forgot anything.)

synopsis ➳ after one fateful encounter with him you cannot get him out of your head. so you opt to do some crazy things to catch his attention and even snag a few dates with him. only trouble is he isn't the type to stay after the whole disposition is over.

Swirling the third drink in your hand you heave yet another depressed sigh. You are so tired that you feel like you can just slump on the counter and pass out. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to stop for a drink, you alcohol riddled brain thinks.

The plans you had with Katelyn was cancelled last moment; she called to tell you that her thesis submission date was moved forward and so she couldn't hang out with you tonight. You're in the middle of an existential crisis quite literally, the too many part time jobs yet still lack of money and copious amounts of study getting to you. Staring hard at your drink you contemplate if it is worth giving up on college and your dream of becoming an arts major. It sure feels tempting right now, the long hours at the diner and not enough sleep at night proving to be the worst nuisance.

Sighing you put down your drink. It's still early, you should go home and try to catch up on the much needed sleep. You really had no intention of grabbing a drink tonight; you have morning classes tomorrow but you made a last moment decision to stop for a drink on your way back home. You didn't take your usual route to home today, and while trudging through the streets tiredly you came across this bar called Seventeen's. You've heard stories about this place, how it is the home to local gangs and how it's bad people's turf and what not. Your curiosity, probably too much of that made you get inside for a drink even though all the bones in your body ached. The inside is what you expected, nowhere near fancy but dingy, just decent enough. The people inside didn't look friendly and if the chains and tattoos on them gave any indication you'd say the rumours are true; this is the turf of gangs. The drinks taste decent, not the best but not the worst and from the overall look of this place you don't really have a reason to come back.

You're about to stand up from your stool when a large, clammy hand grabs your wrist out of nowhere, making you jump. "Hey sexy, sit down. Let me buy you a drink," the owner of the hand, a large, tattooed middle aged man slurs making your nose scrunch out of disgust. You're wearing nothing that can be called sexy; a plain cardigan and jeans and the way he looks you up and down makes you want to poke his eyes out.

You really shouldn't have come here. Clenching your jaw, you meet his eyes, "What makes you think I'm interested to have a drink with you?"

"Oh come on, why would you be here then, lookin' all nice? Just sit down," the man drawls, an ugly smile on his face. He still hasn't let go of your wrist and it's making you impatient. Looks like you're gonna have to kick his balls tonight. Maybe the self defense classes didn't completely go to waste.

"Get your disgusting hands off me while I'm being nice, sleazeball," you hiss at him, trying to get his hand off. The man stands up growling, "What did you say you bitch?" You're preparing to break his nose when out of nowhere a punch lands on his face that sends him tumbling to the ground. The attacker gets on top of him and twists his arm and you can literally hear a bone snap.

Shit.

"I think she said she is not interested," the man hisses, landing yet another another hit on his face before kicking his groin and getting up. When he turns around and his eyes meet yours, your heart skips a few beats and you almost The man is drop dead gorgeous, someone you would not expect to see here but probably on the cover of a high end magazine. His blond hair is long, crossing the nape of his neck as well as some covering his forehead. What takes your breath away the most is his eyes, the most beautiful pair you've ever seen. They seem to have their own galaxies in them, so deep and mesmerising and decorated with lashes long enough to make you jealous. His dress up, black jacket and jeans, immediately tells you what he is; a gang member.

"You should get home, lady," He speaks in a no nonsense tone, his face cold as ice. But you're offended. "Excuse me? Who are you calling lady? You make it sound like I'm old." You puff your cheeks and cross your arms, trying to appear intimidating. "Besides I had the situation under control, you didn't need to butt in." The man keeps looking at you with that no nonsense look, his features displaying annoyance if you are right and he's clearly not intimidated. The dude on the floor grunts and makes an effort to get up, only to be kicked by your saviour once more. "Hey Mingyu, get him out of here. What was this piece of trash doing here anyway?" The man orders to someone before turning to look at you, "Do you live far?"

"Uh- no, a ten minutes walk from here maybe," you reply unsurely, surprised at his question. The blond haired man nods before grabbing your wrist, "I'll walk you home. Hurry up, lady." You have a feeling he's purposely calling you that and though you start following him out of the bar, you make grunts of protest.

"Oh yeah, why? Trying to find out my address? So you can come later and hurt me like that guy?" You would not be this brazen if it wasn't for the alcohol in your system, after all the man next you isn't a friendly one if the rumours are true. The man raises a brow at you, "Did you do something that requires me to beat you up?" You hiccup at his serious tone. Does he not get a joke? He lets go of your hand now that you're at a safe distance from the bar but still stays close enough to you as your steps are rather stumbling and messy. You aren't fully drunk but your body is tired and feels like will shut down any second.

You really need some sleep.

"You know I'm not that drunk. You don't have to walk me home." You complain. "I'm walking you home because this isn't a nice place you should be alone at night. What happened earlier could happen again." He says not looking at you. "Mhmm," you keep on trudging behind him, "Thank you so much for your kind gesture, sir." You mock him but he doesn't reply, staring straight ahead, completely ignoring you as he walks quietly. In silence you two walk the rest of the path, before finally stopping as your apartment comes into view. At this point it feels like your bones will break and you will plop down on the concrete any second, but you manage to keep standing. "Well, thanks for walking me home." You shift your weight from one foot to another. "And for helping me back there." He shrugs coolly, a bored expression on his face. He's turning to walk away when you call, "Hey- I didn't get your name."

"What do you need it for?" He side glances at you. You shrug, "I don't know. You helped me so I thought it'd be nice to know your name." "You don't need to. Go inside, lady." He says, his tone final and starts marching away. You wait a couple moments before yelling, "Asshole!" and quickly rushing inside your building, partly afraid he's gonna come back.

You won't be surprised if you get killed tonight.

-

"So you are telling me Choi Seungcheol walked you home?" Katelyn screams in your ear, jolting up from her seat, earning glares from other people at the library in the process. "That's his name?" You whisper-yell, grabbing her hand to pull her back down. "I'm guessing from the blond hair you said," Katelyn shrugs. "Uh huh." You mean back in your chair, "He was hot though."

"Is that seriously all you have to say?" Katelyn whines exasperatedly. "No, I mean, if it wasn't for the way he dresses or talks I would have thought he's a model or something." You murmur.

"Are you sure he didn't hurt you?" Katelyn questions. "Hell no!" You frown. "He saved me from that creepy old dude. I was surprised too. I wish I didn't drink so much, I could have gotten a better look at his face," you sigh. "Seriously?" Katelyn raises a brow at you.

"Girl, you should have seen him. His aura and the way he carried himself was...so hot." You grin to yourself. Katelyn watches you like you've grown two heads. "Are you trying to tell me you have a crush on that gangster?" You smile sheepishly, "Maybe, I mean it's harmless. He was broody yet charming and I'm a girl so.... Also, it's not like he likes me too and is gonna come running whenever I ask him to bang me." You mutter.

"Oh he's gonna break your bones and bang your skull against a wall. That's what he's gonna do."

"Come on! Maybe he isn't so bad. Maybe the rumours are just rumours. Maybe he just looks intimidating and dresses up like that and people thinks he's a gangster." "Really? His name is on every bad thing that happens around here. From illegal racing to murders. Do you know that people say he has killed too?" "Like I said, rumours," you shrug being your stubborn self. Katelyn holds her hands up in surrender, "You know what? It doesn't matter. I'm glad you're alive so let's just put this behind us, shall we?" You don't reply but wiggle your brows at her, a conspirational look on your face. "Oh no, don't look at me like that," Katelyn warns. "Let's go to that bar tonight. Please?" You give her your best puppy eyes. "What are you? Fucking crazy? You wanna get killed?" She whisper-yells, scowling at you. "No. I just wanna take another look at him. Without the alcohol in my system you know. Besides, the place isn't that bad." You reply.

"Well then get killed by yourself. I'm not coming with you."

"I'll help you with your papers for the rest of the semester."

"Shit."

-

"Well, looks like your wish won't be coming true," Katelyn muses chugging down her fourth glass as you keep playing with your first one. It's nearing an hour since you've come to the bar and there has been no sign of the man you desperately seek. The place is exactly like it was the other day, filled with people who you wouldn't want to mess with.

Yet here you are.

"Let's call it a night," Katelyn sighs. "We're just wasting our time." You know that too but you don't want to leave; not just yet. You are well aware that this is just pathetic but you've this crazy urge to see that man once again. You don't know why you feel this way; you never felt like this before. Why are thinking yourself to death about a complete stranger? Has some kind of spell been casted on you?

"Yeah, let's get going," you murmur half heartedly. You help your friend stand up as she's a little wobbly on her feet and together you make your way through the door. "Should we call a cab?" You ask Katelyn. She shakes her head no and you nod, you arms wrapped around hers to support her in case she looses her balance. You start stepping away from the bar and towards the road to her place until a noise from behind makes you stop in your tracks.

"Did you hear that?" You ask, whipping your head behind. There's no one around and the street is mostly dark other than the light flashing from the name of the bar. You hear the sound once again and this time you can locate where it's coming from. There's an abandoned playground at the back of the bar and you've a feeling that's the source.

Katelyn hisses as she sees you step towards there. "What are you doing!"

"Didn't you hear that?"

"Yes I did. That's why I say we leave!" You ignore her and cautiously keep on stepping forward, mentally cursing yourself for wearing heels. Katelyn follows behind you murmuring all kinds of warnings. "You know curiosity killed the cat, right?" She whispers.

You roll your eyes, "Well I'm not a cat. Just- be quiet. It can be nothing." You both move past the bar gingerly and towards the playground at the back. There are old gallons of oil and abandoned materials just around the corner and you two quickly hide among them. It takes you a while to get adjusted to the low light after you poke your head up from the hiding spot.

You're eyes fix on him immediately. His blond hair makes him easily recognisable amid the darkness. There is a few more people around him, all kicking something in the ground. Not something, but someone. The man lying on the ground groans in pain and you realize this is what you both heard. "Shit," You hear Katelyn curse from beside you. "We need to get going." Instead of replying, you keep your eyes trained on the scene unfolding, holding your breath. You're tranced. Seungcheol lands continuous punched on the guy laying below him and after a moment his writhing frame seems to stop moving as it falls limp.

Fuck.

"You know in movies this is the part where people get caught." Katelyn whispers, her voice hoarse and her hand clutching yours in a tugging motion. "Uh-huh. But I can't seem to move. I wonder if he's... really dead." You whisper back. "Are you fucking crazy!" She hisses. "You wanna witness murder?"

Before you can reply you hear a sound that echoes through the empty field and it takes a second for you two to realise that it came from any one of you two. You don't have the time to figure out who made it as you both are crawling away from the playground without looking back, head crouched low to avoid being seen. You don't know if they heard that or if they're coming behind you, you both just keep scrambling, moving until you're past the corner. As soon as possible you both get on your feet and run like the grim reaper is chasing you, stopping only when you are far enough from the bar.

"I am never listening to you again!" Katelyn yells.

-

It's been a good few days since your near death experience and you somehow find yourself in front of that bar once again. You and Katelyn have not brought up that incident after that night. You made yourself believe that it was over and came to a conclusion that it is better to forget that man and leave all of it behind, no matter how much your heart disagreed. But it's easier said than done; you may not mention him out loud but in the back of your mind you think of him. He's like a ghost, haunting you all the time, plagueing your thoughts when you go to bed at night. It felt like he was ever existent and there was an itch in your heart that drove you insane.

Maybe that's why your subconscious brought you here, in front of Seventeen's, once again. You were on your way back home from library and you thought you took your usual route, until you realized you were standing in front of that place. But what is even terrifying is that the man haunting your mind stands in front of the entrance of the bar and you blink a few times to make sure you are not hallucinating. He's leaned against the entrance door, cigarette between his lips and from his pocket he fetches a lighter to light the poison in his mouth.

Damn, lighting up a cigarette never looked this sexy.

He hasn't seen you yet and you contemplate running the other way. That's the sensible thing to do but you, not being a sensible person, start walking towards him. Your footsteps make him look up and notice you and like the last time, there is no expression on his face. It's the same bored yet handsome face except now in daylight you can take a better look at him and this time, you notice a little mole on the left of his face, by his nose. Realising he's gonna stay silent you decide to speak, "Hi... It's me... Do you remember me?" Wow. That's such an intelligent thing to ask.

With the monotoned yet serious expression on his face, he goes, "Why won't I? I don't have Alzheimer's."

So he can joke.

You laugh, an awkward, probably exaggerated laugh. "What are you doing here? Did you not learn your lesson last time?" He cuts to the chase, his voice brassy and deep, almost threatening. You want to roll your eyes. "Who are you to say? I can be wherever I want whenever I want, thank you very much." "Well then, have fun getting in trouble like last time." He's nonchalant as he blows a smoke right past you and stands up straight, turning away. "Wait!" You almost grab his hand, desperate to stop him.

What is wrong with you? Your subconscious slaps her forehead. What are you holding him back for? To say 'hello sir, I think you're hot, can you please put your dick inside me'? Seungcheol turns his head back, his eyebrow cocked up.

Why do you find everything about him so attractive?

"Um...I know your name, Seungcheol." You speak, trying to sound intimidating, like knowing his name gives you some power over him. There's something definitely wrong with you which is why you don't want him to leave just yet and which is why you're stalling time. But it seems to have done the job as he pulls the cigarette out of his mouth and turns towards you, an annoyed look on his face. "How do you know that?" The timbre of his tone is deep and it rakes shivers down your spine. "Well, you've built quite a reputation for yourself so it isn't hard to get your name." You shrug coolly. "Well, if you know so much about my reputation, you should know what I'm capable of." His lone is low, almost threating as he starts to take slow steps towards you making you step back out of reflex.

Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. Maybe you will also end up like the curious cat.

"Oh yes, I know. People have got a lot to say about you," you try to sound unfazed, not meeting his eyes that you feel are burning holes on your face. "What are you doing here, lady?" he asks slowly, pausing between each word and glaring at you as he continues to step forward. You can feel his patience thinning.

"I swear to God if you call me that-"

"What are you doing here?" This time his tone is scary, too scary. It makes you lose the ability to speak for a second as his dark gaze bores into you. He has backed you up against the wall behind you and you swallow. Right, what are you doing here? It probably has something to do with a very hot individual and his insanely attractive aura. Scratch that you are a hundred percent sure it has something to do with the blond haired, enticing man in front of you. He's driving you mad and you need to get your fill of him.

"Go out with me," you state and you are sure you've never spoken words more stupid than that. Internally, you cringe and pray that the ground below you would open and take you straight to the fiery pits.

This is the first time you see some sort of expression come across his face; surprise. He looks utterly shocked and somewhat confused. His mouth opens just a little and he squints at you, "What?"

There's no going back now.

"Go out with me. Let's go on three dates." you say once more, looking him in the eye. He seems to appear even more surprised, a dumbstruck look sitting on his face. He observes you quietly for a while and you can feel the gears in his head shifting. You wonder what he's gonna say next. Or maybe he won't say anything but bang your head on the wall and leave you to die alone. "I'm sorry I'm not following," he looks genuinely perplexed. "I want to go on three dates with you. They say after three dates you can figure out whether you like that person or not and I think I like you so..."

I think I like you.

The biggest understatement of the year.

Seungcheol tilts his head, an amused expression on his face as he studies you, those sharp eyes of his settling on yours, "What is your deal, sweetheart?" He crosses his arms, a brow raised. Sweetheart? That's new. And definitely better than lady. You can't deny how hearing him call you that makes your insides melt. "Nothing. I just want to date you," you shrug, trying to keep your wits together. His proximity is driving you wild; you can sniff a faint smell of cologne and cigarette, him being inches away from you. This time he laughs loudly, a mocking laugh you'd say. "Who sent you?"

Oh my god.

You roll your eyes. "Nobody sent me! Do I look like I'm a gang member or something?" "Then I don't see a reason why you'd want to date me," He states, throwing a challenging look at you.

"What if I said I have a thing for bad boys?"

He snorts. "You don't look the type to date bad boys," he mocks. "Who are you to say that?" You cross your arms. "I want to date you because I think you're hot, okay?" You can not believe you just said that. Looks like you don't have control over your mouth anymore. Warmth spreads throughout your face like a forest fire.

Seungcheol narrows his eyes on you, his tongue poking his cheek as he stands in front of you as if trying to read your mind. After a beat he sighs before looking at you, his eyes becoming darker than usual and his gaze unforgiving. "Hey. Does it look like I'm playing house here? Do you have any idea about the shit I do? The dirty work I do? I don't care if you have a fucking fetish or whatever but this is the last time I'm warning you. I don't want to see you around again. If I see you here once more, you're in fucking trouble," he spits and starts stomping away. His tone is serious and you know very well he is not joking, which is why you use your last resort. You're embarrassed at yourself for being so desperate but at the same time you feel shameless. It has almost turned into a game at this point, you want to make him surrender. That's right, you want him to give in. "You shouldn't be like that with me. I saw you, a few days ago. That night, when you and your friends were beating up that guy...in the playground," you casually stroll to come stand right behind him.

