#your album cover edit was. before that this was almost added to the list of projects i've abandoned lmaoo

[perilegs]

lay all your blood on me ty again @kuuttituutti for making the thumbnail!

[cookiesupplier]

Every Rose Has Its Thorns - Part Forty-Nine

pairing: Ricky Olson x ofc x Chris 'Motionless' Cerulli

warnings/tropes: slow burn, soulmates, strangers to enemies to lovers, betrayal, angst, fluff, smut, language, online bullying, panic attacks, stalking, mental health issues, conspiracy theories.

summary: In a world where soulmates inexplicably receive a tattoo that will match that of their soulmate the moment they turn eighteen years old, being famous and covered in very visible tattoos can make finding your true soulmate a questionable fate. For everyone involved.

author’s note: Looks like Rick was first!

To read from the beginning, check out the Masterlist Here!

If you would like to be added to this tag list please see THIS FORM

tags: @faceless-mirror @missduffsblog @tamtam-elizabeth @witchyweeb34 @tearfallpixie

@wild-child-7747 @shilohrosechicken @lacktoesandtoddlerants @blackveilomens @valiantroeagleangel

@bngurngheart @dominuslunae @collapsedglasshouses @miamore0570 @emmmm127

@sunsshinesunny @spicywhenspeaking @dontdiganothergravetoday @chick-from-nz @latenightmusiclover

@anameunmusical

Chris didn’t know why Ricky had moved back to his own house some days, okay, that was a lie, he knew exactly why he had. They both needed their own space sometimes, and he knew Ricky sometimes felt like he was imposing being here for so long. While they could live together, Ricky’s house had all of his own gear, his own equipment, and everything about their relationship with Talia was so new, and bringing up moving in together would probably scare the life out of her. The fact that she seemed to be dancing around the idea of moving in with either one of them told Chris that much. It did make him wonder what her thought would be if the option was living with the both of them instead of having to choose between them. 

But no, right now, they had their separate houses, and yet, Ricky was currently sitting on the couch in Chris’ little studio, with his laptop perching on his folded knee typing away. Chris, however, was working some music for the new album. Neither of them were talking, they were just existing in the same space. So Chris, today, had no clue why Ricky had moved back to his own house if he was going to keep coming back over to his for no other reason than just to be. 

Not that he was complaining. He enjoyed the company, he did, it just sometimes could have confusing elements, especially when there were moments that it made working on music just a touch more difficult hearing him typing away sitting on the couch to the side. He didn’t want to tell him to leave though, not for one second, he would be the first to admit, he was struggling with this particular song long before Ricky had walked in and sat down.

Rick was waiting for one of the other two to figure it out. Admittedly, it had taken him time to work it out himself. He wasn’t sure when it had happened, if it had had happened slowly, if there had been something that had triggered it, or it had happened gradually, but he’d just noticed one day. Their tattoos had stopped going crazy every time they were stimulated, let alone even touched one another. Ricky, he was almost certain it had been gradual, considering at first, for him, he’d be the first to admit his tattoo had almost constantly affected him when they stated dating. Once he gave in to how he felt for them… he didn’t want to stop. Even now, why should he want to resist how he felt for either of them? He didn’t just mean physically, either. Just being near them made him feel so much more secure. A brush of a hand, nudge of a shoulder, quick kiss, a knowing glance with a thought, it was the small things that helped him in ways he couldn’t really put words to.

Ricky looked up from his laptop, his fingers stilling for a moment as he paused from editing the chapter he was working on. He had been dabbling on this book for a while now, and working on it, he wasn’t sure how long it was going to take him. However, honestly, it hadn’t been the purpose when he brought his laptop over to Chris’ house today. No, he was just using it as something to do as a task while he spent as much time around Chris and Talia the last few days as possible, sat working while they did what they wanted. He wanted to be around both of them, waiting, watching, he wanted to see which of them would get it first. 

Yes, he could just tell them. He could. However, that would be too easy. This was more fun. When Chris glanced over to him, studying him, seeming to looking at him expectantly for a second. For a moment he thought there was something in his gaze, Rick raised an eyebrow at him, waiting to see if he would actually get it. 

“What is it?”

When Chris just shook his head and returned to his work, Rick couldn’t help but smirk slightly, nope, come on Chris, come on. Alright, they were both really just not going to wise on to this any time soon without a little bit of a nudge now, were they? Closing his laptop, slowly, Chris didn’t even react when he did either, not at first anyway. Setting his laptop aside on the couch, he stood up and moved stepped over to where Chris was sitting, standing behind him. Hands moving to his shoulders, one purposely slipping under his collar, so his fingers could stroke at his skin, directly over his tattoo slowly.

“How is the song going?”

They both worked on plenty of the album, this one Chris had been doing most of the work on, and Ricky had been giving comments here and there, but for the most part, it had been Chris on this one. When Chris got in this kind of mood, he would offer, but not press, because he knew Chris could get focus and would only shrug him off. 

“Fine, I just, no, slow, hitting a wall- I-”

Hearing Chris sigh, Ricky smiled, letting his hands squeezed at his shoulders a bit,

“Maybe a bit of a massage will help. Then you can relax, and then when you’ve finally relaxed babe, you can get back to it, how about that? You’ve been focused on nothing else the last couple of days, it's about time you took a break anyway.”

Chris groaned low as Ricky went ahead just as he said he would, and was massaging his shoulders slowly, one hand over his shirt, while the other still under the collar. His fingertips stroking, circling around the leaves of the rose tattoo, their soulmate tattoo, the same gesture that would have had the mark going completely insane just weeks ago, and right then it was silent. While his other hand stilled, Ricky’s fingers continued to trace over their soulmate tattoo on Chris’ shoulder, letting his nails slowly scrap over the tattoo to draw his attention to it all the more. Smirking at the way he caught the sharp intake of Chris breath the more he dragged his nails across his skin.

Sure, he said he was giving Chris a massage, but he knew that wasn’t really his purpose, and whether Chris figure him out and called him on it, remained to be seen. Now either way, he wanted him to relax, but-

“That massage is getting a bit one-sided there…”

Ricky couldn’t help but grin at the way Chris said that, and the fact that Chris seemed to have a telling way, made him think he had finally gotten the point… please…

“Makes me think you are trying to tell me something.”

“Oh really, and what might that be?”

Had he figured it out, had he gotten the hint yet, Ricky waited with nothing short of excited anticipation. He’d felt this tingle ever since he’d realised. Not the same kind of tingle from his tattoo, but just the same, he just, wanted to shout it out, but even more, wanting to see which of his soulmates would figure it out next. If they both had and just weren’t telling him, he was going to- no, no, they weren’t that good at keeping secrets, they weren’t, not from him, they just weren’t.

“That you’re horny.”

Groaning, Ricky couldn’t help but tip his head back okay, he could see where Chris got his wires crossed but really, would he be that blatantly obvious?

“Dammit, Chris, we both know if I was that horny, I’d have no problem with sticking my tongue down your throat and just stripping your pants off. Try again..”

This time, Ricky was more blatant, walking around the chair facing Chris, staring him in the eyes as he pulled the shoulder of his shirt off his arm. Only then did he tear his gaze away so he could lean over and bring his lips to Chris shoulder blade over his tattoo, kissing at his skin, and swirl his tongue over the now fully shaded black rose petals. There was no mistaking the soulmate tattoo as the same one Ricky and Talia wore on their necks now. Chris gasped at the feel of Ricky’s mouth on his skin, and then, then…

“Wait.. Rick, our tattoo-

Smiling, lifting his head, now he was getting it, Ricky was already undoing Chris’ belt even as he was exclaiming.

“Oh, I know, I’ve been waiting to see which of you would figure it out next, now be a good boy and relax so you can finish your song, okay?”

Chris didn’t get to say much before Ricky was sinking down to his knees between his, pulling his pants open so he could get his cock out, tattooed fingers already working to stroke him to full hardness. Not that it was that difficult to do with the fact that he’d hard his hands and mouth on him just now, Chris had started to chub up already. As he massed his fingers up the length of Chris’ cock for a moment and rubbing his thumb over his head to smear some of the fluid of his pre-cum over his skin, teasing him. Groaning, Chris should know it was stupid to ask him anything right now when he was just getting started, really, but there he was, looking down at him, his lips parted, panting.

“How long since you figured it out?”

Ricky smirked up at him, his hand stroking along his cock again, the other holding onto his thigh firmly as he knelt between them. Licking at the head of Chris cock now teasingly at the fact he had to stop to answer, he’d just about to take him into his mouth too, just perfect timing there Chris.

“About a week, now, are you going to keep asking questions, or will you let me suck you off and help you relax so you can finish your song? Because one.. I am horny, and two, you won’t be relaxed quite enough to let me fuck you until after you’ve stopped thinking about it..”

Chris had been talking about how close he’d been to finishing it for days... The way Ricky kept stroking his cock just a little faster as he spoke, urging Chris on, there was no way he was going to last very long by the time Ricky got his mouth on him.

“Shit, Ricky, Please!”

His hands were gripping the arms of the chair for dear life as his head dipped back against the chair, he couldn’t look down at him again. He could cum just at the sight of him between his knees like that. The way he heard Ricky chuckle low at him wasn’t helping at all. A squeeze of his fingers at the base of his cock was followed by the feel of his warm wet mouth wrapped around his cock finally, followed with a long slow suck. 

Chris let out a drawn out moan at the feel of his tongue swirling around the head of his cock, before Rick started taking more of his length into his mouth with each bob of his head. Groaning around him, letting vibrations run through Chris, until he was giving in with the slightest twitch of his hips. One of Chris hands were threading his fingers into Ricky’s hair, gripping his head slightly, not to control him, just to hold onto him as he continued to move. Rick didn’t stop, he kept going, until Chris was hitting the back of his throat, and now Chris was watching him, he couldn’t help it, watching as his cock was pushing in and out of Rick’s mouth. Seeing as he was pushing past his lips as Rick was fucking himself on his cock was absolutely driving him insane, and he had no doubt that was exactly what he wanted as he pushed him like this. Ricky was always a little shit when he gave him head, he either teased him mercilessly, or went at him full tilt so he had no choice but to cum so hard down his throat.

Today was the latter, it would seem, and he had a feeling he knew exactly what he could look forward to later as well. It was as he was thinking about Ricky fucking him with abandon, hard into the mattress, until he could barely walk, that he was cumming down his throat.

“Fuck, Rick!”

Pulling him back, so he could lean down, no hesitation at all to bring his lips to his, tasting himself as Ricky gasped against his mouth with a moan. Oh, he knew exactly how he was going to finish that song now.

[rhapsodynew]

#Fun facts from the history of rock music

LITA & LEMMY

Lemmy wrote the song "Can't Catch Me" for Lita Ford's album LITA (1988).