You can't believe you are blackmailing a gangster. Your death must be near.

Seungcheol whips his head back, his eyes glaring at you and you can almost see fire in them. Finally, you got his attention.

"My friend also saw it, we both did. You killed him, didn't you? Me and my friend witnessed a murder. What do you say? Should we go to the station?" You can see his jaw clench and you can't hold back a victorious smirk. Moments pass by as your words hang in the air and the tension between you gets thicker. Yet once more he surprises you, breaking the silence with a chuckle, "Well I killed one person, what makes you think I can't take care of another?"

You swallow.

"Well, my friend already knows so if I go missing you can be sure that the cops will come to you first." You throw back at him.

When did you get so wreckless?

Seungcheol stares at you for a few more seconds before shrugging and moving his hand dismissively, "Well then go tell the cops. I don't give a shit." He starts walking back to the bar leaving you starstruck. He stops and turns towards you before opening the door, "Also, I meant it. I hope I don't see you around. Otherwise I may just have to hurt that pretty face."

-

You don't show up after that.

Mostly because you are embarasssed.

It's been a good while after your last encounter with Seungcheol and you didn't go to the police, obviously. Because you don't have evidence and from what you've heard Seungcheol is pretty influential around here and you don't need to go to an extent to get on his bad side. You're definitely gonna end up dead if you do so, which you don't want just yet.

Classes have just finished and you and Katelyn step out of the classroom together, walking through the hallways and into the main campus. She rambles on about some bad sushi she ate yesterday while your mind remains preoccupied. Maybe you need to get laid. Maybe that'll make you forget about Seungcheol. You just need good dick that's probably why you were so desperate for him.

That's just a stupid lie.

You don't realise Katelyn is calling you until she shakes you by the shoulder and you snap back into reality. You notice her face is as pale as a ghost and following her line of sight your eyes stop on him.

Him. Seungcheol.

What?

You double take, blinking furiously to confirm your vision. He's standing there, in the parking area of your uni, leaned against a convertible Ferrari, a cigarette between his lips. He looks relaxed, like he does this regularly. Students whisper in each others ear while gawking at him curiously. "What did you do!" Katelyn yells. "Nothing!" You hiss back.

"Then why is he here!"

"I don't know!"

Your eyes meet with Seungcheol's and a smirk spreads across his face making you shiver. He stands up straight and tilts his head, an indication for you to come closer to him. "Fuck, he's here for me," you mumble. "Of course he's here for you, dumbass," Katelyn snaps. "Well, if I don't return, you know who killed me." You sigh starting to walk towards him. "Wait- you're going with him?" She asks incredulously.

"Don't worry. I'll keep my phone on. I don't think he's gonna murder me, I mean there are so many witnesses." You inhale deeply, leaving behind a lost looking Katelyn.

Seungcheol says nothing as you stand right in front of him raising an inquisitive brow but he only holds open the door for you to get in. Deciding to follow him you enter the car quietly and a wave of gasps go through the crowd.

There's gonna be talk about this tomorrow.

Seungcheol, still smirking victoriously for some reason rounds the car and gets inside and within seconds you're hitting the road. There's a thick silence for a while, which feels like ages to you. You're overwhelmed, bewildered to say anything; your poor brain still processing what is happening. You're nervous, jittery as you fiddle with you bag and look out on your side, for some reason scared to look at him.

What if he really kills you? He wouldn't, right?

"You're awfully quiet," Seungcheol says matter of factly as he spares you a glance while driving.

"I'm... processing."

"What are you, a robot?"

"Why are you doing this?" You question instead.

"Doing what?"

"Okay, you know very well what I mean. Why are you picking me up from uni all of a sudden? How do you even know I'm a student there?" "I have resources and...you didn't protest at all. You came along nicely," Seungcheol raised a brow at you, a cocky smile on his lips. You don't answer but continue to stare at him, trying to pin him down with your gaze. He finally sighs and pulls the car to a stop by the side of the road, the sudden brake making you slightly jerk in your seat. "I've decided to give you those 3 dates. That's why," He is calm, unreadable and you wonder if this is a prank. Then again, he has no reason to prank you, does he? "Really?" Your voice comes out breathy. "Yes. I thought I'd give you a taste of how it feels to be with someone like me. I can scare people without physically hurting them you know," He says in a menacing tone.

"So what? You're taking me to an underground fight or something?" You question. "Nah, we're keeping it simple today." He smirks as he starts the car again and turns on the radio, an indication that he doesn't want to converse anymore.

Shamelessly you take a good look at Seungcheol; he's dressed in another jacket today paired with a black tee underneath. Today, you notice he has upped his accessory game, his fingers full of rings and chains dangling from his neck. But what catches your attention is a tattoo, something like a dragon and words written in a language you don't understand, peeking from underneath his sleeve. You almost ask about it but decide it'll probably be too much and he wouldn't answer you anyway.

As you do so, in the back of your mind you think you should have dressed better, something cuter, more appropriate for a date rather than a plain blouse and jeans. But then again who knew Choi Seungcheol was gonna show up out of the blue. You're gnawing at your lower lip, lost in your thoughts when the car is pulled to a halt and you realize your ride is over. You're parked in front of a diner called Lacy's and from the vibe that the place is giving, you can tell that this is place where people like him hang out. You raise a questioning brow at Seungcheol who says, "I know it doesn't look fancy but trust me I has some of the best food I've ever eaten." Taking his words for now you quickly type out a text to Katelyn letting her know you're in one piece and get out of the car.

Once you're seated you look around the place which is relatively empty except some men playing pool at the far end. You watch Seungcheol who has gone to the reception booth to place your orders; his posture relaxed as he leans against the counter and talks to the girl standing there. They seem to know each other because their chat takes longer than it should and the girl has a shy, almost flirty smile on her face.

He probably fucks her.

You shake the thought off your head as the gangster comes back and sits in front of you. There's silence for a second as you wonder if you should just ask the questions that run free around your mind. "Are the rumours true?" You blurt out. He's raises a brow.

"About you. You know..."

"Do you want them to be true?" He asks back. "I don't...know," you reply. "Well, I think it depends on each person. If you want it to be true it is true, if you don't it isn't," he shrugs, leaning back in his chair. "Why don't you just give me a straight answer?" you snap. He smirks as if he's having fun but doesn't reply, watching you with his arms crossed. You roll your your eyes, blowing out an exasperated breath. "You know, I haven't seen one like you. Willingly hanging out with dangerous people, going to dangerous places. You say you saw me kill someone yet you're here. You're almost desperate to get in trouble," he observes. "I'm not desperate to get in trouble. I just...I'm just- attracted to you alright?" This is so embarrassing. You need to shut your mouth. "You've been on my mind ever since that night. I wanna see exactly how deep I'm into you." You bite your lip.

That's enough. You will boost his ego through the roof like this.

Seungcheol studies you for a bit before grinning cockily, "Well, if you didn't know, I am trouble baby. Just you being with me might end you up in a mess." Before you can reply, your food is served, that same girl from the booth setting down your plates and looking at Seungcheol for a bit too long with that same stupid smile which he returns. You don't know why but you feel jealous, jealous of whatever these two share, whatever she has with him.

You've lost your mind at this point. You're on a high that is Seungcheol. He has made you forget your morals, made you completely lose your mind. Or maybe you've been too good all your life and seeing him brought out that crazy, thrill seeking part of yourself.

Silently you dig into your food and as Seungcheol said, the food is really good. This is one of the best meatloaf you've ever had and you can't help but moan. Seungcheol watches you with an amused smile before popping a fry in his mouth.

"What's your major?" Seungcheol asks out of the blue.

"Uh- sociology."

"Mmhmm."

You're about to ask him what he studied in college but you assume he probably never went to one so you seal your lips. You wonder what his background is and who his parents are but you don't want to get too personal on the first day. So you ask something else, "How old are you?" He laughs out loud before he deadpans, "Thirty five." "What!" You almost choke.

There's no way he's-

"Why? What did you expect?"

"I... I don't know! A few years older than me? You're kidding right? You don't look thirty five." He has to be bluffing. "And how old would you be?" "You shouldn't ask a woman her age," you try to make a point. "Don't you have any manners?" He smirks,"I don't, sweetheart. To answer your question, I'm twenty eight."

Uh huh.

"Well, I'm twenty one," you mutter under your breath. You don't know if he hears it because he doesn't give any reaction, busy twirling a fry in sauce. The rest of your meal is full of silence as you wonder if your date will end like this; dry and boring. He's awfully silent and seems to be lost in thoughts as he doesn't engage in a conversation. You're about to take your last bite when the silence is broken by him.

"What did you see that night?" He leans over, his elbows resting on the table as he suddenly regards you with a sombre look, his earlier cockiness vanished. His eyes have once again gone dark and his demeanor says he's not being superficial right now. You're caught off guard as you cough loudly, reaching for your glass to take a sip of water. "What?"

"You heard me. What did you see that night? Exactly how much did you see?" He repeats. You're confused. You thought he didn't care about it. He said it didn't matter. So why is he bringing it up now? You've worked hard to push that night in the deepest part of your brain, pretending it didn't happen.

And then suddenly it clicks.

"You!" You point an accusatory finger at him as you catch on to his plan. "You've agreed to go out with me so that you can find out what I saw that night!" Seungcheol groans, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Ugh, just fucking tell me!" He snaps, annoyed that you've found out his little scheme. You scoff, "I thought you said you didn't care? Besides it's not like I'm going to tell the police." He rolls his eyes and leans back into the couch. "Just tell me and let me go."

You're baffled. His actions didn't make any sense and you actually thought he had no other intentions behind dating you but holy shit this sneaky bastard. "You sly little asshole!" You hiss at him. "Call me that once more and you'll regret it." He threatens. You roll your eyes sagging back into your seat, "Whatever." Then an idea hits you. "You know what, I'll tell you exactly how much I saw that night." You have Seungcheol's full attention now as he stares intensely at you, waiting for your next words. "On our third date. When this whole deal is over, I'll tell you. But in return you'll have to keep your promise and take me out on two more dates."

"Oh fucking hell," he groans rubbing his face in frustration. His state makes you smirk and you feel accomplished.

Choi Seungcheol is stressed because of you.

What a day to be alive.

You murmur, "Besides this isn't even a proper date. This was more like an interrogation. But I'll go easy on you and won't make you redo this date." You give him a sweet smile and he sees red. You can literally see fury blaze in his eyes. "Whatever!" He yells and abruptly stands up. "I don't have time for this. Your stupid play date is over. I'm dropping you home."

Before you can reply, he's marching towards the door. You've to admit this wasn't the best date but at least you've trapped Choi Seungcheol.

-

It has been a good week after your so called date at the diner and you haven't heard from him. You expected him to call or text you since he was gracious enough to ask for your number but he didn't. You now realize it was a mistake to not get his number; you had asked him for his when he took yours but being the prick he is he denied to hand over his number to you. You should have forced him to, you sigh. As you sit in the library the ping of your mobile distracts you from your racing thoughts as you realize you have a message. Picking the device up you tap on the notification. Even though it was from an unknown number, you have no trouble figuring out who it is from. A smile graces your lips as you read the words over again.

I'll pick you up from your house tomorrow evening at six.

That's all it says and that is good enough to send a thrum of excitement throughout your body.

-

You have not held back in dressing up today and you realize it's been a long time since you've dolled up yourself. A long before the clock strikes 6 you are ready; dressed in a cute pastel top and a matching skirt. You've also went ahead and applied makeup, not too much but just enough to maybe catch his eye. Maybe.

You wonder what he has planned for today.

A text from Seungcheol saying he's here has you flying out of your apartment as fast as your feet can carry your desperate self to see him. He stands in front of your apartment with his convertible, dressed in a white jacket that matched his pants. You take a deep breath before walking towards him, trying to calm all your nerves down.

"You know I expected to hear from you earlier. I've been waiting all week," you voice makes his head turn around to meet your eyes as you are skipping towards him with a teasing smile in your face. "I've been busy," he shrugs coolly, his eyes going over your whole body, from your legs to your face. He doesn't hide that he's taking a good look at you, in fact does it unashamedly.

You wonder if he likes what he sees.

Someone dressed up today," he comments. "Too bad we aren't going to a place where you can show off your pretty clothes." You frown, "Where are we going?" Seungcheol holds open the door, a mischievous smile on his face. "I've decided to grant your wish." With a confused face you get inside the car, the gears in your head running. What does he mean?

"I'm taking you to an underground fighting ring," he says with smirk as he reaches for something behind his seat. He pulls out a large hoodie and tosses it towards you, "Put this on. Otherwise you are going to attract a lot of attention and you don't want that." You gulp, taking the hoodie and putting it on you. You're slightly embarrassed. You were so excited to try this outfit but it's not like you knew he was taking you to a fight club. Hell you would have dressed like a guy if you knew. You shrug on the hoodie and it falls almost to your knees but it's huge and comfy and most importantly it smells like him. There's a hint of cologne, nothing too strong; a subtle, expensive scent that makes you want to take a deeper sniff. You wonder if you can keep this with you.

Stop it, pervert.

Seungcheol's voice pulls you out of your haze, "You can take it off later. Just wear it until we're out of there," he says and brings the engine to life.

Then you actually think about it. Underground fighting ring? Holy shit. You were only kidding when you mentioned it. Admittedly, you're shocked, somewhat horrified. Everyone knows it isn't the best place to be at especially for someone like you who never had such an experience. Seungcheol must have seen your expression because the smile on his face gets bigger, "Why? You not up for it?" His voice is teasing.

He's challenging you.

Oh well.

"Of course I'm up for it," you square your shoulders, keeping your voice cool. "Bring it on."

-

Seungcheol leads you into a bar and then through a door at the back that leads down to a lot of stairs, reaching a place similar to an underground parking lot. Quietly you follow Seungcheol, staying as close to him as possible, your bodies occasionally touching. He leads you to a pair of double doors and from the other side you can hear men shouting and chanting.

This is it, I guess.

Seungcheol throws one more smile at you before pushing open the doors as you scramble to follow him closely. The sight that greets you something you only see in movies. There's a boxing ring where two people are throwing punches at each other and surrounding them from all sides is a wild, loud and excited crowd. They continue to cheer loudly as the two men in the ring continue to box and you hear their grunts and groans.

Holy shit.

Swallowing your eyes meet Seungcheol's who is regarding you with curiosity. "What do you think?" He has to speak loudly for you to hear over the screaming throng. "Uh... It's loud," you say dumbly as you try to think of a reply. But it's too loud for you to even think properly as you take in your unfamiliar surroundings. You see a tall man approaching towards you and out of reflex you shuffle closer to Seungcheol until you realize it's his friend. The guy from the first night. He and Seungcheol grin at each other, patting their backs as they talk close to each others ears. You gawk at them curiously and realize they must be talking about you because his friend takes curious glances at you occasionally. His friend is tall, really tall and well built but unlike his body his face is sweet and puppy like, almost cute. When he grins his canines pop up just like a puppy and you wonder if all his friends are good looking.

After he's done chatting with his friend Seungcheol pulls you close and says, "This is my friend. Mingyu. Always stay near him, you hear me? Don't stray away unless you wanna get hurt." His eyes are stern as he pins you down with his stare but you have other thoughts running in your head.

"What do you mean? Where are you going?" You yell over the noise.

He just smirks at you and starts taking his jacket off. "About time you see how we do it around here." His tone is cocky as he hands his jacket to you, "Hold this for me. And stay close to him."

Giving a look at Mingyu Seungcheol starts walking away towards a door that you're guessing is the changing room.

He's gonna fight.

"Wait- but-" Mingyu stops you with a hand on your shoulder and offers you a kind smile. "It's fine. Just stay with me." He then ushers you towards the crowd, spotting a place where you can get a good look at the ring. "Do you guys do this often?" You look up at Mingyu. He smiles sheepishly, "Not me. I tried a few times and I always end up beaten to a pulp. But hyung does this often, he's really good."

"Uh huh, I'm sure he is," you smile dryly. "This is your first time watching a fight, no?" "Definitely." He grins, "Watch carefully then. It's really fun."

You have your doubts on how watching people beat each other up can be fun but you don't comment anything, instead chew on your lip anxiously. Seungcheol really didn't have to go this far? What if he gets hurt badly? Is he trying to impress you?

Don't flatter yourself, your subconscious rolls her eyes.

As the loud cheering that had died down ensues again, your train of thoughts are halted as you see Seungcheol in shorts and his hands covered in boxing gloves, step into the ring. You can't help but ogle at his naked torso, his finely defined and chiseled muscles. He has the perfect body, not too bulky, not too lean just the right amount that gives you a hard time taking your eyes off him. He seems to have noticed your gaze because the second your eyes meet, he throws a haughty, knowing smirk at you. Embarrassed you avert your gaze elsewhere.