Lita: Yes, oh my God. I mean, this song is all about Lemmy's energy, I remember him composing it. Damn, what's the line “Don't try to put the strong arm on me.” [idiom] Like: Don't put your finger in my mouth, well. He always said: "Lita, you're fucking cool!"

Then no one wanted to admit that a woman can be a guitarist or a woman can't be a bandleader or a frontwoman. They were always trying to make this sex picture or sex symbol out of me. Of course, I'm good, both as a picture and as a sex symbol. But I'm still a musician, I always wanted to be perceived as a musician first of all.

And Lemmy always treated me like this in the first place.: as a musician. This song is just about that, it says: "I'm not your prey" because I'm so fucking cool, I'm faster and cooler than you “I've seen shit and paradise” (I've seen shit and paradise). Well, so that you can understand the mood in which we wrote this.

It was fun, you have to admit.

// Cherry on the cake: On the record, David Ezrin, the son of producer Bob Ezrin, is also listed as a co-author, who composed a couple more numbers for this album and played keyboards there, which for some reason is not indicated on the back of the cover. There are keys, but who played it is not specified. Sharon Osbourne's management is in its repertoire.

Mick Jagger and the Mars Bar

In February 1976, cops acting on a tip raided Keith Richards' house. When they went inside, Mick Jagger, singer Marianne Faithfull and others were in the living room, Faithfull, who had just come out of the bath, had one towel on. But popular legend has it that the police broke in at the moment when Jagger was eating a Mars bar straight from Faithfull's vagina– which she categorically rejects in her autobiography, calling it "the fantasy of old perverts." The story may have originated thanks to Mars' classic slogan about a bar "filling the gap."

The Bloody Kiss Comic

Sometimes the most absurd legends turn out to be true. Thanks to their impressive images and unsurpassed desire to advertise themselves, Kiss naturally turned out to be comic book heroes. But in 1977, they outdid themselves by allowing their blood to be taken and added to the ink for the first edition of Marvel's Super Special Kiss Comic Book. The musicians were even photographed during the dubious action. Knowing about their sexual and drug experiences, would you want to buy your child a comic book with Kiss' blood?

Verdict: the truth

Frank Zappa won the argument "weakly"

Frank Zappa was so eccentric that perhaps that's why his fans found it easy to believe in the strange stories associated with him. One of the heroes of our article stated that Zappa once won an argument "weakly" (some say that he argued with Alice Cooper), after which his opponent defecated right on stage – and Zappa ate it as a result. Another version sounds like this: Zappa won "weakly" by defecating on stage. And here's what the musician writes in his autobiography, "By the way, folks: I've never dragged shit on stage, and the shittiest thing I've eaten in my life was in the dining room of the Holliday Inn in Fayetteville, North Carolina in 1973."

Verdict: Fiction

Joey DeMaio

De Mayo almost died early in his career. At the age of 23, he played in the band of Dio's cousin, David Feinstein. His pompous winged suit caught fire. The musician jumped into the crowd, and the fans took it as part of the show — after which the musician spent a month in the hospital, healing serious burns to his back and arms.

The story of the song "Lithium" by Nirvana.

Kurt Cobain explained the idea of the song this way: "The song is about a guy whose girlfriend left, his friends, and he's thinking… He decides to find God before he kills himself." "Faith is the last thing that can keep him from committing suicide." Lithium preparations are actively used in psychiatry for the treatment of depression and bipolar disorders.

The CD cover was designed by Kurt Cobain; a sonogram (intrauterine photograph) of his daughter, Frances Bean, was placed on the back of the 12-inch vinyl record. The lyrics of all the songs from the Nevermind album were also attached to the single. The video for this song was directed by Kevin Kerslake and is a cut from the band's live recordings.

Like many Nirvana songs, the song is based on an alternation of a calm verse part and an energetic chorus.

Many people know that Michael Jackson owns the rights to most of The Beatles' lives. At one time, it even ended his friendship with Paul McCartney. But the music of businessmen is not an isolated achievement of Michael Jackson. In 2007, he acquired power over part of the cataloging in response to her "Just Lose It" video, which Markal distributed to the star. This performance cost Jackson $370 million, and its owners presented themselves as Real Slim Shady without me.

[alanlicht]

Havens double album released 9/20/2024, fall tour Oct/Nov

Havens, a two-LP set of solo guitar (plus a teeny bit of mellotron and voice) is released Friday, September 20, 2024 by VDSQ/The Black Editions. I'll be playing solo shows on the east and west coasts this fall, full schedule above, more details to follow. Review above from Uncut magazine. Order here.

Track list:

Side 1--Havens, Five Chords and a Sword

Side 2--Nonchalant

Side 3--Frank Sinatra Drive

Side 4--The Daily Sit, 1970 (Stooges cover)

Recorded and mixed 2021/2022 by Eli Crews at Spillway Sound, except The Daily Sit, recorded and mixed by Ted Young at Outer Space, 2014. Mastered by Jeff Yellen, Ridgeline Sound

Cover photo by Alan Licht, album layout and design by Miles Wintner

Additional package photos by Laurent Orseau, and Young Ha Kim for Liquid Architecture

"Alan Licht returns to VDSQ with Havens, a sprawling double-disc set of exploratory guitar-based compositions forged from the myriad possibilities arising when strings collide with electricity & space. Licht is masterful and relentless in his negotiation of the often-unknowable intersections that exist between juxtaposing strands of sound. His work is marked by contrast & contradiction: maximalism versus minimalism; rockist inclinations versus avant, expanded-field expression; loose improvisation versus considered performance. What these dichotomies shouldn’t obscure, however, is the simple pleasure that transpires in his refracting of idiom, conjuring expansive pieces that collapse, stratify & convolve competing schools of music to wholly singular ends.

Havens documents a new sound for Licht, building on a previous VDSQ release "Currents," his last major solo outing from 2015. Playing those solo acoustic tracks live on tour, their lyricism translated through the power of a PA, Licht was taken by the overtones surging atop those song-like pieces, transforming them into something new. The compositions here, particularly the mesmeric title track, luxuriate in that newfound sense of possibility, infused with a rock-born urgency by way of lightning-fast, urgent strumming gradually unfurling layers of phantom harmonics. Celestial punk, if you will; guitar soli of such ever-surging vitality as to blur & distend dense chord shapes to phantasmagoric effect. The record is rich with considered, contained explosivity, firmly minimalist in its patient pace & ear for hallucination but expressed in defiantly, deliciously rock terms, each piece its own lyrical hybrid built of scant elements unfurled with painterly grace. This is firmly a "guitar" record, despite what your ears mighttell you; barring a short mellotron intervention, Havens is almost unbelievably wrought from guitar alone, ably deployed straight or perverted into abstracted spectres & illusions.

The central pairing of sidelong epics, "Nonchalant" & "Frank Sinatra Drive", feel as succinct an encapsulation as any as to the magic of this new approach. On the former, a focal acoustic figure is put through the most beautiful of wringers over its peripatetic duration, Licht moving up the fretboard with intuitive precision to properly excavate the possibilities of the melody as wraith tones take hold & thrust it all upward. The latter, moving over to electric and adding a brief, enigmatic vocal, is a full-throttle beauty, a multi-movement set of variations on a single chord progression realized through a cascade of resplendent guitar that feels like infinite rapture, accelerating towards the ether before plateauing in splendid drone. Elsewhere, the same tools are put towards more contained ends to no less glorious results. "Five Chords and a Sword" (calling back to his idiosyncratic 2022 covers collection Three Chords and a Sword) finds a delirious slide-strewn refrain swallowed by a dense swarm of bliss a la Jim O’Rourke’s Happy Days albeit exclusively by way of ebowed acoustic guitar. "The Daily Sit", the oldest composition here, takes a similarly bright tune & lets it wander down labyrinthine paths with deft control, before we head out on an extended, climacticcover of the Stooges’ "1970," the unbridled repetitive glee of the original set adrift in minimalist fantasia, jutting out in ever more angular shapes & circling back to a place far removed from where it all began.

This loving dislocation & reframing of the rock lexicon remains true to the Licht M.O., Havens being a resoundingly deep listen teeming with visceral energy, a glorious love letter to the still-unexplored potentialities of a simple guitar thrust into the hands of an individual who simultaneously reveres its known nooks but steadfastly continues to push it into crannies uncharted."

—Edward Beaver, Nature Strip Records

[teamhappyme]

a series of promising events (1/5)

aaron hotchner x female! reader

word count: 7.9k :)

a/n: hello hello hello! this is my first hotch fic, and the first of three parts (edit: it’s actually 5 now lolol). it’s going to cover 8 (maybe 9?) events over the course of several years, so it needed to be broken up in the most rational way possible. this is my baby, and has been in the editing process with my lazy brain since september. please, please, please, let me know if the timeline or anything is confusing to you! i have a tendency to under explain things (as my profs will testify to), and i don’t want y’all to be confused. i hope whoever stumbles across this enjoys!

also, big shoutout to @winterscaptain, you are a gift to the world, tali. i am in love with the ajf universe, and that shit inspired me to polish this piece up for the tumblr verse to see. 

alright friends, here we go.

link to part 2: here

**** 

June 2005

You wouldn’t forget your first day in the BAU for as long as you lived. It was forever ingrained in your memory, the good, bad, and embarrassing moments all stored away. Stored away that is until Derek Morgan decided to dredge it back up as you passed your six month mark on the job. 

Derek, Prentiss, Reid and yourself were finishing up paperwork in the bullpen after an unusually slow friday. You were usually the first one done, earning a groan from the doctor across from your desk. They all envied your English degree and professional writing skills. 

“Hey bobo,” The nickname Derek had assigned to you was named after your alma mater, and extremely annoying. “Remember your first day, when I tricked you into doing Prentiss and my paperwork for almost two weeks?” You shook your head, not having to look at Morgan to be able to hear the smirk in his voice. “Do you think I could trick you again?”

7:47. Thirteen minutes earlier than you needed to be. Yet the room full of agents you were supposed to join was already filled. You liked these people already, they were punctual and functioned in the morning. 

You pushed one of the glass doors open with your ballet flat, juggling your box of office supplies while keeping your crossbody balanced on your shoulder. The sound of fingers pounding on keyboards, phones ringing on loop welcomed you into the BAU. Along with a shove to your back, causing you to lunge forward. You felt something cold run down your back, cursing yourself for wearing a white blouse.

“Are you alright?” You looked up to find a tall mop of brown hair and big brown eyes looking down at you. “Well, I’m a little damp.”