His opponent is a muscular man who's growling and banging his chest with his fists, a gesture of intimidation, you suppose. You are definitely intimidated and you wonder if Seungcheol can actually win against him.

The fight starts with a whistle and in mere seconds they are on to each other, throwing punches left and right. Your eyes have a hard time keeping up with them and their fast reflexes and your hands fly to your mouth as a punch lands on Seungcheol's face, followed by repeated blows as Seungcheol falls back. There's a moment of silence as he wipes his bottom lip and you realize there's a cut.

He tilts his neck, popping the bones and glaring at the other man before launching himself on top of his opponent. The next moments are a blurry mess, Seungcheol beating the guy repeatedly until he ends up on the floor but he doesn't stop there. Seungcheol ends it with a sharp jab to his spine and you have no doubt the other man has broken bones with the ways he howls in pain. The match comes to an end like that as the people cheer wildly while Seungcheol steps down from the stage. Mingyu grins at you happily as if what you witnessed was just a regular occurrence, something you should be cheerful about. Shaking your head at the situation, you let out a deflated sigh.

Their life is really so different than yours.

-

Seungcheol seems to be in a very good mood after the fight as he buys you both some sandwiches and drinks from a deli after you both step out of the bar. You both sit down at a park nearby to eat and watch the night sky. "You know, I thought you were gonna lose," you speak after taking a few bites of the sandwich. Seungcheol scoffs, "You underestimate me, sweetheart. I've been doing this for a long time."

"Do you enjoy it?" You ask quietly, focused on peeling the wrapper from your food. You feel Seungcheol's stare on you. "Yes. Why? Are you scared already?"

"No. I was just... curious. Your definition and my definition of fun is totally different." You murmur. "Of course. What did you think? I go to the mall and shop and watch movies with my friends when I'm bored?" His tone is sarcastic. You bite your lip. "No I didn't. It's just...I feels different now that I have experienced it first hand." Seungcheol offers nothing more, taking a sip of his coke and leaning back into the bench. A silence stretches between the both of except the rustling of the wrapper of your food. "How long have you been doing this?" You blurt out. He frowns at you and you don't expect him to answer but he surprises you.

"For a long time."

He doesn't offer anymore and you don't have the heart to prod him for an actual answer. "And how long do you plan on doing this?"

"What?"

"I mean... don't you have any other plans. Like...do you wanna keep doing what you are doing for the rest of your life? Don't you wanna like... settle down maybe?" Your voice is soft as if you are talking to a child. Seungcheol looks annoyed. He doesn't speak for a while as he stares at the ground, a frown etched to his face. You're about to take back your question when he replies, "I really don't think you understand. I've been trying to tell you that my life is completely disparate to yours. So I don't think like you. I don't have plans like you but neither am I expected to follow a certain pattern like you. I can do whatever the fuck I want, ___. So don't look at me like you pity me. I'm the last person here that should be pitied. " His tone is sharp and it makes you feel bad, like a sensation of needles pricking your heart. "I didn't mean it like that. I'm sorry," You whisper, feeling timid as you look down at your lap. He mutters, "Don't go poking your nose in other people's business. Specially people like me."

He's right. You shouldn't have asked that. You are not close enough to ask things like that. After that there is a silence, this time, an awkward one. There's palpable tension in the air and you feel jittery. Should you just ask him to take you home?

It's still early and truth be told, you don't want to leave him just yet. You only have one more date to go and judging by his reaction, he is in no way interested in a relationship. You heave out a long sigh. You knew very well what you were getting into, yet you couldn't stop yourself. Seungcheol is like a poison, the sweetest one, the one that has you addicted and unable to let go, no matter how much it hurts.

This is a fucking mess.

"Let's get going. I have plans," Seungcheol announces, standing up. You want to protest but you feel like you have ruined the mood, so you follow him mutely to his car.

The drive to your house is awfully quiet, to the point you want to scream out of frustration. Seungcheol seems to be lost in his head as he makes no move to talk. It's like you are alone, but you're not and it's worse, the air full of tension. Soon you have reached your house and he stops the car but keeps the engine rolling, indicating his rush. He keeps still and stares ahead while gripping the steering wheel as you step out of the car in silence. "Thanks for dropping me home," you say lamely, your voice meek. You turn around to walk away but his voice stops you in your tracks.

"I promised you three dates and I will keep my word. I expect you to keep yours, ___. I hope you will tell me what I want to hear when we meet next time." His tone is sharp with an edge of threat and you barely get to nod before he drives away.

It's not until you're inside your apartment that you realize you still have his hoodie on. Quickly fishing out your phone you type out a text.

I'm sorry, I forgot to return your hoodie.

After a while, his reply comes.

Keep it.

-

You watch Katelyn as she fills her lunch tray with food before walking over and taking a seat opposite to you. She looks extra radiant today, which probably has something to do with the way she's dressed; a bright colourful outfit which undoubtedly she put a lot of time into considering. She has a date, with a guy she has been talking to for the last few weeks. It reminds you of your pitiful situation and you sigh, trying to shrug off those thoughts.

It has been a good couple weeks since you last saw Seungcheol and you have not exchanged a word after that night. In the back of your mind you wonder if he is even alive. You want to message him, you really want to because you are going crazy but after how your last date ended, you can't bring yourself to. You are scared, exactly of what, you can't put your finger into.

The entire situation you have put yourself into is fucking scary. They say you become sure of your feelings after three dates but it did not take that much for you. You already are very certain about your feelings for him and how deep they run exactly and you also know that in the end you will be left scarred. He would never be yours. He has probably forgotten about you or decided that it is not worth another date to figure out what you saw that night.

You let a desperate, pitiable sigh.

"I know you are hiding things from me but I understand that you are not ready to talk yet. But I want you to know I am here for you okay?" Katelyn's voice makes you blink your way out of your thoughts. She squeezes your hand tightly and gives you a reassuring smile and you're left feeling guilty.

"I ...I will tell you. Soon. Just give me a bit more time," you whisper. She nods in understanding. A grateful smile touches your lips as her words make you emotional. Then there's a ping from your phone letting you know there's a message. Without giving it much thought you open the device and your eyes go wide.

I'll take you out for dinner tomorrow night. Wear something formal.

-

You wait outside your apartment for Seungcheol. Your day has passed by in a flurry of excitement and nerves as you carefully picked your outfit and did your hair and makeup. A soft baby pink dress that stopped just above you knees adorns you as your hair rests just above your neck in a loose bun.

You are fiddling with your fingers as you think about how this night is gonna end and wether you will ever see him again when a car screech that grabs your attention.

Seungcheol's convertible has taken a stop in front of you and you see the man getting out the vehicle and take big steps towards you.

You're mesmerized.

Perhaps there is not enough word in this world to describe his looks or perhaps you've simple lost the ability to speak; either way, you just stand and stare, drinking the godly man that stands in front of you. He looks delectable, completely flawless and agonizingly gorgeous in his sharp black suit and pants, with a silk black shirt underneath, the top couple buttons undone that reveals a beautiful porcelain skin. His hairstyle completes the look, parted to one side in a sleek way and showing his forehead and oh god is it sexy. You realize you have a forehead kink, if there is anything as such.

If you weren't in love with him before you are now.

He looks ravishing, and you wonder why it isn't illegal to look this good. It should be because you have completely lost control over yourself. Nothing exists in your world except for him and you feel paralyzed, unable to do anything but drink him in. You wonder if you are even worthy to stand beside him.

"____?" Seungcheol calls you, snapping his fingers in front of your eyes. He must have been calling you while you were eye fucking him. "Oh! Um, hi." You're flustered. "You- you look really, really nice." It isn't enough but it's what you can get past your lips. A knowing smirk kisses his lips before he teases, "Well, you look really, really nice too." Motioning you to his car he says, "Shall we? We'll be late for our reservation."

"Yeah, of course," you say, hurrying over to his car, embarasssed at your foolery. Seungcheol must have noticed you ogling him like that. But you don't really care when he looks like that. It is his fault for looking so devilishly handsome and idly you wonder if he did that on purpose. If he's deliberately teasing with, trying to make you the most miserable before letting you go with a slap of reality to your face. Pushing away those plagueing thoughts, you sit up straight and clear your throat as Seungcheol comes to sit beside you and brings the engine to life.

A decently long and quiet (except for the music from the radio) but not quite uncomfortable car ride later, Seungcheol stops in front of a really fancy and expensive looking restaurant just by the sea. You did not except him to take you to a high end restaurant, otherwise you would have put some more effort in your looks.

Feeling slightly out of place you quietly follow Seungcheol into the beautiful European styled building after he hands his keys to a valet. The interior is dripping with polished furnitures and extravagant chandeliers and marble floors as guests dressed elegantly have their dinner. As you look around the place in awe Seungcheol talks to the receptionist who then guides you towards a staircase that leads to a pair of large double doors decorated with gold which then, opens to a large balcony. In the middle of it sits a table with two chairs and an unceremonious gasp escapes your mouth as you realize this is where you will be having dinner.

The man from earlier takes his leave as Seungcheol helps you sit down before taking a seat for himself while you take in everything, overwhelmed with all your surroundings. Why did he put so much effort for a lousy and fake date?

"What do you think?" He asks with a smirk as he rests one of his elbows on the table.

"I'm overwhelmed," you reply quietly, honestly. He chuckles, "Well this place has really good food and a fantastic view so I thought it wouldn't bad for our last date."

Last date.

"It's really beautiful. I don't know why you did this but thank you, really," you murmur, eyes on the satin table cloth with intricate golden lining. Everything about this place is so pretty.

"Well, I decided it would be beneficial for me to extract words from you if you are wooed," his words have a teasing tone to it and his demeanor is completely different from last time, giving you a whiplash but you are not sure if he's fully joking. Before you can say that you are definitely wooed, a waiter appears to take your order and you leave the duty of ordering to Seungcheol since he seems to frequent this place. Prior to his leave, the waiter pours you Seungcheol's champagne of choice and then, you two are alone once more.

Reaching for the flute, you quickly gulp down the champagne to soothe your dry throat and to calm all your nerves.

Over dinner you talk about your uni and your parents back home and the farm they own. While Seungcheol mostly keeps quiet he doesn't ignore you but listens carefully, occasionally passing glances your way or commenting. He does not offer anything about him, which you expected and you don't ask any questions about him either. Instead you try your best to keep his interest in your words despite the lack of it from his side.

After a hearty meal of poached lobsters and wagyu beefs and creamy soups comes dessert; a chocolate orange mousse with spiced fruits and yogurt sorbet. You start eating your dessert in silence, the occasional crashing of waves filling the complete lack of sounds.

This location is truly magnificent and breathtaking, almost having a feel like you're in a fancy resort in a luxurious tropical island. It is undoubtedly the most beautiful place you have ever been, let alone have dinner at and you wonder if you would ever have the chance to visit some place like this had you not met Seungcheol. The man in question, continues eating quietly, seemingly lost in his thoughts. He looks lovely as always, if not more and you try to burn this image in your mind for you to look back at later. You want to ask him so many question, you want to tell him so many things but you're scared. Sacred if you do so this moment will break, scared it will annoy him and end your final date all too early. So you bite your tongue and finish your food as he does and after your plates are cleared away, you are served another expensive champagne as an end to your luxurious dinner.

Even though Seungcheol doesn't say anything, you assume it is time to spill the beans, to say what he has been wanting to hear from the beginning. You have teased him enough and it is time you give him what he deserves. Taking a deep breath, you open your mouth. "Me and Katelyn heard noises from the playground that night so we decided to check. It was pretty dark and we were tipsy but I recognized you and you were... beating someone up. We stayed there and watched until one of us accidentally made some noise. We were scared that you heard us so we ran. That's all that happened."

You have Seungcheol's full attention now as he listens cautiously, his sharp eyes trained on you. Gulping, you clench your hands together underneath the table, waiting for his reaction. There seems to be an eternity of silence as Seungcheol simply stares at you as if he's debating whether your words are true or not. It's torturous, awfully agonizing and when you can't bear it anymore you're about to speak but he beats you to it.

"I didn't kill him." His voice is quiet. You let out a breath you didn't realize you were holding. Somewhere in the back of your mind you believed it, you believed he wouldn't be cruel enough to kill someone just like that and as soon as he speaks those words you believe him, without a doubt, without a second of delay.

"I believe you." You whisper, holding his gaze. "That asshole deserved what he got. He shouldn't even be alive but I let him go. He's in a hospital now, if you are wondering." You nod quietly. It's scary how much you believe him, how much you trust him even though he is pretty much a stranger.

There's a moment of silence as you bask in his presence before he speaks, "____, men like me, we aren't the nicest people. But we are needed, the cops need us around. People like me do the dirty works for people like you so y'all don't face troubles. We do things in an unconventional way but that's just who we are. We aren't as bad as the rumours say but we definitely aren't someone you should be with." You open your mouth to protest but his sharp gaze makes you stop. "If you have not understood it yet, let me say it out loud. I am trouble. People like me is always bad news. Whatever we did until now, I hope you forget. That's the best, ____ trust me. I think we both got what we wanted so let's call it a night." Just like that, he stands up, not waiting for your reply.

You gawk at him, baffled as he pays the bill and starts walking away. Tears burn the back of your eyes and you bite your lip to hold them back. The ending that you had expected has taken place but you are having a hard time accepting it. Your subconscious reminds you that you deliberately got yourself into this even though you saw this coming. So there is no one to blame for it but you. Grabbing your purse, you stomp your way out of the restaurant and towards Seungcheol's car.

Seungcheol barely acknowledges you as you both get in the car and he presses the key to the ignition. You are fuming in your seat, his words and the way he dismissed you cutting you deep. His words come to you, I think we both got what we wanted. You want to laugh. How can he possibly think that? Is he really so stupid or is he deliberately ignoring your interest in him? You want to smack his perfect face, curse and scream at him but all you can do is sit still with your arms crossed as steam comes out of your head. Is he really not curious about your feelings? Does he possess none for you? Does these few days with you mean nothing to him? You have so many unanswered questions. Leaning back into your seat, you close your eyes and let out a frustrated sigh.

It feels like in the blink of an eye the drive to your place is over as Seungcheol halts his car in front of your apartment. He does not utter a single word, doesn't even spare a glance at you while patiently waiting for you to get out of the car.

Asshole.

You inhale deeply, trying your best to gather yourself together as you take off your seatbelt and turn towards him.

"Seungcheol?" Few seconds pass before he looks at you. Words are stuck in your throat. When your eyes meet his, you become mute, overwhelmed with emotions as your words die in your tongue. He keeps staring at you, not opening his mouth but waiting for you to speak. "Is this goodbye?" Your voice breaks.

"I believe we don't have any reason to see each other. We both got what we wanted," He says without batting an eye. You're left bemused, one step away from landing a slap on his face. How dare he say that?

"Do you really believe that?" Your words come out as an accusation. "I wanted to go out with you because I thought I have feelings for you! And I do! And my feelings have only increased since I first saw you. I want to see you again, Seungcheol. You may have gotten what you wanted but I didn't." Your fades into a whisper as tears burn the back of your eyes.

Seungcheol stays quiet, staring ahead, his brows knitted as if he's annoyed. "I promised you three dates, ____. And I gave you that. It's over. Your feelings? You'll get over them. It's better to be in pain for a while that be with someone like me."

"You can't say that! I get to decide for myself!"

"____," he sighs, rubbing his temples. "I'm a bad man. You should leave while you still have a good image of me. You'll get hurt because of me and I've caused enough pain to enough people. Just...go. Just forget me." You stare at him as frustrated tears roll down your cheeks. He doesn't meet your gaze but turns his head the other way. You are angry, infuriated and heart broken all at a time. Clenching your fists you inhale a shaky breath before reaching for him.

Before you can chicken out, you tilt his face towards you and quickly press your lips against his. Seungcheol seems to be shocked as a small gasp leaves his mouth but you don't let him push you away. Instead one of your hands come to rest on his thigh as he other cups his face to keep his mouth against yours. You kiss him with all you have left, pouring in every bit of passion and love for him as your tongues intertwine. By the time you are both breathless, Seungcheol gently pushes you back and peers into your eyes. "That's all I can give you, ____." He says, his voice the softest you have heard. You are broken into a million pieces and as much as your heart wants to cling to him, you suddenly feel tired, deflated like a popped balloon. Your emotions have drained you out and left nothing and right now, breathing almost seems too painful for you. Taciturnly, you grab your purse and step out the convertible. You hear another door shut behind you but you don't look back as your heavy steps carry you to the entrance of your building. When you are about to enter your apartment, you accumulate all your strength and courage to spare one final glance at him.

Turning around you see Seungcheol standing by his car, hands in his pockets, simply watching you. Even though your eyes are locked on each other, you don't see any emotion in them. He looks like the same expressionless, mysterious man you saw the first day. The man you fell in love with. Taking in his gorgeous features one last time, you bite your lip and turn away, forcing yourself to walk inside your apartment building.

Your chapter with Seungcheol ends here.

Epilogue

A/N : Okay so idk why this fucking app is being like this but it says I reached the maximum of 250 blocks but I thought tum1r didn't have a word limit?? Anyway so I've decided to break it up and put the rest of the fic in another post. Please click epilogue to read that.

Taglist: @koo-18 @shiningstar-byulxx @pcisonedhaos @happyvitamin @yoongischeeksluv @haluim17 @nayam14 @horanghae-gumanhae @cottonsthings @hotcheetosnorter99 @peekabooseoksoon @acapellaanna @amixoferrthang

[traynslations]

Inumaru Touma Sugao Rabbit Chat Part 1: “Sugao” Idol Feature

Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Touma: Thank you for your hard work, Takanashi-san!

Touma: I heard that your idols are going to be working on the “Sugao” project with me, so I contacted you to say hello. Let’s work hard!

Tsumugi: Thank you for your hard work, Inumuru-san. And thank you for contacting me!

Tsumugi: Thank you very much for your enthusiasm and willingness to work with us!

Tsumugi: 

Touma: You’re in a good mood, aren’t you!?

Tsumugi: Yes…! I didn’t expect that “Sugao” would do an idol feature, so when I first heard about it, I was surprised…!

Touma: When I heard about it from my manager, I was really happy too! ww

Tsumugi: I get it! I also did a high five with the office staff!

Tsumugi: They have a wide range of readers, and it was one of my dreams to have IDOLiSH7 in it, so I’m really happy…

Touma: That’s great. I feel relieved. With my members, everyone’s reactions were very weak.

Touma: Or am I going crazy and imagining that? ww

Touma: What reaction did IDOLiSH7 have?

Tsumugi: Everyone had different reactions! Most of them were happy, but there were also some who didn’t know about the magazine. 

Tsumugi: Among them, Sougo-san seemed to have a special attachment to the magazine, so he was very happy!

Touma: Oh, you know about Sougo!

Touma: I’ll share my joy with him later ww

Tsumugi: 

Tsumugi: Your issue has the theme of “Bodybuilding starts with balance”!

Tsumugi: Since you are the leader of ŹOOĻ, I understand that you were chosen for this theme because you play a role in balancing the performances among your members.

Touma: It seems so. The group is made up of a lot of free-spirited people, so I don’t know if we’re all properly balanced.

Touma: But I still like being with the four of us. I guess I try to keep the balance unconsciously.

Tsumugi: That’s what Utsugi-san said! It’s attractive to be able to do that naturally without forcing yourself.

Tsumugi: I’ve heard that themes such as immunity and intestinal activity were also included in the mix of naturalness and healthiness!

Touma: Feels a little forced though ww

Touma: Well, it might be because I often drink energy drinks or eat protein bars between lessons.

Tsumugi: Recently, I’m seeing them often in convenience stores! There are many kinds.

Touma: Yes yes. Even just by nutrition, there are many variations. I can eat them without getting tired of them, so they’re great!

Touma: It can also increase the immune system and trim the intestinal environment. This all might just fit the theme. 

Tsumugi: I often see specials advertising saying things that can help the intestinal activity in other magazines, so it might be popular. 

Touma: Are you doing things to do that, too?

Tsumugi: Well… I’ve always liked Japanese food, so I try to be conscious while eating fermented foods such as miso soup and natto.

Tsumugi: Also, recently, because of Yuki-san’s recommendation, I’ve been eating sugar-free yogurt with oligosaccharides in it! It seems to have an intestinal regulation effect and seems to increase intestinal bacteria.

Touma: Hee! Is there such a thing?

Touma: I don’t cook for myself, and I eat out a lot, so I have to learn a little more about this…

Tsumugi: It seems to be quite difficult since you live alone. You must be busy with work…

Touma: No, Mina also lives alone, but he seems to be able to care for himself.

Touma: It seems that Tora’s chef and Haru’s grandma make nutritious food. It might be a good idea to ask them about their meals and diet. 

Tsumugi: They may know a lot of things about this!

Touma: I will take this opportunity to challenge myself little by little, so I’ll ask them about all this. 

Tsumugi: 

End of Part 1

[stormblessed95]

Hi! I saw quotes from an interview where BTS talked about how the other members would fare in a long distance relationship and can't seem to find the original source. Was wondering if you could help! In it, RM started talking about JM by saying that he had never been in a real relationship, which was an unprompted and irrelevant tidbit to add in. It seems like it was 2017, which I'm wondering about bc imo that would mean that jikook hadn't started dating yet. Anyways, love your blog! Be well!

Hi! You got a little confused on the year, but when i look it up I find articles written about this interview in 2017, 2018 and even 2021. Lmao so it's easy to misunderstand that. But that Interview is from the Haru Hana Vol 30 Japanese Magazine, July 2015 edition. It was also for promotions for their song "For You."

Translations of that particular question and quotes would be here:

Since the theme (of the song) is long-distance relationships, which members can accept long-distance relationships?

Jimin: Long-distance relationship… It feels painful just thinking about it. But I don’t think Suga hyung would think it’s painful.

Jin: I think Suga should be OK with it since he’s kind of colder/cooler. But on the contrary, it seems like Jimin is the type that wouldn’t be able to stand the pain. I think I’m the type that wants to see the other party so bad that I’ll cry (laughs).

Rap Monster: Because Jimin has not had any real love experience, isn’t it good to start with long-distance relationships? If you’re always stuck with that person, it would be even more painful when you break up later. I think V is the one that is unable to do long-distance relationships.

V: Because I’ll want to see the person all the time. I think I’ll go crazy even if I don’t see the person for just one day. If I have a girlfriend, I just want to watch her all the time. (In Japanese) Only you!

Jungkook: I think Suga hyung’s the one that can’t do long-distance relationships. Not sure why but I’ve never seen him use Kakaotalk and seems like he doesn’t use SMS either. I think Rap Monster hyung would be able to do long-distance relationships?

Rap Monster: I’ve had a similar experience… Even though it was very painful, I think I would still accept it if there’s another situation like that.

J-Hope: I think Suga hyung would accept it. Jungkook probably won’t accept it. He wouldn’t even know where he’s flying to. The girl would be chased away [by someone else] any time.

You can read the full magazine feature and interview translations here:

And this wouldn't be the first time in those early years that Jimin was mentioned as the most innocent member or the one with no dating experience pre debut. Lol but yeah, I would agree with your assessment that Jikook weren't dating at this time. And everything else going on in 2015 doesn't look like "boyfriends" to me at that time frame either. Although the comment wasn't totally unprompted, they were all saying WHY they think someone would be good at long distance or not 😂

Hope this helps!!

[randoimago]

Hi hi & good day!!! Could I ask for Akechi, Yusuke, and Ann with a decora kei reader (overly-accessorized with a cutesy rainbow aesthetic) who actually acts,, kinda off-putting.

Like she'd bring you to your favorite place, even if you don't recall telling her. Throws around crazy theories that seem improbable but whaddya know, it goes exactly as she said,,,

I just feel like someone who acts all cutesy and air headed but actually being all too smart would be interesting ^^

Tnx for your hard work and writing our requests ヽ(*＾ω＾*)ﾉ have a splendid day!!

Off-Putting Decora Kei Reader

FANDOM: Persona 5

Character(s): Goro Akechi, Yusuke Kitagawa, Ann Takamaki

Type of Request: Headcanons

Word Count: 391

Note(s): I hope you have a great day too! I did look up the style a bit myself and I love the pastel looks. It honestly makes me want to just buy a crap ton of beaded bracelets now.

Akechi

Does make comments on your appearance from time to time. Just because it’s so out there and he is trying to keep things on the downlow. 

It’s also a lot of bright colors that hurt his eyes. He gets that the style makes you happy but he’s getting a headache so he’s going to need to take a walk real quick or something.

Okay but you constantly bringing him things he likes or wanting to take him out to places he likes causes him to pause. He starts to think that you’re some joke that Shido sent to keep an eye on him.

Because he’s so suspicious, he’s going to keep up his “act” of the happy personality. So he thanks you a lot for all the things you bring him and places you both go, but he’s also keeping an eye out for any weaknesses you might have.

Ann

Ann hasn’t done any Decora Kei type photoshoots but she has seen it featured in a few magazines so she’s definitely interested in your style. 

Probably asks you a lot of questions about where you get certain accessories because they are really cute.

Thinks it’s a bit weird at first when you bring her a lot of sweets and stuff that she loves. She doesn’t remember specifically talking about certain foods but she’s not going to complain!

Okay but you starting to bring her to places she enjoys being at does cause her to feel a bit creeped out. She’s already had stalkers in the past and doesn’t need to deal with another one.

Yusuke

Okay your style and the colors and accessories are so intriguing to him. You definitely inspire him to paint more vibrantly and trying out new things. 

If you have plans on taking him somewhere, you’ll have to wait because now he has to paint.

Yusuke is a bit scatterbrained so you bringing him stuff he likes causes him to shrug it off as something he’s probably mentioned before. Hearing your theories does cause him pause. Especially when they start to happen.

If you ever approach Yusuke with a “theory” that he’s in the Phantom Thieves and name off the rest of the members, he’ll definitely be speechless. Might ask you to keep that theory to yourself but he’d love to hear your reasoning behind it.

[you-fuckers-are-asses]

SEARCHING FOR JACKASS RARE MEDIA!

Hey guys, I'm on a mission to track down some lost/rare Jackass Media for a digital preservation collection a group of community members are conducting and maintaining. I'll make a post about the actual project at a later time, right now I'm focused on reaching out to the Tumblr side of the community to collect some media that we're still missing. This preservation server is truly for the die-hard Jackass-CKY fans as we are attempting to track down and include EVERYTHING possible, so please help out if you can!

If you have any video files/copies of the following, please let me know and I'll send you an invite to be part of the project. If you have other content outside of the mainstream content available that isn't on the list, also let me know!

This is not the first project I've conducted or been part of within the community, but by far it's the most important and I would love to have the Tumblr Jackass community also part of it - but we're more looking for contributors right now who can offer the content the collection is missing!

[Please note we're looking for digital files, not physical items - this is a digital preservation project for the entire Jackassworld and related collective. The current collection is sitting at over 500GB worth of digital content.]

- Demise & Rise [HD rip]

- 3.5 extras [HQ rip]

- Dreamseller graphic novel [scans]

- ALL talkshow and late night interviews and appearances including SNL etc.

- ALL available Jackass movie trailers and promotional material.

- Inception and the social network parodies [HD rips]

- Ridiculousness episodes [MEGA upload]

- ALL award show appearances

- Riptide with Andy Roy episodes

- BB Magazine scans

- Steve-O: I hate Pebbles/I Hate Rain

- Bam’s most recent podcast episode on Knockin down doorz

- VLB TV rips

- BOOB [Book, scans]

- 54321 [2003-] (Weeman Hosted)

- Peestains and other Disasters [2005] (weeman)

- Death to the Supermodels [2005] (weeman)

- Pledge this [2006] (preston)

- NYPD blue (Episode with Preston)

- The andy dick show w/ Preston

- The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (Preston starred as a regular before Jackass)

- All Preston's pre-Jackass commercials. (The press kit claims he was in 25 national TV commercials)

- Christmas in Wonderland (Preston) [2006]

- Made in Hollywood - Preston's episode [2010]

- Up Close with Carrie Keagan - Preston [2010]

- Home James (Preston, 1 episode)

- All award show appearances [MTV Movie/Music Awards etc]

- The Art of Marc McKee [Book]

- Disposable: A history of skateboarding art by Sean Cliver [book]

- Outlaw Country episodes hosted by Johnny & Roger

- Big Family Jubilee episodes

- CKY Live on west Chester university radio

- I needed time to stay useless book Scans/pdf

- 10 years of stupid book scans/pdf

- SHIT, big brother book scans/pdf

- What wee man did next - going to hell

- 3000 miles (Bam/Dunn)

- Gumball 3000 (Dunn)

- Jackass Forever Extended cuts, extras, etc.

- Jackass 4.5

- ALL CKY and CKY crew features and interviews on WCHE / WDEL Radio

- ALL Radio appearances

- ALL red carpet interviews

- EPIC PAINTBALL BATTLE w/ Steve-O, Chris Pontius, Dave England & Jerry Purpdrank

- Ultimate expedition full series

- Wildboyz 3DS commercial & BTS

- Tanked w/ Jeff Tremaine (2 episodes)

- Being Evel

- We summon the darkness (2019)

- Somewhere (2010)

- 7-Teen sips

- Hollywood Medium w/ Tyler Hendry - Episode with Steve-O

- The DMan Project

- ALL WWE Monday Night Raw Episodes ft. The guys

- WWE Summerslam 2007 Promo w/ Umaga and Steve-O [HQ]

- Hella Crazy 2 & 3

- Love Story: The saga of a skate landmark

- Fairmans 1 & 2

- Loiter Squad: Boyz in da hood /S02E06 [2013]

- The Joe Rogan Experience w/ Steve-O: Episode #960

- High quality cover art scans of Gnarkill, and the Haggard Soundtrack

- Photoshoot of the crew by Terry Richardson

- ALL Red carpet photoshoots and interviews

- The cheerleading photoshoot for Stance Magazine by Zach Cordner

- A folder of all the official Jackass logos used since the beginning

[pretty-idol-hell]

“Sukinishite IIZE” - WITH Interview Translation

Bit of a surprise for you guys. I was looking through my King of Prism magazine clippings and stumbled upon uh... this. 

A WITH interview I saved and completely forgot about! And for some reason it was exactly what I felt like working on! But, after I started I was a little disappointed to realize this wasn’t the interview I thought it was. There was another interview I owned at one point that I made a post about on this blog which was actually a good introduction to the boys. But that one was from 2D Star Vol 9. This one is apparently from 2D Star Vol 12 and has the boys discussing their first real life concerts (but in character) and the above risqué art. 

I wish I could tell you why I saved this one and not the other one (I wish I knew why I do a lot of things) but I suspect it was because this article happened to be right after the King of Prism feature so it was easy to rip out together. I’d love to translate the other one, but maybe not enough to spend 1,188 yen to buy the Kindle version of 2D Star Vol 9 just for those two pages. Let me know if any of you out there have it, though. 

But anyway, since I’d already started it, I decided to bang out a rough translation of this one from 2D Star Vol 12 anyway. So without further ado...

It’s nice to meet with all of you again. Congratulations on your concert and talk show performances in Tokyo and Osaka! May we hear your impressions on your experience?

Koyoi: Hello there. We are WITH. First of all, we would like to think everyone out there who cheered for us. It was challenging for us to perform concerts featuring almost entirely brand-new songs. It was thanks to the fans that these concerts were such a success. Asahi: Heeeey hey, Ko-chan, can I get a word in!? I’ve got somethin’ I really wanna say! Koyoi: Of course. You may speak at any time. Asahi: Allriiiight! Our concerts in Tokyo and Osaka were wicked fun! I want to perform again soon! And by “soon”, I basically mean right frikkin’ NOW!! Shogo: Asahi’s basically been saying that since the concerts ended (lol). Koyoi: Hehe. But all three of us feel the same way. Shogo: Yeah! It was really like a dream come true! We got to get so much closer to our fans, and see each and everyone’s individual smiling faces♪ Asahi: Everyone was cheering and waving their towels in sync! It felt like a concert we’d all built together! Koyoi: Indeed it did. And now, through this interview, I’m happy that our feelings about our concerts will be able to reach our fans once more. This opportunity is also thanks to being able to perform live.

Please tell us any significant memories you have about your experiences at the concerts.

Shogo: So much happened I even don’t know where to start… Ah, whenever we finished a song the crowd kept yelling “IIZE”! That really built up the atmosphere! Asahi: We got wicked carried away too and started yellin’ “IIZE IIZE” ourselves! Koyoi: It’s a cheer unique to DanPri concerts. That word alone united all of us. Asahi: Also, it felt super awesome to perform in our new outfits. They’re all wicked flowy and nice to look at! Koyoi: Blue, red, purple. Of course all of our individual image colors were incorporated. But was also interesting to see the smaller color accents as well. Shogo: The designs sure all had their individual charm! I hope we get to wear them again.

We often hear stories about performers who are too nervous to sleep before the night of their concerts. How did you three fare?

Shogo: Well, we have one member who’s a stranger to insomnia (lol). Asahi: Are you talkin’ about me!? I was wicked nervous and going crazy with excitement the night before!! Shogo: Asahi was in bed at 8pm as always, right? Koyoi: Yup, out cold. Asahi: What the heck, you two! Koyoi: Hehe. We were all talking about the concert together right up until you fell asleep. Reviewing our dance moves, talking about how we would go about emceeing, and stuff like that. Shogo: We all stayed in the same room together before the Tokyo and Osaka performances. Asahi: It was super fun, just like a school trip!