He nodded while looking at your box full of sticky notes and pens. “You must be y/n l/n. I’m Dr. Spencer Reid. We’ve been taking bets on what time you’d arrive. And you beat us all with your extreme punctuality.” You laughed. “Sorry to let you down. It’s nice to meet you, Dr. Reid.” You extended your hand for him to shake, but he just stared at your extended limb.

“Yeah, he doesn’t do that sort of thing.” The new voice came into view, shaking your hand that was meant for Reid. He was tall like Spencer, but was lean with a smile on his face. Confident. “I’m Derek Morgan. When JJ told us the new recruit graduated with an english degree, I expected someone with tweed elbow patches and big round glasses.” 

“You’re an english major? Statistically speaking, only three percent of the agents that have been recruited for the BAU didn’t have any background in law enforcement or field experience.” This wasn’t the first time you’d been questioned at the FBI for being a liberal arts degree profiler. Your english degree and your fresh age of twenty five left many people to dismiss you through your time in the academy. But you got used to it. 

“Sorry to disappoint your stereotypical profile of an FBI agent,” You started, shifting your weight between your feet, now uncomfortable and a little embarrassed in front of your new co-workers. 

“Oh I didn’t mean it as an offense. I-” “He’s a genius, but he lacks some social cues. You’re the first girl he’s been around that’s his age in the workplace.” Morgan added and Reid elbowed his ribs. You covered the smile on your face as the two of them started to quietly bicker. 

“Let the poor woman go and settle in at least before you harass her.” A brunette woman in a black pant suit came walking toward you. She had a stern face while looking at the two men, but when she turned to you, her face softened into a smile. “Special Agent Emily Prentiss. You do not understand how happy I am to have another woman out in this bullpen.”

You laughed as she led you to the empty desk across from Dr. Reid’s. “Welcome to your new home.”

“Thanks.” You placed your box down before taking the place in. “I’m supposed to meet with SSA Hotchner,”

“Agent l/n,” All heads turned to the man descending the stairs into the bullpen. He was taller than the other two, and that was saying a lot since they practically towered over you. He had a clean boys haircut, paired with a suit and tie. No question that this was the unit chief you were to report to. “I’m SSA Aaron Hotchner. Welcome to the BAU.” He shook your hand before looking at the others. “JJ’s ready to debrief in the conference room.”

And just like that, the three agents sprung into action, leading the way to the board room. “We can go over the particulars when we get back from Nebraska. You ready for your first case?”

His face didn’t change, no change of tone in his voice. He lived and breathed for the BAU. Until you noticed the wedding band on his left hand. It was always the first thing you looked for when you met someone new. It was shallow and patriarchal, you knew, but it was instinct. And it put you at ease knowing there was someone out there he was doing this for. Someone he didn’t have to hold this demeanor around. 

“Ready.”

“Funny. But if you have any other insults to give, direct them to the head of the english department at Bowdoin. Mention that you’re talking about y/n l/n, with the 4.0 GPA.”

Prentiss led a slow clap as Derek shook his head. 

“I think that’s what the kids are calling a ‘mic drop’.” Spencer added and you couldn’t help your laugh. “Alright kid, why don’t you get out of here before we inevitably find ourselves back.”

You turned off the lamp on your desk and grabbed your crossbody and backpack. “Have a good weekend guys. And Reid,” He looked up, and you laughed as he pushed his hair out of his face. “Please recite the old testament for these two if they mock me while I’m gone.” He gave you a mock salute as Prentiss flipped you off on your way to Hotch’s office. 

In the six months you’d been here, these three people you shared the bullpen with had quickly become the siblings you never had. Morgan acted as your annoying older brother, constantly picking on you and Reid. Not only were you the newbie, but you were now the youngest, only a year behind Spencer. Emily Prentiss on the other hand, was the protective older sister you always dreamed of. She was confident and held her own against the male dominated team, but knew when to be soft spoken and caring with victims and the team when needed.

And then there was Dr. Spencer Reid. The smartest person on the planet, in your book. Sure, he was a little socially awkward and didn’t know when to stop listing off all the stats he knew, but you understood. He was consistently the youngest and smartest person in every classroom he walked into. There weren’t many people that wanted to get to know him without bullying him or picking apart his eidetic memory. Despite the problematic first encounter you shared, the two of you stuck together considering your combined intellect and young age. He taught you the ins and outs of the BAU, and helped you get accustomed to D.C. Although, Spencer himself hadn’t really ventured out into the city in the four years he’s been here. So the two of you tried to see as many things as you could in the rare weekends that you weren’t working a case. You worked your way through a third of the smithsonian's, and saw the Declaration of Independence. You’d be lying if you said you didn’t get a little emotional while looking at it. Spencer had called you a nerd, and you didn’t mind one bit. 

You walked up the steps to Hotch’s office, case reports in your hand from this week. The blinds were open, you could see him working through the stack of files on his desk. Despite the exhaustion written all over his face, his sport coat was still on, tie still impeccably tight around his neck. Even when he was in private he kept up the put together facade.

You knocked on the door, and heard a quiet ‘come in’ as you twisted the door knob. “L/n,” “I have my case reports from this week.” “Just place them on my desk.”

“How much longer are you here for?” He let out a sigh while closing the file in his hand. 

“Another hour or two.” You opened your mouth to respond, but he beat you to the punch. “And before you offer to stay and help me, I don’t need any help.”

“You just don’t want to listen to me singing Coldplay under my breath.” He huffed out a semblance of a laugh. A month into your bout here, Morgan had accosted you on the jet on the way home from Milwaukee. None of you had slept in three days, and you were currently enthralled in your new mp3 player and Coldplay's newest album ‘X&Y’. After the third song, a paper cup was thrown at the back of your head, followed by a ‘I’m trying to sleep, bobo’ from Derek. It was a habit of yours that you had yet to kick. 

“That’s part of the reason.” “I knew it.” He opened another file, and you took that as a cue to wrap up the conversation. You rummaged through your purse, looking for the blue envelope you sealed this morning. 

“Um, I also wanted to drop this off. It’s for Jack, you mentioned he was being Christened this weekend.” You placed the card on top of the pile of paperwork, your cursive handwriting on top. “I was going to get him a stuffed animal or some type of toy, but he’s only three months old and wouldn’t know the difference. This check may be the penny that helps you guys afford Harvard.”

A real laugh escaped his lips now, as he picked up the card. “Thank you, y/n. You didn’t have to do this.” You smiled. “I know, but I wanted to. He’s a cute kid.” 

He looked at the framed picture of Jack on his desk, then back up to you. No one else had mentioned the Christening after Hotch first brought it up. He was quiet, and only liked to talk about his family if he initiated the conversation. You could tell you were the only person who had reached out like this, with a simple gift. 

Hotch had been the hardest person to get to know in your time here. Despite Morgan saying there are no secrets kept among the team, you knew these people had their demons. And Hotch certainly had enough both professionally and personally. You didn’t want to push the professional boundaries, but you always wanted to be present in the lives of people that you shared time with. To let them know you were thinking of them, and cared for them. It was probably your most damaging personality trait.

“I’ll let you finish your work so you can get home at a reasonable hour. Tell Haley I said hi.” He nodded. “I will y/n. Have a nice weekend.”

****

December 2005

You pride yourself in the fact that you haven’t shot your weapon in the year you’ve spent with the BAU. It meant that you were successful at connecting to these people’s emotions, despite the asterisk next to their name labeling them as a serial killer or sadist. Guns were there to protect you, and they were always the last result. But as you pulled up to a log cabin in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania, you had a feeling your record was going to be broken.

The team was working a case where six bodies, two adult males and four teenage males, were found mutilated, along with a cut from sternum to belly button. It was the first case you worked that had no female victims. A small victory, in your mind. But, it was also the first case you worked that the profile of the unsub fit a sixteen year old girl, who had most likely been assaulted as a young child. When children were involved, the team acted differently. They were failed by the people that were supposed to care for them, they were consistently hurt with no one to turn to. And as a result, they would spend the rest of their lives paying for it. 

You, Prentiss, and Hotch got out of the suburban, strapping the bullet proof vests onto your bodies. Thanks to Garcia, you had found the unsub’s location once she turned her cell phone back on. A cruiser pulled up behind you guys, two more cops falling out. 

“Prentiss, you take the two officers down with you to the exterior basement access. L/n and I will take the main floor.” Hotch ordered as he pulled his gun from his holster. 

You could feel the anxiety rising in your chest, but there was no time to calm it down. You barely had enough time to strap on your vest. 

“Ready?” Hotch looked at you before taking another step toward the cabin. You nodded, pulling your own gun from it’s holster. “Ready.”

You followed him up to the front porch, announcing yourselves before kicking the door in. You cleared the living room as Hotch cleared the dining room and bathroom, leaving you both to meet up in the kitchen. 

That was where you found her. You saw her first, hiding half of her face behind the rifle that she had pointed at you. She was trembling, dried tear streaks left on her cheeks. She was petrified. 

“Stephanie Moore?” Her grip on the gun tightened at the mention of her name as you heard Hotch’s footsteps get closer. “My name is Y/n L/n, I’m with the FBI. I don’t want to hurt you Stephanie, but I need you to put the gun down.”

Hotch joined you on your left, both of you directing your weapons toward the young girl. “I did what I had to do to survive. They took everything from me, every last shred of dignity I had. I wasn’t going to let them kill me.” You never thought it would be possible for your heart to break while listening to an unsub. But this tiny girl standing in front of you, with her whole life ahead of her, it just hit you too hard. 

“I know you did, Stephanie. You were so brave and so strong. Not many people could survive what you did.” She started to loosen her grip on the rifle, you were getting through to her. “I’m here to help you. I want to put an end to all of this.”

You glanced at Hotch and he gave the slightest nod, giving you the okay to take a step forward together. “I couldn’t let them get away with it.” Ever so slowly, the gun started to lower in her hands. 

“You’re doing great. Just a little lower and this will all be over.” Before she could completely lower her weapon, you heard the storm door to the basement slam shut. 

Stephanie jumped, raising her weapon back up in her hands.

“You said you were here to help me!” She exclaimed, the gun pointed at you as Hotch took another step forward. “I am Stephanie, but other members of my team are trying to help the boy you took.”

Fresh tears started to fall down her cheeks and you knew you were losing her. “Y/n,” 

He whispered to you and she moved the gun from your chest to Hotch’s. “Shutup!”

“Stephanie, hey, look at me,” She shook her head, continuing her stare at Hotch. “He’s in on it, he has to be!”

“He’s not! He’s my boss, trust me, Stephanie.” You heard the safety go off, and before her foot landed as she took her first step towards Hotch, you emptied two rounds into her chest. He rushed forward as she fell, kicking away her gun and checking her pulse. Nothing. 

You lowered your gun as your breathing increased, looking at the lifeless sixteen year old lying in front of you. A hand covered your mouth as you realized what you’d done. 