This time you decided to shake things up and try a more “adult” glamour shot. How was your experience?

Koyoi: It was our first time doing this kind of photo shoot so it was all new to us. Shogo: When they said “Please lay down over here” I was surprised. Asahi: Yeah, yeah! It was funny rolling around there with each other! (lol) I was sure to work wicked hard to make sure I was making a cool pose so I wouldn’t get laughed at! Koyoi: They were playing our songs as background music the whole time. Shogo: Since we have a lot of adult-ish songs, it made the perfect atmosphere for modeling our facial expressions. Koyoi: The photo that was chosen was taken while we were listening to “Sukinishite IIZE”. Pay attention to the mature expressions we are making with our eyes and with our hands.  Asahi: Butbut you know what, when they’re playing songs like “ALWAYS WITH YOU!!” and “BLASTING CLAP!” it’s so hard not to sing along! Koyoi: You’re right. The staff members participated in a call and response with us and we all had a good time.

I see, so your photo shoot was just like a concert, too (lol). Now, we would like to ask you “adult men” a few more questions. Tell us about the kind of adult male figure you admire.

Shogo: Adult man, huh… How about someone who is always calm and collected at any time? Someone who is never shaken no matter what goes down… Asahi: I get that. Me too! And I’d like to add “dependable” as well! Someone who you look at and say “As long as he’s coming along, we’ll be fine!” Someone like that is super cool! …But wait, aren’t we just talking about Ko-chan!? Koyoi: Huh? Me? Shogo: Now that you mention it, Koyoi is the most “adult” out of the three of us. Koyoi: So that’s how the two of you see me. Hehe, I’m happy to hear that. Thank you. Asahi: So what’s your type then, Ko-chan? Koyoi: Let me think… Someone who has a strong will and sense of self. Also, “stylish and tough”. Asahi: Whaa… That last past is just Meganii!!

What do you think love is like for an adult?

Asahi: Shogo’s a little too young to answer a question like that, don’t you think? Shogo: Wha! You’re the last person I wanna hear that from. Koyoi: I wonder what kind of “adult love” Asahi is thinking about. Asahi: Alright then, Ko-chan! Big brother Asahi will explain everything for Shogo’s sake as well. Adult love is when you buy a meal at some kinda expensive restaurant, and take your date to kind of a dark, shady place!! Shogo: Is that what you really think…? Asahi: Huh? Ko-chan, isn’t that right…? What the heck is adult love!? Shogo: Koyoi-sensei, please teach us. Koyoi: Hmm. I think it’s about respecting each other’s feelings and supporting one another. To walk together towards your respective goals. Shogo/Asahi: W-WHAT AN ADULT… Asahi: But that’s important for everyone, not just adults or people in love! Koyoi: Yes indeed. …It may be necessary for us as members of WITH as well. Asahi: I’ll always wicked totally suuuuper respect and cheer for you guys!! Shogo: Asahi does make a good point sometimes…

And finally, what is a message you’d like to share with yourself as an adult?

Shogo: Future self, I’m sure you’ve had lots of shining experiences and perfected your “Shogo Smile” eeeeven more! And I know you’re taller than Asahi too! I’ll make sure of it! Asahi: Future self! I’m gonna work hard with singing lessons and weight training, so you work hard too! Let’s become a bigger man together! Koyoi: As the leader of WITH, I hope you have strengthened our team working skills and personal bonds all the more. Now and in the future, we will keep running at the head of DanPri!

[path-of-my-childhood]

CABIN FEVER - Aaron Dessner: Producing folklore and evermore

Sound On Sound Magazine // March 2021 issue // By Tom Doyle

The pandemic gave Taylor Swift a chance to explore new musical paths, with two lockdown albums co-written and produced by the National's Aaron Dessner.

Few artists during the pandemic have been as prolific as Taylor Swift. In July 2020, she surprise-released folklore, a double-length album recorded entirely remotely and in isolation. It went on to become the biggest global seller of the year, with four million sales and counting. Then, in December, she repeated the trick with the 15-song evermore, which quickly became Swift's eighth consecutive US number one.

In contrast to her country-music roots and the shiny synth-pop that made her a superstar, both folklore and evermore showcased a very different Taylor Swift sound: one veering more towards atmospheric indie and folk. The former album was part-produced by Swift and her regular co-producer Jack Antonoff (St Vincent, Lana Del Rey), while the other half of the tracks were overseen by a new studio collaborator, Aaron Dessner of the National. For evermore, aside from one Antonoff-assisted song, Dessner took full control of production.

Good Timing

Although his band are hugely popular and even won a Grammy for their 2017 album Sleep Well Beast, Aaron Dessner admits that it initially felt strange for an indie-rock guitarist and keyboard player to be pulled into such a mainstream project. Swift had already declared herself a fan of the National, and first met the band back in 2014. Nonetheless, Dessner was still surprised when the singer sent him a text "out of the blue" last spring. "I mean, I didn't think it was a hoax," he laughs. "But it was very exciting and a moment where you think it's like serendipity or something, especially in the middle of the pandemic. When she asked if I would ever consider writing with her, I just happened to have a lot of music that I had worked really hard on. So, the timing was sort of lucky. It opened up this crazy period of collaboration. It was a pretty wild ride."

Since 2016, Aaron Dessner has been based at his self-built rural facility, Long Pond Studio, in the Hudson Valley, upstate New York. The only major change to the studio since SOS last spoke to Dessner in October 2017 has been the addition of a vintage WSW Siemens console built in 1965. "It had been refurbished by someone," he says, "and I think there's only three of them in the United States. I heard it was for sale from our friend [and the National producer/mixer] Peter Katis. That's a huge improvement here."

Although the National made Sleep Well Beast and its 2019 successor I Am Easy To Find at Long Pond, the band members are scattered around the US and Europe, meaning Dessner is no stranger to remote working and file sharing. This proved to be invaluable for his work with Swift. Dessner spent the first six weeks of lockdown writing music that he believed to be for Big Red Machine, his project with Bon Iver's Justin Vernon. Instead, many of these work-in-progress tracks would end up on folklore. Their first collaboration (and the album's first single), 'cardigan', for instance, emerged from an idea Dessner had been working on backstage during the National's European arena tour of Winter 2019.

"I sent her a folder and in the middle of the night she sent me that song," Dessner explains. "So, the next morning I was just listening to it, like, `Woah, OK, this is crazy."

On The Move

As work progressed, it quickly became apparent that Swift and Dessner were very much in tune as a songwriting and producing unit. There was very little Dessner had to do, he says, in terms of chopping vocals around to shape the top lines. "I think it's because I'm so used to structuring things like a song, with verses and choruses and bridges," he reckons. "In most cases, she sort of kept the form. If she had a different idea, she would tell me when she was writing and I would chop it up for her and send it to her. But, mostly, things kind of stayed in the form that we had."

Dessner and Swift were working intensively and at high speed throughout 2020, so much so that on one occasion the producer sent the singer a track and went out for a run in the countryside around Long Pond. By the time he got back, Swift had already written 'the last great american dynasty' and it was waiting for him in his inbox. "That was a crazy moment," he laughs. "One of the astonishing things about Taylor is what a brilliant songwriter she is and the clarity of her ideas and, when she has a story to tell, the way she can tell it. I think she's just been doing it for so long, she has a facility that makes you feel like you could never do what she's capable of. But we were a good pair because I think the music was inspiring to her in such a way that the stories were coming."

Swift's contributions to folklore were recorded in a makeshift studio in her Los Angeles home. Laura Sisk engineered the sessions as the singer recorded her vocals, using a Neumann U47, in a neighbouring bedroom. Live contact between Swift, Sisk, Dessner and Long Pond engineer Jonathan Low was done through real-time online collaboration platform Audiomovers.

"We would listen in remotely and kind of go back and forth," says Dessner. "We used Audiomovers and then we would have Zoom as a backup. But mainly we were just using Audiomovers, so we could actually be in her headphones. It's powerful, it's great. I've used it a lot with people during this time. Then, later on, when we recorded evermore, a lot of the vocals were done here at the studio actually when Taylor was visiting when we did the [Disney+ documentary] Long Pond Sessions. But Taylor's vocals for folklore were all done remotely."

Keeping Secrets

Given the huge international interest in Swift, the team had to work with an elaborate file-sharing arrangement to ensure that the tracks didn't leak online. Understandably, Dessner won't be drawn on the specifics. "Yeah, I mean we had to be very careful, so everything was very secretive," he says. "There were passwords on both ends and we communicated in a specific way when sharing mixes and everything. There was a high level of confidentiality and data encryption. It was sort of a learning curve.

"I'm not used to that," he adds, "'cause usually we're just letting files kind of fly all over the Internet [laughs]. But I think with someone like her, there's just so many people that are paying attention to every move that she makes, which can be a little, I think, oppressive for her. We tried to make it as comfortable as possible and we got used to how to get things to her and back to us. It worked pretty well."

Drums & Guitars

For the generally minimalist beat programming on the records, Dessner would sometimes turn to his more expensive new analogue drum generators - Vermona's DRM1 and Dave Smith's Tempest - but more often used the Synthetic Bits iOS app FunkBox. "There's just a lot of great vintage drum machine sounds in there, and they sound pretty cool, especially if you overdrive it," he says. "Often I send that through an amplifier, or through effects into an amplifier. Then I have a [Roland) TR-8 and a TR-8S that I use a lot. I also use the drum machine in the [Teenage Engineering] OP-1. So, a song like 'willow', that's just me tapping the OP-1."

Elsewhere, Dessner's guitar work appears on the tracks, with the intricate melodic layering on 'the last great american dynasty' from folklore having been inspired by Radiohead's In Rainbows. "Almost all of the electric guitar on Taylor's records is played direct through a REDDI DI into the Siemens board," he says. "It's usually just my 1971 Telecaster played direct and it just sounds great. Oftentimes I just put a little spring reverb on it and sometimes I'll overdrive the board like it's an amplifier, 'cause it breaks up really beautifully.

"I have a 1965 [Gibson] Firebird that I play usually through this 1965 Fender Deluxe Reverb. So, if I am playing into an amp, that's what it is. But on 'the last great american dynasty', those little pointillistic guitars, that's just played direct with the Telecaster through the board."

Elsewhere, Aaron Dessner took Taylor Swift even further out of her sonic comfort zone. A key track on folklore, the Cocteau Twins-styled 'epiphany', features her voice amid a wash of ambient textures, created by Dessner slowing down and reversing various instrumental parts in Pro Tools. "I created a drone using the Mellotron [MD4000D] and the Prophet and the OP-1 and all kinds of synth pads," he says. "Then I duplicated all the tracks, and some of them I reversed and some of them I dropped an octave. All manner of using varispeed and Polyphonic Elastic Audio and changing where they were sitting. Just to create like this Icelandic glacier of sounds was my idea. Then I wrote the chord progression against that.

"The [Pro Tools] session was not happy," he adds with a chuckle. "It kept crashing. Eventually I had to print the drone but I printed it by myself and there was some crackle in it. It was distorting. And then I couldn't recreate it so Jon Low, who was helping me, was kind of mad at me 'cause he was like, 'You can't do that.' And I was like, 'Well, I was working quickly. I didn't know it'd become a song."

Orchestra Of Nowhere

Meanwhile, the orchestrations that appear on several of the tracks were scored by Aaron's twin brother and National bandmate, Bryce Dessner, who is located in France. "I would just make him chord charts of the songs and send them to him in France," Aaron says. "Then he would orchestrate things in Sibelius and send the parts to me. I would send the parts and the instrumental tracks to different players remotely and they would record them literally in their bedrooms or in their attics. None of it was done as a group, it was all done separately. But that's how we've always worked in the National so it's quite natural."

On folklore standout track 'exile', Justin Vernon of Bon Iver delivered his stirring vocal for the duet remotely from his home in Eaux Claires, Wisconsin. "He's renovating his studio, so he has a little home studio in his garage," says Dessner. "It was Taylor's idea to approach him. I sent him Taylor's voice memo of her singing both parts, and he got really excited and loved the song and then he wrote the extra part in the bridge.

"I do a lot of work remotely with Justin also, so it was easy to send him tracks and he would track to it and send back his vocals. I was sending him stems, so usually it's just a vocal stem of Taylor and an instrumental stem and then if he wants something deeper, I'll give him more stems. But generally, he's just working with the vocal layers and an instrumental."

Vernon also provided the grainy beat that kicks off 'closure', one of two tracks on evermore that started life as a sketch for the second Big Red Machine album. "It was this little loop that Justin had given me in this folder of 'Starters', he calls them. I had heard that and been playing the piano to it. But I was hearing it in 5/4, although it's not in 5/4. 'Closure' really opened everything up further. There were no real limits to where we were gonna try to write songs."

Given the number of remote players, Dessner says there were surprisingly few problems with the file swapping and that it was a fairly painless technical process. "It was pretty smooth, but there were issues," he admits. "Sometimes sample-rate issues, or if I happened to give someone an instrumental that was an MP3, that sometimes lines up differently than if you send them an actual WAV that's bounced on the grid. So, sometimes I'd have to kinda eyeball things.

"If there was trouble it started to be because of track counts. I probably only used 20 percent of what was actually recorded, 'cause we would try a lot of things, y'know. So, eventually the sessions got kinda crazy and you'd have to deactivate a lot of things and print things. But we got used to that."

Soft Piano

Aaron Dessner's characteristic dampened upright piano sound, familiar from the National's albums, is much in evidence throughout both folklore and evermore. "The upright is a Yamaha U1 that I've had for more than a decade. Usually, I play it with the soft pedal down and that's the sound of 'hoax' or 'seven' or 'cardigan', y'know, that felted sound. It kind of almost sounds like an electric piano.

"I always mic it the same way, just with two [AKG] 414s, and they're always the same distance off the wall. I had a studio in Brooklyn for 10 years and then when I moved here, I copied the same [wooden] pattern on the wall. And the reason I did that is 'cause of how much I love how this piano sounds bouncing off that wall. It just does something really special for the harmonics."

When on other folklore songs, such as 'exile' or 'the 1', where the piano was the main sonic feature of the track, Dessner played his Steinway grand. "A lot of times we use a pair of Coles [4038s] on the Steinway, just cause it's darker. But sometimes we'll have the 414s there as well and choose."

Keeping Warm

On both folklore and evermore, Taylor Swift's voice is very much front and center and high in the mix, and generally sounds fairly dry. "I think the main thing was I wanted her vocals to have a more full range than maybe you typically hear," Dessner explains. "'Cause I think a lot of the more pop-oriented records are mixed a certain way and they take some of the warmth out of the vocal, so that it's very bright and it kinda cuts really well on the radio. But she has this wonderful lower warmth frequency in her voice which is particularly important on a song like `seven'. If you carved out that mud, y'know, it wouldn't hit you the same way. Or, like, `cardigan', I think it needs that warmth, the kind of fuller feeling to it. It makes it darker, but to me that's where a lot of emotion is."

Effects-wise, almost all of the treatments were done in the box. "There's no outboard reverbs printed," says Dessner. "The only things that we did print would be like an [Eventide] H3000 or sometimes the [WEM] CopiCat tape delay for just a really subtle slap. But generally, it's just different reverbs in the box that Jon was using. He uses the Valhalla stuff quite a bit and some other UAD reverbs, like the [Capitol] Chambers. I often just use Valhalla VintageVerb and the [Avid] Black Spring and simple things."

In some instances, the final mix ended up being the never-bettered rough mix, while other songs took far more work. "'cardigan' is basically the rough, as is `seven'. So, like the early, early mixes, when we didn't even know we were mixing, we never were able to make it better. Like if you make it sound 'good', it might not be as good 'cause it loses some of its weird magic, y'know. But songs like `the last great american dynasty' or 'mad woman', those songs were a little harder to create the dynamics the way you want them, and the pay-off without going too far, and with also just keeping in the kind of aesthetic that we were in. Those were harder, I would say.

"On evermore, I would say 'willow' was probably the hardest one to finish just because there were so many ways it could've gone. Eventually we settled back almost to the point where it began. So, there's a lot of stuff that was left out of 'willow', just because the simplicity of the idea I think was in a way the strongest."

The subject of this month's Inside Track article, 'willow' was the first song written for evermore, immediately following the release of folklore. "It almost felt like a dare or something," Dessner laughs. "We were writing, recording and mixing all in one kind of work stream and we went from one record to the other almost immediately. We were just sort off to the races. We didn't really ever stop since April."

Rubber & Vinyl

Sometimes, Dessner and Swift drew inspiration from unlikely sources; `no body, no crime', for instance, started when he gave her a 'rubber bridge' guitar made by Reuben Cox of the Old Style Guitar Shop in LA. "He's my very old friend," says Dessner of Cox. "He buys undervalued vintage guitars. Stuff that was made in the '50s and '60s as sort of learner guitars, like old Silvertones and Kays and Harmonys. These kinds of guitars which now are quite special, but they're still not valued the same way that vintage Fenders or Gibsons are valued. Then, he customizes them.