You killed her. 

You remembered what it felt like to be sixteen. Struggling to find your identity, wanting so desperately to be noticed by someone. For anyone to reach out and help you. 

But you took that away from her. You ended her life before it even began.

“Are you guys okay?” You heard Prentiss come up through the basement, but your eyes were closed as she entered the room. “We’re good. Y/n took the shot.”

Hotch stood up and dared a look at you, taking in your grief stricken state. “Did you find the boy?” 

“Yeah, he’s gonna be fine.”

Before Emily could greet you, you ran to the corner of the room, heaving up whatever was inside your almost empty stomach. Your throat burned as you threw up for a second time, vaguely registering two people calling your name.

“You’re okay, y/n,” Prentiss approached you, gently resting a hand on your back. You coughed a few more times before a towel was being rushed to your side. “It’s okay.”

The whirring of more sirens forced you to open your eyes and straighten up from your sick position. Prentiss had eyes filled with concern, not letting go of you until you gave her a slight nod. She handed you a water before she exited the house, letting two uniforms in. They went straight to Hotch, asking questions and looking over the body before their eyes landed on you. You felt exposed, like you were the one lying lifeless on the ground for all to see. You took a few deep breaths to get your breathing under control, and tore your gaze away from Stephanie. 

Hotch finished his conversation with the officers before walking over to you. “Hey,” He rested a hand on your shoulder, and you couldn’t help but flinch. “It was a clean shot, but protocol states they have to take your gun and badge as well as give a statement to IA.” You nodded, taking your badge from your pocket. “They’re gonna take you back to the station and do an interview. This should all be wrapped up in a few hours. We’ll meet you back there, alright?”

You glanced up at his big brown eyes, warm as they bore into yours instead of their usual slanted nature. “Okay.”

The two officers escorted you to their patrol car, taking your badge and gun before you got in. You felt naked without them, like you were a nobody wandering the streets looking for someone to help, or looking for someone to help you.

It was a good thirty minute ride to the station from the cabin, and when you got there a detective from IA was already waiting for you. They led you into an interrogation room where they already had Section Chief Strauss hooked up through video call. Great. 

The questions they asked were pretty straight forward, nothing that couldn’t be answered by a crime scene report from the technicians. But the government insisted on interviewing cops involved in shootings, just in case it wasn’t legal. As if anyone wanted to deal with the psychological repercussions of taking another’s life. 

It took them nearly an hour and a half to get through the interrogation. In part due to you almost throwing up a third time as Strauss asked you to repeat the moment you shot Stephanie. They gave you a few minutes to regroup, some ginger ale and crackers from the vending machine to help settle your stomach. They took your fingerprints last, letting Strauss finish up with the bureaucratic discussion.

“That’s all for now Agent L/n. We’ll debrief tomorrow morning when you’re back in Quantico.” “Yes ma’am. Thank you.”

They led you out of the interrogation room and back through the lobby leaving you at the conference room your team had been set up in the last three days.

The white boards were still littered with images of the victims, crime scenes, and the unsub. Piles of evidence were scattered along the table, and you tried to resist looking through them again. You knew if you went through the images of the mutilated boys again, you wouldn’t survive the emotional turmoil. But you needed to know that you made the right choice, the only choice to prevent more families from going through the same pain and suffering as the Corbins. 

You turned to the white board, glancing at the first victim. Connor Corbin was fifteen years old, on the varsity soccer team, and involved in musical theatre. He was cousins with the teenager that abused Stephanie. She targeted all the men in her abusers life, letting them know what he did to her. Wanting them to understand the pain she’d had to endure because of their ignorance.

You looked through the rest of the victims, the abusers two younger brothers, father and uncle were among those killed. The boys were only twelve years old. You brought a hand up to cover your mouth, remembering meeting their mother on the first day you were here. JJ was the one to speak to her, as the communications liaison, most people trusted her with being the most empathetic. That fact was up for debate, in your opinion. She was a wreck, and JJ needed help comforting her from Morgan. But you understood, boy had you understood. Her whole family was killed. 

“Y/n,” You jumped, startled by the new voices in the room. Hotch, Spencer, and JJ had arrived back at the station. “Did they clear you?”

You nodded as Spencer walked over to you. “Yeah, Strauss just wants to debrief again tomorrow morning.” “Of course she does.”

Section Chief Erin Strauss is a hardass and not the biggest fan of the BAU. “Did they give you your piece back?” Your hand immediately flew to your left hip, void of your gun and holster. “No, I completely forgot about it.” You went to move toward the door, but Spencer laid a hand on your forearm. “It’s okay, I’ll get it.” He gave your arm a comforting squeeze before leaving the conference room. 

You spared a glance at Hotch as you started cracking your knuckles. “JJ, why don’t you call the airstrip, tell them to get the jet ready.” “Yes sir.”

In an effort to keep your mind busy, you started to take down the pictures from the white board, erasing all Reid’s notes in his barely legible handwriting. The boy had three PhD’s, yet couldn’t figure out the concept of penmanship. 

“Are you alright?” “Fine.” You pulled an empty manila folder out, stuffing Connor’s pictures in. “You don’t have to clean this up for them.” “I know.”

He sighed. “Y/n, stop.” His voice was stern now and you dropped the files. “I asked if you were alright.”

“Why wouldn’t I be alright, Hotch?” You crossed your arms over your chest, letting a breath out. “We found her, we saved her from hurting anyone else, and we brought closure to Mrs. Corbin. Case closed, the BAU gets to go home.”

Your eyes started to water but you refused to bring your hands up to wipe them away. You wouldn’t let them fall. “We’ve all been where you are right now.”

“I’m confident that you’ve never felt what I’m feeling before.”

“Try me.” He didn’t flinch, his hands remained in his pockets, stare heavy on your own. 

“When JJ presented this case to us, that two teenage boys and their fathers had been murdered, it was a no brainer for all of us to take it. Two twelve year old boys dead, two more teenagers missing, how could we not take it? But then we got here, and we met with the victims' families, we learned the boys' backgrounds, the unsub’s profile.” You scoffed, not sure who you were angered with at the moment. “This girl was raped by a seventeen year old boy and his father for two years, and we’re still supposed to treat her like a monster, like Tim Vogel?” You shook your head. “I’m not condoning what she did, but, can you blame her? And then we went in, and she had a gun raised at us. I would’ve been able to talk her down, I know I could’ve saved her if she didn’t have the gun.”

“But she had a gun.” You nodded. “She had a gun and it was raised at you. And I didn’t even flinch to take the shot. All it took was two seconds for me to forget her pain, her trauma, and reduce her to a sick serial killer.”

Even though that’s what Stephanie ultimately was, you didn’t want to accept it. Because she was a person before she went through all that pain, she was someone’s daughter, who was involved in gymnastics and softball, and had stuffed animals scattered across her bedroom. God, were you ever going to forget what she looked like?

“Feeling guilty about taking someone’s life is a good thing. It means your human, that you care.” Hotch freed his hands from his pockets, taking the file you packed out of your grip. “You’re not like them, y/n.”

You dared a glance at him as you felt more tears spring to the surface. Those big brown eyes could tell a story all on their own, and right now, they were pleading for you to believe him. You would try. 

“Got the goods.” Spencer came back in, your gun and credentials in hand. “They really had the audacity to I.D. me, as if we hadn’t just worked a case with them the last seventy two hours.” 

He got you to laugh, which served you enough cover to wipe your eyes dry. And out of the corner of your eye, you thought you saw a rare smile cross Hotch’s face. 

But Aaron knew there was more to your guilt than just this little girl. He was the leader of this team, it was his job to know the people he was in charge of like the back of his hand in order to keep them safe. And in the year that you’d been here, he noticed how reserved you were. Too reserved and too broken for a twenty-six year old. How you took on the giver persona to hide the fact that you were terribly closed off to others and your emotions. You would be the first to offer help, to be a listening ear, or lend your shoulder to cry on. But you never accepted it from anyone. Not that you had to, until today. 

When Hotch started to notice you and Spencer growing closer at the three month mark, he was excited. Proud, even. He knew you were struggling with the gruesome cases (he knew you threw up after every crime scene, despite your best efforts with barf bags and travel size mouthwash) and hoped you could share your burdens with the young doctor. But it seemed like they only grew in time, like the smile on your face. Hotch just hoped you knew your limits.

“Gather whatever else you guys need for Quantico. Wheels up in thirty.” Reid nodded for both of you as Hotch left the conference room, presumably to find JJ. 

“Everything okay in here?” He asked as you continued to empty the white boards, this time at a faster pace. Of course he had noticed the red rim on your waterline and the red tip on your nose. Spencer could read you better than anyone else, regardless of being a profiler or not.

“Yeah, I’m okay. Just talked through the case.” His feet stayed nailed to the ground, yet his eyes continued to stick to the back of your head. You sighed and stopped moving, turning to face him. “Spencer, I can feel you boring holes into the back of my head.”

He had a sheepish smile and ran a hand through his hair. “Sorry. We have copies of all this back at the office, I already faxed it over to Garcia. Why don’t we spend the next twenty eight minutes searching for a good burger before the flight home.”

You smiled. “Okay. As long as I can get a vanilla shake, too.”

****

May 2006

Growing up, you always wanted an office job. A boring nine to five with your own cubicle, a script to follow when your phone rang and a customer needed help. You’d have a generic wall calendar pinned on the particle board, sticky notes littering your monitor screen, and maybe a few pictures of pets and future family. It was safe, predictable, and what you were constantly told all you would be capable of.

Now, as you’re sitting on the FBI owned jet with your six special agent coworkers, you can’t imagine living that life you once dreamt of. 

It was nearing two a.m., and you were two hours into the flight home from Los Angeles. Reid was passed out on the couch, Prentiss and JJ in the same state of mind in the cluster of four chairs, legs spread out. Morgan and Rossi were sitting across from one another, each listening to their own playlists. And by the way Rossi was tapping his fingers against the arm rest, you knew it was some genre of opera. 

This left you in the back of the jet, staring out the window as you passed over Nebraska. You always had the map up on your screen, wanting to know every state you passed over. No matter the case, you always looked forward to the plane ride. It calmed you, oddly enough. 

“Not tired?” Hotch took the seat across from you, handing you one of the two cups of tea. “Plane rides are too exciting for me to catch any sleep.”

You took a sip of the hot drink and your face scrunched out of instinct. You never liked tea, but you tried it again and again when people assured you that it would calm you down. It never worked. 

“You could just say no,” He added and you smiled. “I know. But my taste buds may change one of these times.”

He took a sip out of his own cup, no change of expression on his face. You couldn’t help the chuckle that left your lips and his eyes narrowed on you. 

“What?” 