"Recently he started retrofitting these guitars with a rubber bridge and flatwound strings. He'll take, like, an acoustic Silvertone from 1958 and put a bridge on it that's covered in this kind of rubber that deadens the strings, so it really has this kind of dead thrum to it. And he puts two pickups in there, one that's more distorted and one that's cleaner. They're just incredible guitars. I thought Taylor would enjoy having one 'cause she loves the sound. So, I had Reuben make one for her and she used it to write `no body, no crime'."

Another friend of Dessner's, Ryan Olsen, has developed a piece of software called the Allovers Hi-Hat Generator which helped create the unusual harmonic loops that feature on `marjorie'. "It's not available on the market," Dessner says of the software. "It's just something that he uses personally, but I think hopefully eventually it'll come out. I wouldn't say it's artificial intelligence software but there's something very intelligent about it [laughs]. It basically analyses audio information and is able to separate audio into identifiable samples and then put them into a database. You then can design parameters for it to spit out sequences that are incredibly musical.

"When Ryan comes here, he'll just take all kinds of things that I give him and run it through there and then it'll spit out, like, three hours of stuff. Then I go through it and find the layers that I love, then I loop them. You can hear it also on the song 'happiness', the drumming in the background. It's not actually played. That's drums that have been sampled and then re-analyzed and re-sequenced out of this Allovers Hi-Hat Generator."

The song `marjorie' is named after Swift's opera-singer grandmother and so, fittingly, her voice can be heard flitting in and out of the mix at the end of the track. "Taylor's family gave us a bunch of recordings of her grandmother," Dessner explains. "But they were from old, very scratchy, noisy vinyl. So, we had to denoise it all using [iZotope's] RX and then I went in and I found some parts that I thought might work. I pitch-shifted them into the key and then placed them. It took a while to find the right ones, but it's really beautiful to be able to hear her. It's just an incredibly special thing, I think."

Meet At The Pond

Taylor Swift finally managed to get together with Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff in September 2020 for the filming of folklore: the long pond studio sessions, featuring the trio live-performing the album. It also provided an opportunity for Swift to add her vocals to some of the evermore tracks.

"It did allow us to have more fun, I think," says Dessner. "Y'know, drink more wine and just kinda be in the same place and have the feeling of blasting the music here and dancing around and just enjoying ourselves. She's really a lovely person to hang out with, so in that sense I'm glad that we had that chance to work together in person.

"We were using a [Telefunken] U47 to record Taylor here," he adds. "Either we were using one of the Siemens preamps on the board, which are amazing. Or I have Neve 1064s [preamps/EQs] and we use a Lisson Grove [AR-i] tube compressor generally."

One entirely new song, `tis the damn season', came out of this face-to-face approach, which Swift wrote in the middle of the night after the team had stayed up late drinking. "We had a bunch of wine actually," Dessner laughs, "and then everybody went to sleep, I thought. But I think she must have had this idea swimming around in her head, 'cause the next morning when she arrived, she sang 'Us the damn season' for me in my kitchen. It's maybe my favourite song we've written together. Then she sang it at dinner for me and my wife Stine and we were all crying. It’s just that kind of a song, so it was quite special.”

National Unity

One key track on evermore, 'coney island', features all of the members of the National and sees Swift duetting with their singer Matt Berninger. "My brother [Bryce] actually originated that song," says Aaron Dessner. "I sent him a reference at one point - I can't remember what it was - and then he was sort of inspired to write that chord progression. Then we worked together to sort of develop it and I wrote a bunch of parts and we structured it.

"Taylor and William Bowery [the songwriting pseudonym of Swift's boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn] wrote 'coney island' and she sang a beautiful version. It felt kind of done, actually. But then I think we all collectively thought, Taylor and myself and Bryce, like this was the closest to a National song."

Dessner then asked the brothers who make up the National's rhythm section, drummer Bryan and bassist Scott Devendorf, to play on 'coney island'. Matt Berninger, as he often does with the band's own tracks, recorded his vocal at home in Los Angeles. "It was never in the same place, it was done remotely," says Dessner, "except Bryan was here at Long Pond when he played. It was great to collaborate as a band with Taylor."

No Compromise

folklore and evermore have been both enormous critical and commercial successes for Taylor Swift. Aaron Dessner reckons that making these anti-pop records has freed the singer up for the future. "I think it was very liberating for her," he says. "I think that's the thing that's been probably the biggest change for her has just been being able to make songs without compromise and then release them without the promotional requirements that she's used to from the past. Obviously, it comes at this time when we're all in lockdown and nobody can tour or go on talk shows or anything. But I think for her probably it will impact what she does in the future.

"But I also think she can shapeshift again," he concludes. "Who knows where she'll go? She's had many celebrated albums from the past, but to release two albums of this quality in such a short time, it really did shine a light on her songwriting talent and her storytelling ability and also just her willingness to experiment and collaborate. Somehow, I ended up in the middle of all that and I'm very grateful."

INSIDE TRACK - Jonathan Low: Secrets of the Mix Engineers

Sound On Sound Magazine // March 2021 issue // By Paul Tingen

From sketches to final mixes, engineer Jonathan Low spent 2020 overseeing Taylor Swift’s hit lockdown albums folklore and evermore.

“I think the theme of a lot of my work nowadays, and especially with these two records, is that everything is getting mixed all the time. I always try to get the songs to sound as finalised as they can be. Obviously that’s hard when you’re not sure yet what all the elements will be. Tracks morph all the time, and yet everything is always moving forwards towards completion in some way. Everything should sound fun and inspiring to listen to all the time.”

Speaking is Jonathan Low, and the two records he refers to are, of course, Taylor Swift’s 2020 albums folklore and evermore, both of which reached number one in the UK and the US. Swift’s main producer and co‑writer on the two albums was the National’s Aaron Dessner, also interviewed in this issue. Low is the engineer, mixer and general right‑hand man at Long Pond Studios in upstate New York, where he and Dessner spent most of 2020 working on folklore and evermore, with Swift in Los Angeles for much of the time.

“In the beginning it did not feel real,” recalls Low. “There was this brand‑new collaboration, and it was amazing how quickly Aaron made these instrumental sketches and Taylor wrote lyrics and melodies to them, which she initially sent to us as iPhone voice memos. During our nightly family dinners in lockdown, Aaron would regularly pull up his phone and say, ‘Listen to this!’ and there would be another voice memo from Taylor with this beautiful song that she had written over a sketch of Aaron’s in a matter of hours. The rate at which it was happening was mind‑blowing. There was constant elevation, inspiration and just wanting to continue the momentum.

“We put her voice memos straight into Pro Tools. They had tons of character, because of the weird phone compression and cutting midrange quality you just would not get when you put someone in front of a pristine recording chain. Plus there was all this bleed. It’s interesting how that dictates the attitude of the vocal and of the song. Even though none of the original voice memos ended up on the albums, they often gave us unexpected hints. These voice memos were such on‑a‑whim things, they were really telling. Taylor had certain phrasings and inflections that we often returned to later on. They became our reference points.”

Pond Life

The making of the National’s 2017 album Sleep Well Beast and the setup at Long Pond were covered in SOS October 2017; today the studio remains pretty much the same, with the exception of a new desk. “The main space is really big, and the console sits in the middle,” says Low. “In 2019, I installed a 1965 WSW/Siemens, which has 24 line‑in and microphone channels and another 24 line channels. WSW is the Austrian branch of Siemens usually built for broadcast. It’s loaded with 811510B channels. The build quality is insane, the switches and pots feel like they were made yesterday. To me it hints at the warm haze of a Class‑A Neve channel but sits further forward in the speakers. The midrange band on the passive EQ is a huge part of its charm, it really does feel like you’re changing the tone of the actual source rather than the recording. Most microphones go through the desk on their way into Pro Tools, though we sometimes use outboard Neve 1064 mic pres. Occasionally I use the Siemens to sum a mix.

“We have a pair of ATC SCM45 monitors, which sound very clear in the large room. The ceiling is very high, and the front wall is about 25 feet behind the monitors. There are diffusers on the sidewalls and the back walls are absorbing, so there are very few reflections. Aaron and I will be listening in tons of different ways. I’ll listen in my home studio with similar ATC SCM20 monitors or on my ‘70s Marantz hi‑fi setup. Aaron is always checking things in his car, and if there’s something that is bugging him, I’ll join him in his car to find out what he hears.”

Low works at Long Pond and with Dessner most of the time, though he does find time to do other projects, among hem this last year the War On Drugs, Waxahatchee and Nap Eyes. When lockdown started in Spring 2020, Low tacked up on supplies and "had a bunch f mixes lined up". Meanwhile, on the Eest Coast, Swift had seen her Lover Fest our cancelled. With help from engineer aura Sisk, she set up a makeshift studio which she dubbed Kitty Committee in bedroom in her Los Angeles home, and began working with long-term producer nd co-writer Jack Antonoff. At the end of April, however, Swift also started working with Dessner, which took the project in different direction. The impressionistic, atmospheric, electro-folk instrumentals Dessner sent her were mostly composed nd recorded by him at Long Pond, assisted by Low.

Sketching Sessions

The instrumental sketches Aaron makes come into being in different ways," elaborates Low. "Sometimes they are more fleshed-out ideas, sometimes they are less formed. But normally Aaron will set himself up in the studio, surrounded by instruments and synths, and he'll construct a track. Once he feels it makes some kind of sense I'll come in and take a listen and then we together develop what's there.

"I don't call his sketches demos, because while many instruments are added and replaced later on, most of the original parts end up in the final version of the song. We end up in the final version of the song. We try to get the sketches to a place where they are already very engaging as instrumental are already very engaging as instrumental tracks. Aaron and I are always obsessively listening, because we constantly want to hear things that feel inspiring and musical, not just a bed of music in the background. It takes longer to create, but in this case also gave Taylor more to latch onto, both emotionally and in terms of musical inspiration. Hearing melodies woven in the music triggered new melodies."

Not long after Dessner and Low sent each sketch to Swift, they would receive her voice memos in return, and they'd load them into the Pro Tools session of the sketch in question. Dessner and Low then continued to develop the songs, in close collaboration with Swift. "Taylor's voice memos often came with suggestions for how to edit the sketches: maybe throw in a bridge somewhere, shorten a section, change the chords or arrangement somewhere, and so on. Aaron would have similar ideas, and he then developed the arrangements, often with his brother Bryce, adding or replacing instruments. This happened fast, and became very interactive between us and Taylor, even though we were working remotely. When we added instruments, we were reacting to the way my rough mixes felt at the very beginning. Of course, it was also dictated by how Taylor wrote and sang to the tracks."

Dessner supplied sketches for nine and produced 10 of folklore's 16 songs, playing many different types of guitars, keyboards and synths as well as percussion and programmed drums. Instruments that were added later include live strings, drums, trombone, accordion, clarinet, harpsichord and more, with his brother Bryce doing many of the orchestrations. Most overdubs by other musicians were done remotely as well. Throughout, Low was keeping an overview of everything that was going on and mixing the material, so it was as presentable and inspiring as possible.

Mixing folklore

Although Dessner has called folklore an "anti-pop album", the world's number-one pop mixer Serban Ghenea was drafted in to mix seven tracks, while Low did the remainder.

"It was exciting to have Serban involved," explains Low, "because he did things I'd never do or be able to do. The way the vocal sits always at the forefront, along with the clarity he gets in his mixes, is remarkable. A great example of this is on the song 'epiphany'. There is so much beautiful space and the vocal feels effortlessly placed. It was really interesting to hear where he took things, because we were so close to the entire process in every way. Hearing a totally new perspective was eye-opening and refreshing.

"Throughout the entire process we were trying to maintain the original feel. Sometimes this was hard, because that initial rawness would get lost in large arrangements and additional layering. With revisions of folklore in particular we sometimes were losing the emotional weight from earlier more casual mixes. Because I was always mixing, there was also always the danger of over-mixing.

"We were trying to get the best of each mix version, and sometimes that meant stepping backwards, and grabbing a piano chain from an earlier mix, or going three versions back to before we added orchestration. There were definitely moments of thinking, 'Is this going to compete sonically? Is this loud enough?' We knew we loved the way the songs sounded as we were building them, so we stuck with what we knew. There were times where I tried to keep pushing a mix forward but it didn't improve the song — 'cardigan' is an example of a song where we ended up choosing a very early mix."

The Low Down

"I'm originally from Philadelphia," says Jonathan Low, "and played piano, alto saxophone and guitar when growing up. My dad is an electrical engineer and audiophile hobbyist, and I learned a lot about circuit design and how to repair things. I then started building guitar pedals and guitar amps, and recorded bands at my high school using a minidisc player and some binaural microphones. After that I did a music industry programme at Drexel University, and spent a lot of time working at the recording facilities there.

"This led to me meeting Brian McTear, a producer and owner of Miner Street Studios, which became my home base from 2009 to 2014. I learned a lot from him, from developing an interest in creating sounds in untraditional ways, to how to see a record through to completion. The studio has a two-inch 16-track Ampex MM1200 tape machine and a beautiful MCI 400 console which very quickly shaped the way I think about routing and signal flow. I'm lucky to have learned this way, because a computer environment is like the Wild West: there are no rules in terms of how to get from point A to point B. This flexibility is incredible, but sometimes there are simply too many options.

"l met Aaron [Dessned] because singer-songwriter Sharon van Etten recorded her second album, Epic [2010] at Miner Street, with Brian producing. Her third album, Tramp [2012] was produced by Aaron. They came to Philly to record drums and I ended up mixing a bunch of that record. After that I would occasionally go to work in Aaron's garage studio in Brooklyn, and this became more and more a regular collaboration. I then moved from Philly up to the Hudson Valley to help Aaron build Long Pond. We first used the studio in the spring of 2016, when beginning to record the National's album Sleep Well Beast."

Onward & Upward

folklore was finished and released in July 2020. In a normal world everyone might have gone on to do other things, but without the option of touring, they simply continued writing songs, with Low holding the fort. In September, many of the musicians who played on the album gathered at Long Pond for the shooting of a making-of documentary, folklore: the long pond studio sessions, which is streamed on Disney+.

The temporary presence of Swift at Long Pond changed the working methods somewhat, as she could work with Dessner in the room, and Low was able record her vocals. After Swift left again, sessions continued until December, when evermore was released, with Dessner producing or co-producing all tracks, apart from 'gold rush' which was co-written and co-produced by Swift and Antonoff. Low recorded many of Swift's vocals for evermore, and mixed the entire album. The lead single 'willow' became the biggest hit from the album, reaching number one in the US and number three in the UK.

"Before Taylor came to Long Pond," remembers Low, "she had always recorded her vocals for folklore remotely in Los Angeles or Nashville. When I recorded, I used a modern Telefunken U47, which is our go-to vocal mic — we record all the National stuff with that — going straight into the Siemens desk, and then into a Lisson Grove AR-1 tube compressor, and via a Burl A-D converter into Pro Tools. Taylor creates and lays down her vocal arrangements very quickly, and it sounds like a finished record in very few takes."

Devils In The Detail

In his mixes, Low wanted listeners to share his own initial response to these vocal performances. "The element that draws me in is always Taylor's vocals. The first time I received files with her properly recorded but premixed vocals I was just floored. They sounded great, even with minimal EQ and compression. They were not the way I'm used to hearing her voice in her pop songs, with the vocal soaring and sitting at the very front edge of the soundscape. In these raw performances, I heard so much more intimacy and interaction with the music. It was wonderful to hear her voice with tons of detail and nuances in place: her phrasing, her tonality, her pitch, all very deliberate. We wanted to maintain that. It's more emotional, and it sounds so much more personal to me. Then there was the music..."

The arrangements on evermore are even more 'chamber pop' than on folklore, with instruments like glockenspiel, crotales, flute, French horn, celeste and harmonium in evidence. "As listeners of the National may know, Aaron's and Bryce's arrangements can be quite dense. They love lush orchestration, all sorts of percussion, synths and other electronic sounds. The challenge was trying to get them to speak, without getting in the way of the vocals. I want a casual listener to be drawn in by the vocal, but sense that something special is happening in the music as well. At the same time, someone who really is digging in can fully immerse themselves and take in all the beauty deeper in the details of the sound and arrangement. Finding the balance between presenting all the musical elements that were happening in the arrangement and this really beautiful, upfront, real-sounding vocal was the ticket."

A particular challenge is that a lot of the detail that Aaron gravitates towards happens in the low mids, which is a very warm part of our hearing spectrum that can quickly become too muddy or too woolly. A lot of the tonal and musical information lives in the low mids, and then the vocal sits more in the midrange and high mids. There's not too much in the higher frequency range, except the top of the guitars, and some elements like a shaker and the higher buzzy parts of the synths. Maintaining clarity and separation in those often complex arrangements was a major challenge."