“Well, you may enjoy the taste, but it seems like it’s calming chamomile effect has never worked on you, either.” “We’re not supposed to profile each other.” 

“Then don’t even think about rattling off excuses of why I’m not sleeping.”

He looked down at his cup, slowly nodding his head. “Well if you don’t want to talk about what’s really bothering you, because I know it’s not sleep, I can bore you with Jack’s sleep routine we have to stick to.” You smiled. “You know that I’m the only one on this team that would actually be interested in Jack’s sleeping routine. Hell, anything with that chubby little baby would interest me. Bring it on, Hotch.”

It was no secret that Jack Hotchner was your favorite person on the planet. Not only was he the chubbiest little nugget you’d ever seen, he was the result of two of the strongest people you knew. 

The first time you met Haley, she was six months pregnant with Jack, begging Hotch to leave the office early for a date night. You made the afternoon walk up to his office, dropping off some files for him to sign when you first saw her.

“Come on, Aaron. This baby is going to be here before we know it, and who knows the next time we’ll have any alone time will be.”

Before he could respond, you knocked on the open door. Both of their heads snapped over to you, and a red blush of embarrassment spread across your cheeks. “Sorry to interrupt, sir. Just dropping off some reports for you to sign off on.”

You smiled at the petite blonde woman while placing the files on the desk. “It’s okay l/n. This is my wife, Haley Hotchner. Haley, this is Agent y/n l/n, she started about a month ago.” She smiled back at you, extending a hand to shake. 

“It’s nice to meet you, y/n. I’ll leave the agent part out, it makes you sound like a robot.” She said and glared at her husband before placing her hand back on her growing belly. You laughed once you heard Hotch let out a breath, knowing he wasn’t offended with her joke. 

“It’s nice to meet you too.” The smile only grew on your face as you looked at her, admiring her own belly. “Congratulations on the baby. It’s always exciting to bring a baby into the world.”

“Thank you. If only my husband thought going out with me was half as exciting, he would’ve been gone a half an hour ago.” “Haley!” He was more than surprised that she would speak so cavalierly while at the office, especially around someone he had barely gotten a chance to know yet. But the two girls only shared a laugh.

“Hotch, why don’t you go. I can hold things down around here.” “Y/n, it’s not your responsibility to. And quite frankly-” You dropped a file to the desk, boldly interrupting your bosses statement. You were only acting like this because you knew his wife deserved half the attention he gave to this place. “It’s a friday night, and your beautiful, pregnant wife is asking you to go to dinner with her. JJ and I will be here if anything comes up, I’ll even redirect your calls to my desk.”

“I like you.” Haley said with a smile, gently squeezing your shoulder. “She means business.”

Hotch let out a sigh, reluctantly grabbing his briefcase and punching a few buttons on his phone to make sure his calls went to you. “You or JJ call me immediately if I’m needed.”

“Promise. Now go have fun.” He gave you the smallest smile as he grabbed Haley’s extended hand to him. “Thank you, y/n. I owe you one.” Haley said as they exited his office. But you weren’t looking for a favor in return. You did this to make them happy, and you always felt better when those that surrounded you were at their best.

But Haley did end up paying you back. She asked you to babysit the first night her and Hotch went out after the baby was born. Apparently, she was impressed with your background in social services that Rossi had drunkenly let slip at the office christmas party. And only you would get excited to babysit a poopy baby, for free. And you continued to do it as many times as they needed you to.

You earned a smile from the reserved unit chief, and raised a fist in the air. “I’ll have to add that to the team tally sheet. I’m now tied with Reid for the lead in making you crack a human expression.” “Doesn’t matter who’s in the lead, you’re all behind Jack.” He quipped back and you returned his smile.

You looked back out the window of the jet, the view of any terrain was quite literally clouded. You could see the moon reflecting on the puffy clouds, and you knew then and there you could be converted to a night person if you could look at this view every night.

“I wanted to check in with you, about Randall Garner.” You looked back to your boss, eyes glued to your own, an earnest gaze in them. “With what happened last time-”

“Last time it was a sixteen year old girl. This time it was a psychotic father who was torturing his child. There’s a broad spectrum.”

“So you don’t feel guilty about taking his life?” The way your stomach flipped at the mention of your actions merely hours ago should have worried you more than it did. 

“Of course I feel guilty.” You quipped back, and quickly looked around to make sure you didn’t disturb anyone else. Hotch didn’t even flinch. “I didn’t take this job to play God. I wanted to help people, I wanted to stop people from getting hurt. To be on the other side of the heartbreak.”

Before transferring to Quantico, you worked as a social worker in Brooklyn for three years, straight out of college. You saw first hand the horrors and trauma that came with being in the foster system, and you wanted to help children going through the same situation you had. 

This became your life, even after you escaped it. And one day, it became too much. You needed a fresh start, to make a change and help people from a different platform. And with your degree in English, and minor in psychology, the BAU seemed to be a perfect fit for a new career. 

“Why did you leave DCFS?” It irked you to no end how his voice stayed so calm when he was clearly agitated. Especially since the silky smooth tone had talked you off an emotional ledge one too many times.

“Why are you interrogating me? Strauss said it was a clean shot, that she was proud to have a man like that dead and accounted for.” A direct quote from the ever emotionless section chief. If only she had any field experience, she would understand what this job was like. “Besides, I’ve been here for a year and half. You should have my file memorized by now.”

“Half of your file is sealed. Strauss must have a soft spot for you.” You actually laughed at that. Strauss most certainly did not have a soft spot for you. She was however under orders from the Attorney General of New York to keep my file sealed, no matter my employer. 

“My sealed file has nothing to do with the actions I took tonight.” You uncrossed your legs now and turned your body to face him. This conversation wasn’t ending any time soon. “If I needed help grieving this process, I would ask for it, Hotch. I’m fine.”

He wanted to believe you. More than anything else, he wanted to believe that you had found a routine that helped you forget the daily horrors you saw. But he knew that you were the last to leave the office every night, he knew you drove home with the light on in the backseat of your car every night. Deep down, he knew you weren’t fine. 

“We don’t ever truly know the people we work with. Despite the fact that we say there are no secrets in this unit, we all have our own demons we hold onto. I know you’re not fine, y/n.” You let out a strained laugh as you started tapping your foot anxiously against the ground. 

“I do though.” For the first time tonight, Hotch had no idea what you were talking about. His furrowed brow only made your throat tighten. “I know every single one of these people’s secrets. They confide in me because they know about my past with DCFS. Everything I knew was confidential, and it ate me up inside not being able to tell anybody the horrors these children go through.” You ran a hand through your hair; the flood gates were open. You feared there would be no turning back now. “It started out as me just wanting to get to know them. I wanted to be liked, and I wanted to trust my coworkers. And then overnight, I became Father l/n, sworn to secrecy by the Parish of the FBI. I’ve become a suggestion box, papers filling me up to the top and no one is coming to empty me out. 

“But I can’t even be mad at them,” I said as my eyes started to water, remembering what Spencer said to me two months into our friendship. “Spencer told me I’m the only person that’s ever listened to his problems without suggesting that he see someone to talk to. He said I was the only person that’s ever laughed at his stuffy jokes without making fun of him. I can’t be mad at them for confiding in me in their time of need. But I’m just,” You tried to smile as a tear rolled down your cheek. “I’m just really overflowing.”

Aaron Hotchner was lucky enough to have never experienced a heartbreak in his life. He met Haley his junior year of high school, she was his first and only girlfriend, hurling him into a life of love and happiness, sparing him any pain from loving someone too much. But as he watched you break in front of him, feeling so overwhelmed by the responsibility to be everyone’s rock, to be everyone’s source of light, he experienced his first heartbreak. And he was sure he never wanted to feel it again.

“So confide in me.” You didn’t think his tone could become any softer. His baritone voice had already been strained to keep from waking the others, and he somehow became even softer. But you shook your head, quickly bringing your hands up to wipe the tears that fell down your face. “Why not?”

“Because you’re the boss. You have all of us to worry about when we’re in the field. You have Strauss breathing down your neck, waiting for one of us to screw up.” He rested his elbows on his knees, slightly leaning toward you. “Most importantly, you have Haley and Jack that need you to be their confidante. That beautiful family needs you to be there when you’re not here.”

“Y/n, if you can’t come talk to me when you’re drowning in your own thoughts, I’ve failed you as a boss.” He sighed at your continued silence. “I can’t force you to open up. But I can’t watch you give and give and give without earning a reprieve of your own.”

So the two of you sat there, in a deafening silence, as you counted the seconds passing by. You were both too stubborn to pull away first, because that would be admitting defeat, and this conversation would end then and there. You counted to one hundred and eighty seconds, three minutes, when you finally got tired of staring into the endless brown eyes of Aaron Hotchner. 

You thought carefully about what you were going to say, what you would reveal in the magic that covered the two a.m. air. And no matter how hard you tried to in those one hundred and eighty seconds, you could not keep your eyes from watering.

“I grew up in foster care.” You started, scanning his face for any judgements. You weren’t going to find any. “The last, and most permanent foster parents I had were horrible. It was basic shit that happened to every kid in foster care, nothing scandalous enough to get them to be turned in. But their birth son,” You swallowed, trying to resist the urge to pick your fingernails. “He moved back in with them when I was fifteen. He was a loser, and he started to take a share of the subsidy checks. I heard him in the living room one night with Charlotte, one of the younger girls that lived there. She was only twelve, and I found him pinning her to the couch, a knife to her throat. And I just snapped. I lunged at him, knocking him off of her. It’s all blurry now, except for when I stabbed him in the throat.” My hand scratched at the side of my neck, subconsciously finding the spot I stabbed him. “He died before the ambulance got there. Charlotte and I both gave statements, and it was ruled as self defense. But the statement still lives in my file, and with some convincing, I got Strauss and DCFS to keep it sealed.”

In all honesty, Hotch didn’t know what to expect when you decided to open your mouth. But he never would’ve guessed this. Not from the doe eyed kid that never forgot a birthday, that got everyone a donut and coffee on Monday mornings. Not from the kindest person he worked with. 

“You know that took a lot of courage to get out, so it would be nice if you could say something.” You started to panic, wondering if he saw you as a monster, as a killer.

“You were the oldest one there, weren’t you?” Your eyes widened, how did he know that? “You grew up quick and took on the role of the parent for those younger kids. You wanted them to be safe, stay innocent for as long as they could.”

You finally tore yourself away from his gaze, starting to become too strong. Baby steps. 

“None of us had a family. I tried my hardest to shelter them from those people and make a family out of the five of us. And it worked. Because all four of them still reach out and tell me how successful they are.”

“But they don’t feel like your family.” You had a sad smile and looked back up at him. 

“Do you ever stop profiling?” He mirrored the smile you gave him. “No, they don’t. But I was old enough to understand that they needed each other more than I needed them. Besides, I found a pretty weird family to take me in.”

You earned another laugh from Hotch as you made a check mark in the air, referencing the team tally. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, searching through the cash and cards he had in there. 

“What are you doing?” He pulled out a thin wallet picture and turned it over to you. It was of him, Haley, and Jack on his first birthday. “You’ve got more than one weird family to belong to.”

He extended the picture to you, but you shook your head, the anxiety forming a pit in your stomach. “Hotch, this is your family. I can’t,”

“You can. And this family wouldn’t be half as happy as they are in this picture if it weren’t for you and everyone on this team.” You smiled down at the picture, Jack had frosting from his birthday cake all over his face. You reached out and took it between your fingers. “You’re a giver, y/n. You wear your heart on your sleeve and exude more empathy than we know what to do with.” You let out a laugh as you pulled out your own wallet now, tucking the picture in one of the plastic sleeves. “It’s time you learned how to accept the love you give.”

It was deep, too deep to be coming from your boss on the private jet at two in the morning. But he was more than just your boss, and they were more than just your team. And this job, boy this job was so much better than sitting in a cubicle, answering questions from a recited list.

****

[hanniiesuckle17]

The Comment Section

A/n: as a technically plus size girl myself i really liked writing this! feel free to request again after I finish the rest of the ones I have now! (sry this is not thoroughly edited)

Word Count: 3.8k

Warnings: cussing, mentions of hate

Requested by: anonymous 

Tag List: @distrikt9​ @mini-meanhoe​ @poeticallyspaghetti​ @hanstagrams​ @yangomangos​ @hoes4hoseok​ @desertfordessert​

Summary: Being on the larger side had never stopped you from anything before. You were confident in your curves and loved how you looked. It was one of the reasons that Han Jisung fell head over heels in love with you. Who would have thought a few silly little pictures would turn your world upside down.

Genre: fluff, little angst, romance

✯

Meeting Jisung was a complete accident. A complete accident that changed my life forever. I was a lost foreign exchange student desperate to find her way back to her dorm in the hot summer streets of Seoul. By pure chance, I had bumped into him on the street. I had no idea who he was at the time and he seemed to find that fascinating. 

We ended up walking together until the sun set and the store signs lit up casting neon glows on our faces. Soon we both got lost wandering through the streets talking about everything and nothing in my broken korean and his adorable english. 

Jisung bought me dinner and then we finally found my dorms. He left me with the promise to take me out and get lost again. And that was the start of our relationship. About our fifth date, Jisung told me about his job and who he was. He was utterly shocked that I didn’t freak out about his celebrity status. He always said that what I told him after was when he began falling in love with me. 

“Whether you sing in front of thousands of people, pick up garbage on the side of the road, or teach pre-schoolers not to pick their noses, I would rather be with you than any other place or with any other person on the planet.” 

Now a year and a half later, we were dating and living together in an apartment near the company. Jisung was quite upset that he had to keep our relationship a secret. The company after many attempts at breaking us up gave in and let him continue our relationship despite his dating ban, but only if he kept quiet about it and nothing got leaked to the press. 

This meant we rarely got to go out unless both of us wore masks and hats and for five months out of the year, I was sitting at home waiting for Jisung to come back from tour trying to pretend like I didn’t have a boyfriend to begin with. But, it was all worth it. Jisung was worth it. 

“Yes, dad. I promise I’m eating well.” I said looking at my father through a computer screen. My ears picked up on Jisung moving behind me to open the fridge and I knew what was about to happen next. 

“Jisung!” My father called. Hearing his name he turned and leaned over me to look at my father. “Jisung, how are you?” My dad smiled and turned to focus on my boyfriend. 

Jisung laughed seeing me drop my head in my hands. He leaned against the counter, a bright smile on his face. “I’m fine, Mr. L/n.” 

“How many times have I told you? Just D/n is fine. Now, is she eating well? I know she has exams. You have to make sure my daughter is eating!” Jisung’s arm wrapped around my stomach, pulling me to his side. 

“Of course! We are going out to eat soon actually.” He said cheerfully, pushing the hair away from my face. 

I jumped at the opportunity Jisung secretly handed me. “Yes, Dad! So, we have to go! I love you, talk to you later, bye!” Jisung waved before I slammed my laptop closed, effectively hanging up on my father. “Can we really go out to eat?” I asked, wrapping my arms around his waist. He smiled taking my face in his hands, squishing my cheeks. 

“Of course. I’m starving.” Placing a kiss on my forehead he exited the kitchen. While he was doing whatever he was doing, I ran to our bedroom and changed out of the pajamas I had worn all day. 

Grabbing some shorts and one of Jisung’s shirts I started tying my shoes. How any of his clothes fit me at all was a mystery to me. Jisung was a twig compared to me. Granted he was a very muscular twig. But a twig none the less.

Jisung smiled seeing me in the baggy white fabric that covered my shorts entirely. He leaned against the doorway, dark hair falling in front of his doe eyes. He didn’t bother changing out of his gray sweatpants and tank top. “I never get tired of seeing you in my clothes.” 

“I never get tired of wearing them.” He smirked, watching me get up from the bed and walk over to him. I let my hands travel up his chest as he looked down at me. “Are we taking the car or the subway?” I whispered, leaning up and kissing his lips. A cheeky smile slip onto his face as his hands grabbed onto my ass. 

“I heard it’ll rain soon. Subway?” I nodded and kissed him again, fingers threading through his hair. “Ready to go, baby?” With another nod, we left our apartment, masks on and hats covering our faces. Instinctively, I pulled the white cap on Jisung’s head lower to cover his handsome features. He did the same with the black bucket hat (which was probably his) that I wore. 

Just as Jisung said, a light sprinkled down on us as we walked to the nearest subway station. Unfortunately, the train was crowded, leaving no seats for me and Jisung. We got a few weird looks, most likely because of the excessive face covering. 

We shared low whispers about where to eat and bickered about what stop to get off at. I turned out to right and dragged him off with train, just before the doors closed. Laughing, we ran through the rain to get to our favorite sushi place. 

The woman who owned the restaurant greeted us happily when we entered, ushering us to a secluded back table. Jisung didn’t even look at the menu before ordering enough food to fill every inch of the table. 

“How is the new album coming?” I said picking up a piece of fish. He nodded cheeks half full of food. I smiled seeing his little habit resurface itself.

“Good. I sent a song off to Chan this afternoon. He and I will work on composition tomorrow.” His long fingers maneuvered the chopsticks to place another roll onto my plate. I tried to put it back but he shook his head, adding another one as well. “How are your classes?” 

“Stressful, but manageable. You know the girl next to me in my Maths class is a STAY. She has Seungmin’s photocard in her phone case.” Jisung smiled eating another piece of sushi. “Her phone rang in class the other day. Guess what her ringtone was?” 

He hummed and looked up at me expectantly. “What?” He said covering his mouth, silver rings glinting in the low warm light. 

“Close.” Jisung’s eyes lit up as he started laughing. 

“I almost got in so much trouble when I released that song.” He said dipping a roll in soy sauce. “STAY almost figured out about us.” 

“Well, you did all but put my name in the song,” I said with a laugh. Somehow we had managed to eat all the food on the table. “Did you really feel that way when we met?” I asked him, my elbow resting on the table. 

A waitress came and cleared our table. Jisung stared at me, a soft look in his eyes. “Of course. You were the most gorgeous girl I had ever laid eyes on.”

“You are just saying that because you thought I had a great ass.”

“It is a great ass.” He said eyeing me up and down, a sly smirk on his face. “We should get going. It’s already raining cats and dogs.” Jisung paid for our meal and shoved his black hat back on my head with a smile, draping his arm over my shoulder as we walked out. He was correct. The rain was pelting down on the streets like bullets. “You ever been kissed in the rain?” He asked out of nowhere.

That mischievous smile glowed on Jisung’s face. “No, why?” 

Without another word, Jisung pulled me out into the rain, soaking us both. His brown hair turned dark and stuck to his forehead as he pulled down my mask. My eyes glanced around the nearly empty street, before staring back into Jisung’s bright eyes. His long fingers lifted up my chin before resting on my cheek. The cool rain dropped around us, but I felt warm in his arms. 

His lips dragged over mine, butterflies thundering in my stomach along with the rumble in the sky. My chest pressed against his, the wet fabric rubbing together. His teeth cheekily dragged over my bottom lip as I pulled away. 

“Get out of the street!” Someone yelled honking their horn. Jisung and I turned to see a car’s headlights shining through the rain. We laughed and moved back under the awning. “Crazy kids!” The man yelled as he drove passed us. 

I kissed Jisung again, tangling my fingers in his wet hair. “I love you,” Jisung whispered, pulling away. “All of you,” His hands ghosted over the curve of my hips. “Do you love all of me?” 

“More than anything, Jisung.” 

The cool rain sent a breeze under the cover. He pulled me closer to him kissing the top of my head. “Home?” He muttered looking around the wet street. 

“Home.” 

I pulled the dark fabric over his face, leaving nothing but his round lively eyes for me to see. His warm hand enveloped mine before we ran through the rain. Our feet splashed through puddles as each step brought us closer to the train that would carry us back to our little apartment.

✯

Bright light streamed through the bedroom window. An arm was wrapped tightly around my stomach. I smiled and shifted under the blanket so I could look at the handsome face of the man next to me. My eyes glanced at the clock before reaching over and stroking his hair. 

“Jisung?” 

He hummed, nestling into the pillow. I smiled feeling him reach for my hand and bring it to his lips. Drowsy kisses from his plump tired lips trailed over my skin. “You saying my name in the morning is so sexy.” My laugh filled the bedroom. His raspy voice never failed to send shivers down my spine.

“You think anything I say is sexy.” Jisung’s eyes slowly opened and his hands moved to rub his face, the muscles in his arms flexing ever so slightly. My fingers traced patterns over his bare chest, the skin radiating a welcoming warmth under my touch. 

“No way. Prove it.” He said with a goofy smile. 

Chuckling, I kissed his cheek. I thought about what to say. Leaning down, my breath fanned across his cheek. “I have to go shopping because we have no ramen left in the kitchen.” My words floated into his ear and I could see his cheeks redden at my tone. 

Jisung groaned, pulling me fully on top of him. “Yeah, you were right. Anything you say is sexy.” He laid still for a moment, his hands rubbing up and down my back. “Do you need money for groceries?” He hummed. Shaking my head, I sat up, legs falling on either side of his waist. “Are you sure?” 

“Yes, Ji. You don’t have to pay for everything, you know.” He laid back with a smile on his face, hands behind his head. Jisung stared up at me keeping that sleepy bright grin on his face. “You should get up. You’ll be late before you know it.” 