In & Out The Box

According to Low, the final mix stage for evermore was "very short. There was a moment in the final week or so leading up to the release where the songs were developed far enough for me to sit down and try to make something very cohesive and final, finalising vocal volume, overall volume, and the vibe. There's a point in every mix where the moves get really small. When a volume ride of 0.1dB makes a difference, you're really close to being done. Earlier on, those little adjustments don't really matter.

"I often try to mix at the console, with some outboard on the two-bus, but folklore was mixed all in the box, because we were working so fast, plus initially the plan was for the mixes to be done elsewhere. I ran a couple of mixes for evermore through the console, and `closure' was the only one that stuck. It was summed through the Siemens, with an API 2500 compressor and a Thermionic Culture Phoenix and then back into Pro Tools via the Burl A-D. I will use hardware when mixing in the box, though mainly just two units: the Eventide H3000, because I have not found any plug-ins that do the same thing, and the [Thermionic] Culture Vulture, for its very broad tone shaping and distortion properties.

"The writing and the production happened closely in conjunction with the engineering and mixing, and the arrangements were dense, making many of the sessions super hefty and actually quite messy. Sounds would constantly change roles in the arrangement and sometimes plug-ins would just stack up. So final mixing involved cleaning up the sessions and stemming large groups down."

Across The Rubber Bridge

The Pro Tools mix session of 'willow' has close to 100 tracks, though there's none of the elaborate bussing that's the hallmark of some modern sessions. At the top are six drum machine tracks in green from the Teenage Engineering OP-1, an instrument that was used extensively on the album. Below that are five live percussion tracks (blue), three bass tracks (pink), and an `AUX Drums' programming track. There's a 'rubber bridge' guitar folder and aux, OP-1 synth tracks, piano tracks, 'Dream Machine' (Josh Kaufman's guitar) and E-bow tracks, Yamaha, Sequential Prophet X, Moog and Roland Juno synth tracks, and Strings and Horns aux stem tracks.

"Most of the drum tracks were performed on the OP-1 by Aaron. These are not programmed tracks. Bryan Devendorf, drummer of the National, programmed some beats on a Roland TR-8S. I ran those though the Fender Rumble bass amp, which adds some woofiness, like an acoustic kit room mic. There's an acoustic shaker, and there's an OP-1 backbeat that's subtle in the beginning, and then gets stronger towards the end of the song. I grouped all the drum elements and the bass, and sent those out to a hardware insert with the Culture Vulture, for saturation, so it got louder and more and more harmonically rich. There is this subtle growing and crescendo of intensity of the rhythm section by the end.

"The 'rubber bridge' guitars were the main anchor in the instruments. These guitars have a wooden bridge wrapped in rubber, and sound a bit like a nylon-string guitar, or a light palm mute. They're very percussive and sound best when recorded on our Neumann U47 and a DI. On many of those DI tracks I have a [SPL] Transient Designer to lower the sustain and keep them punchy, especially in the low end. There's a folder with five takes of 'rubber bridge' guitar in this session, creating this wall of unique guitar sound.

"I treated the 'rubber bridge' guitars quite extensively. There's a FabFilter Pro-Q3 cutting some midrange frequencies and some air around 10kHz. These guitars can splash out in the high end and have a boominess that's in the same range as the low end of Taylor's vocal, so I had to keep these things under control. Then I used a SoundToys Tremolator, with a quarter-note tremolo that makes the accents in the playing a bit more apparent. I like to get the acoustic guitars a little bit out of the way for the less important beats, so I have the Massey CT5 compressor side-chained to the kick drum. I also used the UAD Precision K-Stereo to make the guitars a bit wider. The iZotope Ozone Exciter adds some high mids and high-end harmonic saturation sparkly stuff, and the SoundToys EchoBoy delay is automated, with it only coming on in the bridge, where I wanted more ambience."

Growing Pains

"Once we had figured out how to sit the 'rubber bridge' guitars in the mix, the next challenge was to work out the end of the song, after the bridge. Taylor actually goes down an octave with her voice in the last chorus, and at the same time the music continues to push and grow. That meant using a lot of automation and Clip Gain adjustment to make sure the vocal always stayed on top. There also are ambient pianos playing counter-melodies, and balancing the vocals, guitars and pianos was the main focus on this song. We spent a lot of time balancing this, particularly as the track grows towards the end.

"The vocal tracks share many of the same plug-ins and settings. On the main lead vocal track I added the UAD Pultec EQP-1A, with a little bit of a cut in the low end at 30Hz, and a boost at 8kHz, which adds some modern air. The second plug-in is the Oeksound Soothe, which is just touching the vocal, and it helps with any harsh resonance stuff in the high mids, and a little in the lower mids. Next is the UAD 1176AE, and then the FabFilter Pro-Q3, doing some notches at 200Hz, 1kHz, 4kHz and close to 10kHz. I tend to do subtractive EQ on the Q3, and use more analogue-sounding plug-ins, like the Pultec or the Maag, to boost. After that is the FabFilter Pro-DS [de-esser], taking off a couple of decibels, followed by the FabFilter Saturn 2 [saturation processor], on a warm tape setting.

"Below the vocal tracks are three aux effects tracks, for the vocals. 'Long Delay' has a stereo EchoBoy going into an Altiverb with a spring reverb, for effect throws in the choruses. 'Chamber' is the UAD Capitol Chamber, which gives the vocal a nice density and size, without it being a long reverb. The 'Plate' aux is the UAD EMT140, for the longer tail. These two reverbs work in conjunction, with the chamber for the upfront space, determining where the vocal sits in the mix, and the plate more for the depth behind that.

"At the bottom of the session is a two-bus aux, which mimics the way I do the two-bus on the desk. The plug-ins are the UAD Massive Passive EQ, UAD API 2500 compressor, and the UAD Ampex ATR102. Depending on the song, I will choose 15ips or 30ips. In this case it was set to 15ips, half-inch GP9. That has a nice, aggressive, midrange push, and the GP9 bottom end goes that little bit lower. There's also a PSP Vintage Warmer, a Sonnox Oxford Inflator, plus a FabFilter Pro-L2 [limiter]. None of these things are doing very much on their own, but in conjunction give me the interaction I expect from an analogue mix chain."

[thepriceofbeingaroseisloneliness]

Kaoru Ongaku to Hito Interview  May 2021

DIR EN GREY  Endless originality. Don't shake, don't move, don't give up. As the leader and main composer of DIR EN GREY,  he made me realize in this interview that even if the band is in a situation in which they can't move forward, they are still striving toward their own determination without losing sight of their desire to create music. The new single "Oboro" is a ballad with a simple sound envision that insists on the melody and lyrics. In this single, which was made with the intention of being widely listened, you can feel a different stance on the sounds and the arrangements. I think his obsession with music and the pursuit of originality are changing because of his age and career. On the other hand, the latest promotional photos are still grotesque and chaotic. The future this band is heading for it’s held by his unchanging desire for music. Here there is a dialogue with him which makes you believe so.

Notes before reading: This is Kaoru’s interview featured in Ongaku to hito music magazine May 2021.

You can get this magazine at cdJapan (totally worth it!) Feel free to correct me if you spot any mistake or any confusing parts. Links or credits to this post when the content is reposted or captured in other SNS is appreciated :) -----------

Text by Higuchi Yasuyuki Photographs by Amita Mari Hair & make-up by Yamaguchi Atsushi_ EKYQ

“I’m not in the mood to say ‘let’s do this now’ but recently,  making astounding/ crazy songs might be difficult”

(While turning over the latest issue ...)  Kaoru: Did M-AGE make a come back? 

*M-AGE is a Japanese electronic pop/rock band active during the early 90s. They were feature in the previous issue of Ongaku to hito, April 2021* -Are you affected by that band? (laughs). Kaoru: I was surprised (laughs). -A band that disbanded more than 20 years ago did a comeback, there are another band that the drummer who has been a member for 20 years has left, there have been various things happening (in the music industry) in the past year, but DIR EN GREY has not lost to Corona. K: When it comes to losing, there is nothing you can do about it. - What do you think is the reason why these five people are continuing, without stopping, as a band? K: Isn't it because every one of us think we can’t go beyond this band? If someone gives up, we are not confident we can do something better than what we are doing now. It’s like, we can't get away from each other. It's easier to express your opinion if you keep a certain distance in that sense, and you don't have to accumulate stress about it. -By the way, throughout this year you noticed things and had some thoughts about the band. K:  That’s right….well, since the creation process was originally done remotely, I rarely had the opportunity to meet with the members other than the tour, but in reality it was important to have casual conversations with the members during the tour. There was a moment when the ideas changed depending on the words I exchanged with the members on the spot like “we should try to make this kind of song”… But it was a year when I was making songs without this input, so  it’s like there was  a part of me that felt gloomy. -You felt the importance of talking with the members. K: Even if we communicate remotely, we can just communicate by voice or text but, the mood/situation, the temperature, facial expressions etc…that can only be perceived directly so I thought those things are important after all. -In that situation, did the band make a song that only can be made now or tried to aim for something in your work?

K: That’s not case. It was as usual. We are not in the mood to do something like that now. However, it has nothing to do with this situation but we talked about how recently  it’s becoming harder to make crazy songs. -A crazy song? K:  When the band tries to create a song, naturally it turns out quite relaxed/calm. It feels like it’s what our bodies want. -Why do you want that kind of thing? K: I think that kind of songs makes you feel good, isn’t it? If we want to make a song like “Gya!” (fierce), we can make it but if we do it naturally, there will be more calm/relaxed songs. In other words, our previous single (digital single ‘Ochita koto no aru Sora) was a song we made with the intention of creating something fierce. -Intentionally, you made a fierce song. K: So, there was a talk about what kind adjustments should be done. We did it this time as well, but for now we are not thinking too much about it. Originally, ‘ARCHE’ (album released in 2014) was an album that was closer to that feeling. I just tried to do things I liked. There were a lot of slow and calm songs, but maybe it's easier to come up with such songs these days. -That’s why you can’t let yourself go with your natural flow… K: That’s right. So, the next album ('The Insulated World') was shaken off in the opposite direction. Of course, there are still intense/fierce songs coming out from the members. However, the songs everyone selects and remains in the top ranks are generally calm/relaxed. - 'Oboro' is a song that was born in such a situation. K: There was a talk about this single like ‘let’s make it easy for people who listen to DIR EN GREY for the first time, having an easy-to-understand melody”, so this song became a single. -Why did you decide to go in that direction? K: Somehow, we thought there are quite a lot of people who only know the name DIR EN GREY these days, but don't know what kind of music we are playing. Then, we feel like trying to make it easy for such people to get into us. So, I think it's quite challenging for us. -You are not really a band that “goes outside”. But also this song,  it’s a song that can be classified as a ballad in DIR EN GREY. K: It’s the kind of song we usually would keep for the album. It’s also interesting to dare to release it as a single. -It’s certainly a relaxing song and the variety of sounds is small, so it seems easy to approach but the latest promotional photos….(laughs) I was like “what’s your intention?”. K: Fufufufu (laughs) -But it looks like because of those photos the door is going to be closed before they listened to your music (laughs). K: That's why it's not that simple, like the sound or the tone of the song is intense or not. The song is like this, but this band is actually called ‘fierce’. -You mentioned earlier it  may be a matter of age, but the taste of music changes just as the taste of food changes when you get older. K: That's right. -So, recently, I feel this band doesn't try to resist such changes so much, or like you have started to project a realistic/true-to-life self into music. K: By all means, it looks like we became adults, right? -That’s why I’m familiar with it because we are from the same generation, it just fits. You can listen to it and enjoy a song with faint sounds instead of roaring ones. K: That's right. Simply, this kind of song is the one that roots in me. For example, the synthesizer-like sound that comes out first. -The intro with a synthesizer-like sound? K: That's right. That's my roots, originally I liked  the New Wave and listened to it, so I tried to create  what I was waiting for. *New wave is a broad music genre that included numerous pop and rock styles from the late 1970s and the 1980s* -But I think DIR EN GREY was the kind of band in which the roots of each member weren't projected in that way. K: After all, if five people do it, chemical changes will occur and the result will be completely different. But lately, the things I created haven't changed much, and sometimes they reach the end point. Of course, it's arranged in detail, but for this song, it's pretty much the same shape than at the beginning. -So, I got the impression it was a song that was unlikely to be done by DIR EN GREY until now. K: Maybe if we tried to keep it for the album, the arrangement would have been different. Because it’s a single, maybe I tried to listen to the melody. -In other words, it doesn’t feel like DIR EN GREY. K: Yes, if you listen to it with your existing values/sense of values, you might think it's not like DIR EN GREY. But this time we wanted to do that. That’s why when the president of our label listened to the demo first, said something like ‘This, isn’t it a bit insufficient/unsatisfactory?’ the reply was ‘No, that’s not the case’ (laughs) -Ahahahaha K: So, I think it's a new type of song. But just because this song seems to happen once in a while, the other songs are going to change steadily due to chemical changes going on. "This new song isn't fierce or shocking. Certainly, you can listen to it smoothly but actually….” -Then, I have a question for you Kaoru, not for the band, but do you think your personality has changed a lot from 10 years ago? K: How is that in reality? - Specifically, "DUM SPIRO SPERO" that came out 10 years ago is your commitment and obsession/attachment. In other words, I think it's an album that is full of personality. So, this time 'Oboro' comes from your roots,In other words, it's a song that is full of personality. However, if you compare these two works, the contrast is so huge that you can't think they were made by the same person. K: That's not true. -Oh really? (laughs). K: That's not true (laughs). For me, both are the same me. -But as a listener, I get the impression that the music is exactly the opposite, or that it's completely different. K: Certainly it’s the exact opposite when you  are referring to a band called DIR EN GREY, but it’s not that different for me, rather, it’s connected. -What kind of connection do you have? K: The sound may be different, but the points we are focused are the same. Especially this time, it feels like we've created each sound in detail, so it's more like I'm playing with the precision of a machine inside rather than the outward appearance of the music. -I see. K: Anyway, the most particular thing about this song is the sound of the synthesizer at the intro  I mentioned earlier. I thought the sound at the beginning would determine everything in this song. - Since that kind of determination/passion has disappeared, I was wondering if it would be a song that would allow me to listen to the melody simply. K: That's not true. Is it natural to stick to that? For example, I bought a synthesizer,  and it makes interesting sounds so I tried to create something. But the preset sounds you got when you bought the synthesizer (Note: it's set in advance) don’t work for me. -Why not? K: You have to create your own original ones. Even if I think the preset sounds are are catchy the way they are, I dare to stick to my original ones. Otherwise I can't be satisfied. - I wondered if you had finally abandoned that kind of troublesome pickiness(laughs). K: I’m really picky about that (laughs). But I think that’s normal when you make music. Even commercial pop music can be really picky about it. -You're right. You're right. K: Because it was created with that detail,I think people who listen to it will say "Oh!".If it wasn’t created in that way, it won't convey anything, and if it's as simple as this song, it won't be interesting unless you are committed to it. That is why it is the same as "DUM ". -Surely, but what if you could make it smoothly without being so committed/picky about it? K: Sometimes it’s easy to create, still, it would be nice if it makes you feel something. -I agree. K: This new song isn’t intense or shocking when it comes to the music, so you can listen to it  smoothly, that’s why there is  something for sure that makes you go like  “this song!”. But in reality, there are several sounds, I’m just not trying to hear them properly. It sounds like something that makes you feel it, you can’t hear it clearly, but it’s there. It’s not something new, to stick to that kind that sound, but in that sense it might feel like different or new. -At first, I had the impression that it was new or something different from what I heard before , but that may be the result of your commitment, to the point  that you couldn't hear it. K: I don't know if the word "new" is correct, but now I want to create  in a way that makes easy to project ourselves, while blending  it with something that makes our guts/intestines stick out. If we can do that, I think it will be something different and interesting, like "DIR EN GREY is doing something interesting again". I feel like I'm exploring that aspect now. -We talked about age before but, Isn't this age the time to imagine something like the time remaining? Like taking it easy at this point…..that kind of idea. K: Rather the opposite. I don't know how long I'll be able to create something I'm compromised with, and whether if I will keep having this  energy or physical strength. I want to keep doing it as long as I can. I can only make music with what I have, so I'm not overdoing it in that sense, but I'm overdoing it in a different sense (laughs). You can't create it without straining yourself. -I see, you are not lying to yourself. K: Of course. However, if you rely only on yourself, it won’t beat your expectations. I don’t think that this will change, no matter how many things happen. Still, at last I started to think that our music has some power of persuasion. Do you think we can keep competing with just our music? -It's been like that for a long time. But this band is like asking for something impossible, it’s a band that won’t disappear. K: But isn’t it about creating things? -I agree. Is it still fun to create things? K: It's fun (laughs) -Immediate answer (laughs) K: If we can do it forever, I want to do it forever. There are a lot of difficult moments, but I really like it. -As long as these five people are able to share that feeling, this band will continue. K: I think so. It's okay as long as  I believe in myself and the members. -I see……your speech was  much worse than reading a bad self-help book (laughs). K: hahahaha

[thelarriefics]

FAMOUS/NON-FAMOUS FIC REC: Below you’ll find even more fics where one of them is famous and the other is not. (Part I)

📖 Empty Skies by @greenfeelings (134k)

For three years, Harry has been running from his past. Now, he is moving to London and pledges to fulfil his only dream -- making it big in the music industry. Not everyone has a place, though, and the competition is tough. As is his past catching up on him.