A sigh heaved from his chest as he watched me leave the bed. It was evident his eyes were trained on me as I sorted through our shared closet. “You’re right.” The rustling of sheets told me he was shuffling out of bed and most likely towards the bathroom to shower.

Soon I was walking Jisung to the cab he had called down in front of our building. The fabric of my leggings brushed together as I rushed forward pulling him back for one more kiss before he entered the taxi. “Don’t forget, we have a date with pizza and a drama tonight,” I whispered against his lips. 

His long fingers gripped my waist, a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. His warm touch slipped into the waistband leaving something paperlike between the tight fabric and my skin. “For the groceries.” Jisung pecked my lips before getting into the cab. “Love you!” He called, rolling down the window. 

Waving back, I watched the car pull away from the curb and drive my boyfriend to his company. Curious, I reached for the money he slipped me. Had I worn a hoodie and not a crop top, he wouldn’t have been able to do so easily. It was a habit he had of spoiling me and paying for things despite my protests. “Good grief, Ji,” I muttered to the near empty street. 

My feet carried me to a nearby supermarket. I walked the aisles tossing anything we needed into the cart I picked up at the entrance. My hands lingered on a bag of chips, debating whether I actually needed the study snack. Jisung never cared how much weight I put on or how much I lost. I was confident in how I looked, so I wanted chips. I would get chips. Smiling I tossed them in the basket before moving to the next aisle to pick up a few bottles of wine and soju. I never knew when Chan and Changbin would pop by for a ‘lyric session’ and need ‘inspiration’ 

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two girls whispering and looking my way. More than a year with Jisung had taught me to have an observant eye in public places whether he was with me or not. They stopped their talk when I turned to look at them. After placing the bottle in my cart I waved to them with a kind smile before going on my way. 

Jisung returned later than usual. But, then again. There was no usual for when he came home. He passed out on the couch while I ordered us a pizza. While I waited, I lazily scrolled through twitter until something caught my eye. 

“Rapper Han Jisung Spotted With Supposed Secret Girlfriend” 

My eyes skimmed the article searching for any proof. My heart sunk finding what I sought. Several pictures of Jisung and me from the day before were shown below. Our faces were seen as clear as day despite the rain. We should have been more careful. I sighed, head in my hands. Curious, I scrolled to see what his fans were saying.

“I can’t believe this”

“So he really was seeing someone?”

“She’s so fat! She doesn’t deserve him”

“My friend and I saw her at the supermarket. She had like eight bottles of soju in her cart. Alcoholism puts on wait you know.”

“She’s a drunk and fat. I can’t believe she’s dating our Han.” 

“She looks like a cow. Seriously I understand why he hid her from us.” 

“Guys, stop. If he is happy then leave him alone.”

“He looks disgusted in those photos”

“Does she not care about herself? She’s dating one of the greatest rappers in the industry and she looks like a heavy slob.”

I tossed my phone onto the kitchen counter, not wanting to look a the comments anymore. My shoulders felt heavier than usual. Shower. A hot shower always made me feel better. Abandoning my device, which was blowing up with notifications, on the counter I marched to the bathroom and turned on the water letting steam fill the room. 

The scalding water pelted against my bare skin as I stood under the showerhead. After my skin turned red, I stepped out of the shower, wiping steam away from the mirror. 

My eyes raked over the body I once thought beautiful. How could my mind change so quickly? The curves I used to love now seemed ghastly and unflattering. The rolls on my stomach seemed more prominent as I looked over my bare body. My fingers traced over the waved marks on my thighs and pelvis, wondering how I never noticed them before today. 

“Y/n, baby?” A knock sounded at the door but did not wait for an answer to open. Instinctively, my hands slammed it shut shocking the man on the other side. “Woah- Babe, what’s wrong? Are you okay? It’s nothing I haven’t seen many many many times before.” The smirk in his voice was evident, but I still felt exposed, despite the towel I moved to wrap around myself. 

“Just go away. I’ll be out in a sec. There is beer and soju in the fridge. Go get one; the pizza will be here soon.” 

I waited until I heard Jisung walk away before turning the knob and sneaking into our bedroom. My fingers grasped at the first baggy shirt I could find, but looking in the mirror it hugged in places that should not be hugged and made my body look lumpy and fat. Throwing on some leggings and one of Jisung’s fluffy jackets I decided this was enough coverage suitable to walk around in.

Jisung’s eyes widened when I entered the living room. “Wow. You planning an expedition to Antarctica?” 

“I’m just cold, Jisung.” He watched with wary eyes as I pull the jacket further around my body. The doorbell rang turning both our heads. “I’ll get it.” Jisung nodded and picked up the remote, turning on the TV. 

Opening the door I expected to see a pizza delivery man waiting for his tip, but instead, the hallway was empty. Before I closed the door, my gaze landed on something on the welcome mat. 

A bouquet of wilted, dried, dead flowers. A ribbon darker than black was wrapped around the fragile stems. With shaking hands, I picked up the flowers. Petals and leaves fell to the ground. A note was tucked between the graying stems. 

Fat Bitch.

Subconsciously, I pulled the jacket around my body, covering as much as possible. “Y/n? Everything okay? They didn’t forget my garlic knots, right? They forgot last time.” Jisung’s voice called out. My eyes still stared down at the bouquet in my hands. “Baby?”

I felt cold. It felt like I wasn’t in my own body; like my soul had left this world leaving me a shell standing with no will of its own. 

“What the fuck is this?”

Shaking myself out of the trance, I looked to see Jisung standing beside me anger flooding every inch of him. Not waiting for an explanation he took the bouquet from my hands, more petals falling to the floor. The note seemed to make him even angrier. 

“Fuck,”

I closed the door and watched him throw the flowers onto the counter, sending dead leaves flying across the kitchen floor. He turned to me, fury in his eyes. He seemed to be waiting for me to say something. “We both knew this was going to happen sooner or later.” His jaw dropped, not believing my words. 

“You aren’t furious? You aren’t pissed off? Why are you not bothered by this?” 

“Jisung, I can’t be bothered by something I already know is true!” 

He stared at the flowers littering the counter. “You can’t possibly think that...can you?” Jisung sighed watching me shrug and fiddle with the sleeves of his jacket. “Y/n...this is not you. What happened to the girl who surprised me in my studio wearing nothing but a trench coat and lingerie just because I said I missed your smile?” My gaze fell to the floor, fixated on one of the leaves. “Where’s the girl who went skinny dipping with me on the night of our anniversary in Jeju?” 

“I don’t know, Jisung!” He was shocked hearing me yell. “They are right! Okay! I am a fat cow with no reason to be dating you. I’m not sexy and skinny and I don’t have the body of a model. You know who does? The girl you should be dating! Maybe I just don’t like myself anymore!” 

“The Y/n I know and love didn’t care how much she weighed.” 

“Well...maybe I’m not your Y/n anymore.”

“That I don’t believe.” Jisung took my face in his hands, staring into my eyes. “I know about the photos. I know about the comments. They are all false, okay? None of them are true and you know it.” His thumbs brushed over my cheeks, voice full of desperation and sadness. 

“Jisung, I’m not beautiful. I don’t feel beautiful anymore. I don’t see how you can love someone who can’t even see themselves as pretty.” 

He sighed, leaning down and capturing my lips in a breathtaking kiss. I could feel all his emotions, everything he wanted to say as his lips moved against mine. Jisung pulled away, his eyes looking lovingly into my own. “I don’t love you because you are beautiful,” He whispered, pushing a strand of wet hair behind my ear. “You are beautiful because I love you. All of you.”

“Even the stretch marks?” 

“The stretch marks. The curves. All of you.” 

Sighing, I rested my head against his chest. “Why did I even think that?” Jisung let out a shaky breath stroking my still damp hair. “Shit, I was so stupid to believe those comments for even a second.” 

“I can’t blame you. I’ve done the same.” 

Pulling away, my hands cupped his cheeks before moving to wrap around his neck. “I love you,”

“I love you more.” Jisung kissed my forehead, dark hair falling in front of his eyes. A thought came to mind that made me giggle. “What?” He asked with a smile, leading me back over to the couch. 

“How did you even remember that studio thing? That was like...in the first month we were dating!” 

He laughed, pulling me into his chest and falling back onto the sofa. “Are you kidding? That may have been the single greatest day of my entire life.”

“You are just a pervert.” Again the doorbell rang, causing both of our heads to peek over the top of the couch cushions. “Can you get it?” Jisung nodded and got out from under me. A few moments later he came back with two pizzas and his beloved garlic knots. “They didn’t forget?” 

“Nope!” He said happily flipping open the boxes. “Here.” He pulled one away and fed it to me, the fluffy breading melting in my mouth. 

“You know what I think?” 

“What?” He asked already somehow halfway through the box of garlic knots.

“I think I can eat this entire pizza faster than you.” 

He closed the garlic knot box, a wry grin on his face. “Oh, you are so on, babe.” He planted his feet firmly on the floor and turned to his pizza box. “Ready? Three....two....-” Before he finished counting down I grabbed a slice and stuffed it in my mouth. “Y/n that’s cheating!” Between bites, I laughed as I watched him try and catch up from my early start. 

“Come on, twig boy! Catch up.” He laughed and shoved another slice into his mouth filling his cheeks.

✯

Requests are Temporarily Closed! Sorrrrrryyyy

Masterlist

[razberryyum]

So you’re done with The Untamed and want more, what now?

Reposting this since I’ve updated it with new info/links. Again, I entered the fandom via The Untamed so I’m by no means a MDZS expert, just tried my best gathering all the resources I can which I hope will help some new Untamed/MDZS fan out there. If you spot any errors, don’t yell at me, just let me know and I’ll correct it as best I can, especially for any future reposts.

READ THE NOVEL

Read the original web novel the show was based on: The Untamed (aka “CQL” or “Chen Qing Ling”) was adapted from the BL web novel, Mo Dao Zu Shi (aka ”MDZS” or Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation) by author Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (”MXTX”). Yes the novel came first, CQL is only an adaptation. In the novel, you get the uncensored romance of Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, where they are canonically married and living happily ever after. The novel goes full into R18 territory so please tread carefully.

All four volumes of the novel can be purchased from the original publishing site, JJWXC. The site’s in chinese but here’s a tutorial on how to navigate it and purchase the books:  JJWXC Tutorial Link.

There’s also the option of purchasing the physical copies from Yesasia which might be easier but it’s also more expensive since they’re the middle man: Yesasia MDZS Link

It would be wonderful if you can support MXTX-laoshi by actually buying the books, especially since the cover art is so beautiful and the extra chapter volumes come with a lot of awesome extra goodies, but of course there’s also the option of reading the fan translations graciously provided by the Exiled Rebels Scanlations team at their site:  

They translated all the novels including the bonus chapters in their own free time and are providing the fanslations for free so please give them some love for all their hard work.  