Louis is part of the biggest boy band of the world, and getting there had meant a lot of hard work, as well as sacrificing parts of his heart and soul. He's still happy. Maybe not as happy as he could be, but who is he to complain?

Featuring Perrie as Harry's adorable flatmate, Niall as his manager, and Liam and Zayn as Louis' bandmates.

📖 California Sold by @isthatyoularry (123k)

Notoriously closeted boyband member Harry Styles is famous on a global scale, meanwhile Louis, as his best friend, is back home in Manchester, living the typical life of a 24 year old. When Harry needs Louis with him in LA, a publicity stunt gone wrong changes their friendship forever.

A fake-relationship AU between two lifelong best friends.

📖 When You're Lost by @mizzhydes (114k)

When he finally saw the culprit, he nearly dropped his entire glass. In the distance, Harry could hear Niall calling for him, but everything around him was blurring and all he could do was stare into the blue eyes before him. The eyes that had been so familiar to his younger self. The eyes he had never expected to see again. Suddenly, Harry felt sixteen again.

📖 Tired Tired Sea by @mediawhorefics (113k)

As a B&B owner on the most remote of all the British Isles, Louis Tomlinson is used to spending the coldest half of the year in complete isolation, with his dog and the sea as sole companions. Until, one day, a mysterious stranger on a quest to rebuild himself rents a room for the winter.

📖 Make Your Heart Remember Me by @perfectdagger (97k)

When Harry’s daughter auditions for The Voice Kids singing One Direction, Louis unexpectedly finds himself remembering a boy from his past. This time, he hopes to have another chance to make sure he won’t let him slip away.

📖 Face Your Fears by @sadaveniren (92k)

Harry is a single father, pretending to be a beta after his alpha mated him and left him. He’s getting by just fine raising the twins when Louis walks into his bakery. Too bad him and Louis will never be a thing.

📖 Shine On (You Crazy Diamond) by @larrymaybe22 (58k)

The year is 1974 and Britain’s glam rock scene is in full swing. Enter Louis, a broke and dejected student who finds himself on a tour bus of all places, working as a roadie for the enigmatic “womanizer” Harry Styles. Along the way, Louis discovers the cruelty of fame and that maybe there is more than meets the eye beyond the curls, cocaine, and crazy suits.

A 1970's/Glam Rock AU

📖 Love Isn't Always on Time by @softfonds (45k)

Falling in love with your best friend sounds like a good idea, until he comes back from a work trip engaged to another man. A Made of Honor AU. 

📖 Latching Onto You by @reminiscingintherain (34k)

The one where Louis wants to book Harry Styles to perform at his best friends' wedding.

📖 Drain to the Stars by @roguenauticals (28k)

Louis lived a very quiet life at his inherited book shop in Notting Hill, until Oscar-winner Harry Styles walked through the door.

📖 Walls Are Just Walls (You Are My Home) by @et-y-etc (26k)

After being injured in a hiking accident, musician Harry and his bodyguard are stuck on the trail with no cell service, no supplies, and with nightfall coming. Louis, who’s a wilderness first responder, comes across them, gives first aid, and calls for a rescue.

Once the rescue’s over and Harry’s family is there to care for him, Louis doesn’t figure he’ll ever see Harry again, but he does— at the talk shows he and Harry appear on so they can talk about their experience, at the concert Harry invites him to, through all texts and DMs. It’s amazing how well they get along and how much Louis likes him. Could someone like Harry ever return his feelings?

📖 Your Shadow Running Round by @harrystanslouis (24k)

Seven years ago, Harry chased a dream, leaving behind his home and everyone in it. Including Louis, his best friend and quite possibly, the love of his life. When he's brought back to perform a charity concert for his old high school's Arts program, he realizes not much has really changed, including his feelings. This town is still achingly familiar, his mom still gives the warmest hugs, and Louis still makes his heart feel shimmery around the edges.

📖 tonight's not over (come over and stay) by @adoredontour (16k)

harry is a famous singer and louis is a student who just wants to write his novel

📖 Boy, you got me blinded by @onebritneydirection (14k)

the one where Louis finds himself modeling for Vogue Magazine next to hot top model Harry Styles and faking a relationship with him for the public, finding along the way more than a new way of life

📖 You come in waves (we crash and we roll) by @rainbowsandlovehl (11k)

Three times Louis makes a fool of himself in front of Harry and one time he doesn't. 

📖 We Had Everything by @lightwoodsmagic (2k)

Louis and Harry fell apart, and Louis' never forgiven himself. He gets a second chance at Zayn and Liam's wedding.

[ladykissingfish]

The Akatsuki as YOUR Boyfriend/Girlfriend (Modern Day) ((Part One))

Deidara -YOU end up asking HIM out first (he wanted to approach you but was scared you wouldn’t be interested) -Self esteem is a bit low; doesn’t even realize that you consider him your boyfriend until you introduce him to someone as such -Had zero experience with relationships before you; had to be taught practically everything ((but luckily for you he was a very fast learner)) -Introduces YOU to everyone with sappy smile and “Yeah that’s her/him/them” -Will literally cry if you praise his artwork -Addicted to having you brush/play with his hair -Favorite gesture of affection: Surprise hugs from behind -God help anybody who puts a frown on your face -Has made you a mixtape for literally every possible occasion -Museum and rock concert dates -Will eat/gush over your cooking even if it’s terrible -Greatest pride: when he sees you wearing his (weird band) hoodies -Your opinion is the only one that matters to him -Likes to make you laugh; you both have a LOT of inside jokes -His friends come up to you every time they see you and beg you not to ever leave him because “you keep him sane” Sasori -Reserved and quiet at first; but once he feels he can trust you, you’ll become his greatest confidante -Lost family at a young age, so once he gives his heart to you, YOU become his family and he’d do anything to keep you safe -Not very physically demonstrative, but the affection he DOES give is soft and tender -Dry, sarcastic sense of humor -Very intelligent; will help you with or teach you just about anything you want to learn -Is always on you about needing to eat healthier so that you live longer -Takes any injury you get (even a simple papercut) very seriously -The jealous type; doesn’t really like sharing you/your time with others -Reads a ton; has more books than you’ve ever seen in one person’s possession, and will often take you on “dates” to bookstores to get more -Hundreds of late-night conversations about life and the world in general -Respects your opinions on art and music but never stops trying to “convert” you to his tastes -Always remembers everything you tell him, even insignificant things -Watching tv or movies together is a pain because he over-analyzes every little detail, even with cartoons and comedies. -His friends think he’s too serious ((boring)) and wonder what it is you see in him Konan -Will defend you against the entire world, even when you’re in the wrong -Looks delicate but can kick ass when necessary -Loves when you give her hand-made gifts but will balk at expensive or store-bought ones -Favorite gesture of affection: cheek-kisses -Soft-spoken and reserved around others, bolder and more aggressive when alone with you -Oragami master; will teach you every fold known to man -Doesn’t like crowds, so dates will mostly be dinner and movies at each other’s houses -Likes body art; will show you ALL of her piercings and tattoos (most of which aren’t visible to the general public) -Experienced some trauma as a kid; uses sarcasm and dark humor as a coping mechanism -Will often fall asleep with entire body wrapped around yours, and stay that way the whole night Obito Uchiha -Extremely self-conscious over his looks, in particular the scarring on his face; takes a while for him to relax and let his guard down around you -Is a sucker for hand-holding and will seek out any and every excuse to hold yours -Cuddle monster -Trusts you enough to tell you things about his past that even his closest friends don’t know -Gets distracted easily, but when focused is a brilliant multi-tasker -ALWAYS shows up late for everything; but the excuses he gives are so creative that you actually look forward to hearing them -Has an eclectic extended family, all of whom love you and will tease him about when he’s going to make you a member of their “clan” -Has a phobia about losing people he loves, so will be aggressively protective over you, even in non-threatening situations -Sweet-tooth alert; this guy goes crazy over any and all forms of candies

or desserts, and will be ready to propose over a perfectly baked cake -Light-weight warning: this guy’s alcohol tolerance is ridiculously low; can only handle 1-2 shots or one beer at max before he hits the floor -Knows many forms of self-defense and will spend time teaching you different techniques Itachi Uchiha -Sweetheart level: 1000000+ -Tends to have very “down” moods; will need your patience and support to pull him through them -A better cook than anyone you’ve ever met; will make you your favorite dishes any time you request him to -Shy about giving or receiving physical affection; will mostly stick to forehead kisses or soft pats on the head -Always puts your wants and desires above his own, going out of his way to make you his number one priority -Remains impressively calm and collected no matter the situation -Has beautiful soft hair; gets really happy and relaxed when you play with it -Family means a great deal to him, so will introduce you to his fairly early-on (and be secretly thrilled when you introduce him to yours) -Always seems to know exactly what you’re thinking/feeling -Quiet and serious most of the time, but can be playful and goofy when alone with you -Not a people-person by any means but will make an effort to be sociable with your friends -When stressed, will call you and keep you talking for hours, because the sound of your voice soothes him Kakuzu -Grumpy but cute -Won’t admit/acknowledge that you’re in a relationship for a very long time -Acts annoyed with the things you do but secretly thinks EVERYTHING you do is adorable -Hyper concerned about finances; will spend copious amounts of time trying to teach you to better budget your money -Lots of “dates” to the grocery store on super-sale weekends -Stingy with affection while you’re awake, but will literally keep his arms around you and hold you the entire night while you sleep -Will always be honest and straightforward with you, even if what he says might hurt your feelings -Will freely tell his friends that you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to him (but not while you’re around, of course) -Addicted to tv shows like Pawn Stars and Storage Wars; you’ll end up having lots of watching-marathons with him -Unintentionally(?) blunt with the way he talks to others; you have to really work with him on filtering before you introduce him to your friends/family -Will ((VERY RARELY)) bring you your favorite flowers or candy, just to see your face light up in surprise when he gives them to you Zetsu -Nature lover and extremely environmentally conscious -Claims to be “mostly vegetarian” (but you’ve seen him occasionally sneak a burger) -Has two very distinctive personalities; one very goofy and one very serious, and you never quite know which you’re going to get -A master gardener and landscaper; his handiwork has actually been featured on local tv shows and in magazines -Always pops up to see you unexpectedly, and at the most random times -Is a little uncomfortable with showing affection, so will mostly stick with cute nicknames and frequent presents -Very curious nature and will ask you a lot of questions about yourself, but be hesitant to speak much about himself -The two of you don’t really go on “dates”; rather you just spend a lot of time together outdoors: picnics, long walks, etc

[ariel-seagull-wings]

RAUL SEIXAS

@superkingofpriderock​

Raul Santos Seixas (28 June 1945 – 21 August 1989) was a Brazilian rock composer, singer, songwriter and producer. He is sometimes called the "Father of Brazilian Rock" and "Maluco Beleza", the last one roughly translated as "Groovy Nutcase". He was born in Salvador (Bahia), Brazil, and died of pancreatitis in São Paulo. Every year on Seixas' birthday, legions of fans, including thousands of impersonators (many even changing their last name to Seixas as a sign of idolatry), throw a parade in his honor in downtown São Paulo. His body of work consists of 21 albums released along his 26-year career. His musical style is mostly rock and ballad, although he wrote songs in many different styles, including variations of styles typical of his native Northeast Brazil like Forró and Baião, and in fact often used more than one style in the same song, such as in "Let Me Sing, Let Me Sing". His debut album, Raulzito e os Panteras, was produced when he was part of a band of the same name. However, he only gained prominence and critical audience with songs from the album Krig-Há, Bandolo! (1973), such as "Ouro de Tolo" ("Fool's Gold"), "Mosca na Sopa" ("Fly in the Soup"), and "Metamorfose Ambulante" ("Walking Metamorphosis"). Raul Seixas developed a musical style that emphasized the maverick and the mystic. His album Gita (1974), influenced by figures such as Aleister Crowley, expresses his views very directly. Many songs in Gita were co-written with his frequent collaborator, then-fellow mystic and future worldwide bestselling author Paulo Coelho. Raul was interested in philosophy (especially metaphysics and ontology), psychology, history, literature and Latin. In October 2008, nineteen years after his death, Raul Seixas was placed in 19th position in a list of one hundred greatest artists of Brazilian music sponsored by the Brazilian edition of Rolling Stone magazine, topping the likes of Milton Nascimento, Maria Bethânia, Heitor Villa-Lobos and others, demonstrating the influence that Seixas' music continues to hold today. Seixas was born at 8 A.M on 28 June 1945 to a middle-class family residing at Avenida Sete de Setembro, Salvador, Bahia. As a child living near the United States consulate, he became fluent in the English language, and was introduced to early rock and roll records of artists such as Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley through his contacts with American diplomats' children around 1956. Elvis's music in particular was influential in young Raul's decision to become a musician. At the age of twelve, Seixas formed his first group, The Panthers, later changing their name to the Portuguese-language Raulzito e os Panteras ("Little Raul and The Panthers"). They appeared on TV Salvador doing covers of Lewis, Little Richard and Elvis, a style of music which was at the time called "cowboy music" in Brazil. They were also the first group in the state of Bahia to play Beatles covers and grow their hair long, as early as 1964.In the mid-1960s, Os Panteras started backing some of Brazil's most famous pop singers of the time, such as Roberto Carlos and Jerry Adriani whenever they went to Salvador. Impressed with their talent, the stars would always advise Raul to move down south and take a chance in the thriving Jovem Guarda scene. Following the promises of fame and fortune, the band moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1967. In the following year they released their first and only album on the Odeon label (later EMI-Odeon), which included a Portuguese language version of the Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" among many original numbers. Without any publicity, the record sunk and the band disbanded. Seixas was totally shaken by the failure of the Panthers, and his return to Salvador. He wrote: "I spent all day locked in my room reading philosophy, with only a very feeble light, what ended up spoiling my eyesight [...] I bought a motorcycle and did crazy things in the street."After his former bandmates moved back to Salvador, Seixas made a living as an English teacher before being hired by CBS, still in 1968, as creative director and record producer. In 1971, tired of writing and producing records by bland, commercial artists, he took advantage of a label director's vacations and produced Sociedade da Grã-Ordem Kavernista Apresenta Sessão das Dez, an avant-garde album featuring himself, singer Sergio Sampaio, samba artist Miriam Batucada and Edy Star. The record's mix of Tropicalia, rock and roll and anarchic surrealistic experiments launched Raul Seixas as an icon of Brazilian counterculture.  In the 1970s, Seixas became popular in urban centers such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Music broadcast on TV and radio was satirical, sarcastic with esoteric themes. References to a wide range of historical and fictional personalities are found within his lyrics: The Beatles, Aleister Crowley, Al Capone, Marlon Brando, Jesus, Julius Caesar and Shakespeare, for example. Seixas was subject to censorship during Brazil's period of military dictatorship.  1971 also saw the beginning of a relationship with esoteric author Paulo Coelho, beginning with Krig-Há-Bandolo in 1973. Through Coelho, Seixas was introduced to the work of controversial English mystic Aleister Crowley, which influenced their collaboration. The influence extended not only to music, but also to plans for the creation of the "Alternative Society," which was to be an anarchist community in the state of Minas Gerais based on Crowley's premise: "'Do what thou wilt' shall be the whole of the Law." The project was considered subversive by members of the Brazilian military, which imprisoned all prospective members of the group. Seixas and Coelho are reported to have been tortured during their imprisonment.Seixas got into self-exiling himself in the United States following the detention by government repressive agents, where his American wife of the time was living. (Seixas was legally married two times to Edith Wisner and Gloria Vaquer Seixas). He has three daughters Simone Vannoy, Scarlet Vaquer Seixas and Vivian Seixas. He would later claim that during his exile he had met his childhood heroes John Lennon and Jerry Lee Lewis, although this claim has been disputed. 

Perhaps as a result of his drug addiction and alcoholism, the rate and quality of Seixas' releases slowed through the late-1970s and throughout the 1980s. In later life Seixas suffered from diabetes and pancreatitis. On 21 August 1989 Seixas died of cardiac arrest, the result of acute pancreatitis brought on by his diabetes and not having taken insulin the night before. His final album, A Panela do Diabo, a partnership with fellow Bahian rocker Marcelo Nova (former leader of punk rock band Camisa de Vênus) was released two days before his death.

It is very common to hear people shouting "Toca Raul!" (Play Raul!) in the middle of concerts, regardless of the artist or genre,