WATCH THE ANIME (aka “Donghua” in Chinese)

Watch the anime based on the novel: The donghua was released before The Untamed. Two seasons are already available (23 eps total) with a third season in production and a special chibi version of the donghua in production as well. The Eng-subbed donghua can be seen using the WeTV app or on Youtube:  YT MDZS Donghua Playlist

Grant it, the donghua is even more censored than The Untamed, but the donghua team still managed to sneak in some easter eggs (f.e. WangXian naked bathing scene in the cold springs from the novel...in The Untamed they were fully clothed) and more importantly, the animation is just gorgeous so it’s absolutely worth a watch despite the censorship. 

READ THE MANGA (aka “Manhua” in Chinese)

Read the manhua which is ongoing and is being officially translated by WeComics, available on their app for free. Search under the name “Mo Dao Zu Shi”.

Unfortunately, the official translations are more than 20 chaps behind the raws and there have been complaints about the quality of the translations in the past, but I believe they’re starting to improve so since they’re official, it’s always better to support the official source.

The raw untranslated manhua can be found on the Kuaikanmanhua app. Other than being in Chinese, some of the chapters (f.e. the most recent ones) are behind a paywall, but here’s a tutorial on how to purchase the chapters, provided by @chiharuzushi on Twitter:  Kuaikanmanhua Tutorial

The chapters are quite cheap...I purchase 1000 KK coins for 10 rmb ($0.14) and each chapter is only 68 KK coins so even if we end up with 500 chapters it’ll still be...er...quite cheap overall (don’t make me do the actual math). The most painful part is figuring out how to set up the Kuaikanmanhua account, but otherwise, if you can read Chinese or know enough of the story by now that you don’t really need to read the words, the manhua is definitely worth reading because it’s less censored than The Untamed and the donghua. 

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO DRAMA

Listen to the audio drama, which is at this point the most faithful and LEAST censored adaptation of the novel we will probably ever get! Wei Ying’s voice actor in The Untamed is the voice actor for his audio drama counterpart. (Yes, almost everyone in The Untamed is dubbed by a voice actor, EXCEPT for Nie Huaisang. Ji Li, the actor for NHS, was the only one who used his own voice. Lan Zhan in The Untamed shares the same voice actor as his character in the donghua). 

Each episode art of the audio drama is AMAZING. Google Translate works well on the site, you’d want to see the listeners’ comments cuz they’re just adorable and hilarious.

Official links on Maoer FM:

Season 1: Maoer FM S1 Link

Season 2: Maoer FM S2 Link

Season 3: Maoer FM S3 Link

The audio drama was supervised by MXTX-laoshi, the author of the novel, so a lot of love and care went into the production, and it shows. The audio drama is behind a paywall but I remember it’s relatively inexpensive. Here’s the tutorial on how to purchase the audio drama from the Maoer FM site:  Maoer FM Tutorial Link

Ngl, it was tough at first navigating all that, Google translate helped, but once I figured it out, it was all so worth it because in addition to the MDZS, the site houses a lot of other wonderful audio dramas. There are also MDZS fan songs on the site that are near professional quality and oh so good.

Suibian Subs have kindly translated the episodes and their translations are available here:  Suibian Subs MDZS Audio Drama

Show them some love too for translating the episodes, but please if you can, purchase the episodes so you can support the audio drama team which have done an amazing job.

There’s even a Japanese audio drama which the Chinese AD team helped spearhead, available on the MIMI FM app. Here’s a tutorial on how to purchase the eps (half of the first season is out): MIMI FM Tutorial

It’s in Japanese but just follow the pictures. I’m hoping that the Japanese audio drama will end up being the MOST uncensored version of MDZS since Japanese BL dramas are not afraid (and allowed) to go all the way to R18. XD

MORE THE UNTAMED CONTENT

Lastly, if you’re just thirsting for more Untamed content, there are two spin-off movies you can watch. The first one, The Living Dead, is kind of centered on Wen Ning and Sizhui post-CQL. 

The second one, Fatal Journey, is focused on the Nie brothers, Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang, with a cameo by Jin Guangyao. It takes place prior to Wei Ying’s return from the dead.

Of the two movies, I definitely recommend Fatal Journey more. Both movies are available on the iQiyi app, which offers a one month free trial for first members. Each month afterwards for VIP is $6.99.

You can also go on the WeTV app for even more Untamed extras: WeTV put out a special edition cut of the show which tightened up the story AND features the original ending that was intended before censorship forced the production team to come up with the more ambiguous one we saw in its original run. It was a simple matter of rearranging certain scenes and getting rid of the separation part, but imho it really made all the difference to the ending.

There’s a ton of behind-the-scene cuteness that you can watch and also concerts with the cast in Thailand and Nanjing. VIP subscription to the WeTV app is $5.99/month and the Nanjing concert is for rent for 3 months at about the same price.  

The show also put out two official soundtracks, one for the vocals and one for the score. Both are available on Amazon and iTunes. For Amazon though, you can search under “The Untamed” but they did this weird thing where the vocals one is listed as “The Untamed (Chinoiserie Music Album)” (wtf) while the score is just listed as “The Untamed (Original Soundtrack)”.

Finally, most of the male members of the cast took part in a fan meet and greet at the start of the show, before it became hugely popular. The entire meet and greet is available on youtube subbed: The Untamed Fan Meeting

That’s it for The Untamed and MDZS. If you end up liking the novel enough to want to read more by the same author, MXTX-laoshi has also written two other BL novels, The Scum Villain Self-Saving System (aka “SVSSS” or “Scum Villain”) and Heaven’s Official Blessing (aka “TGCF” after its Chinese title). Both have been fully translated by fans (but always try to buy the original if you have the means, as a way to support the author!): 

SVSSS Translation: BC Novels Link

TGCF Translation chaps 1 - 24:  Sakhyulations Link

TGCF Translation chaps 25 - End: Suika & Rynn Link

As with reading any BL novel (aka “danmei novel” for Chinese BL books), please heed the warnings and if it’s not your cup of tea, just exit out of the page and move on with your life. No big deal, right? 

Anyway, hope all this info dump helps someone! If you’re brand spanking new to this fandom, welcome, and I’m so jealous of you! Would love to relive stepping into the world of MDZS/MXTX/danmei novels all over again since I feel like I’m already running out of stuff to read and I’m beginning to panic a little. 

Happy watching/reading/listening!  

[dustedmagazine]

Listed: His Name Is Alive

While Warren Defever’s name is perhaps less recognizable than that of his band His Name Is Alive, he’s also been connected with a seemingly endless array of other projects: Princess Dragon-Mom, Elvis Hitler, ESP Beetles, Control Panel, and far more. This doesn’t get into his recording and production credits for the likes of Michael Hurley, Iggy and the Stooges, and Mdou Moctar. Forever associated with Michigan’s weirdo-underground music scene, Defever has recently been issuing a series of long-buried recordings as His Name Is Alive. In February, the Disciples label released Hope Is a Candle, the third and final volume in the "Home Recordings" trilogy exploring Defever's teenage tape experimentation as well as A Silver Thread (Home Recordings 1979 - 1990), a four-volume collection of many of Defever’s solo home recordings prior to His Name Is Alive releasing their debut album Livonia on 4AD in 1990. In his review of A Silver Thread, Tim Clarke writes “For a collection of home recordings, what’s most striking about this music is how fully realized and carefully executed it sounds, comparable at times to contemporary artists such as Grouper, Benoît Pioulard and Tim Hecker. This is not the 1980s that I remember.”

Defever gives us his “What Else Is New” list, a set of personal snapshots, memories of a life spent in music, warning the reader that “the descriptions don’t always have an obvious correlation to the video, but welcome to my nightmare brain.”

In The Line of Fire

I started performing when I was five. My grandfather was a self-taught musician from Saskatchewan in Western Canada and he showed me and my brothers how to play banjo, guitar and fiddle. One of my earliest memories is having a full size 127 lb. accordion placed onto my lap and my grandmother voicing her disappointment when I refused to play. I did learn slide guitar from her later though. I have many, often terrible, memories of performing at square dances with his band and we would play old timey country music, folk songs, polkas and waltzes. There were also gigs at the trailer park, old folks homes and a convent. Although my grandfather believed that popular music died with Hank Williams in 1953, he still found room in his heart for Lawrence Welk and Slim Whitman.

Meet Me By The Water

By age ten I had a tape recorder and was using it to capture the sounds of nearby lakes, thunderstorms, and my older brothers LP collection played at the wrong speeds. I recently found the cassette, Echo Lake (1983) which features waves crashing onto the beach on the Canadian side of Lake St. Clair but it was recorded right after I got an echo pedal so it’s got a heavy dose of dreamy delay. Tape loops of the next door neighbor raking leaves and shoveling the driveway would be repurposed a few years later as rhythm tracks on the first His Name Is Alive LP, Livonia (4AD, 1990). Detroit in the late 70s and early 80s had totally insane radio and one of the highlights was Met-Ezzthetics, a late night show on WDET hosted by Faruq Z. Bey who also played saxophone in Griot Galaxy. Shortly before his death he played with His Name is Alive and we had a chance to formalize our student-teacher relationship.

Search For Higher Energies

In high school I was studying Bach Chorale harmonization and counterpoint during the day but recording and touring with the band Elvis Hitler at night. The other guys in band were older but at 16 I was a familiar sight at shitty Detroit punk clubs and Hamtramck dive bars, the nerdy teenager reading a book or doing homework sitting at the bar waiting ’til midnight or 1am for our slot to play our hellbilly hits, “It’s A Long Way From Berlin To Memphis,” and “Hot Rod To Hell.” I was still trying to make sense of the post 1953 music scene and when I met the guy with a giant afro and shiny super hero outfit complete with shiny cape I had no idea he was Rob Tyner of the MC5. We released three records before I was twenty one and played shows and toured with Devo, the Dwarves, the Dead Milkmen, Reverend Horton Heat, the Beat Farmers, Helios Creed, Babes In Toyland, the Cro-Mags, Corrosion of Conformity, the Frogs, the Gories, Pussy Galore, the Unsane and way more I can’t remember I was just a kid. It was some kind of education.

You Don’t Have To Go Home But You Can’t Stay Here

When I signed with 4AD I thought I was a composer and they let me write my own bio, so I called His Name Is Alive the work of a “fucked up, irresponsible teenage composer.” I had only been writing music for three years. When I heard “Tom Violence” by Sonic Youth I thought for the first time in my life, “I think I could do that.” In 1988 I made a mixtape with Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car, Leadbelly and some of Big Star’s third album and I tried to arrange it like it was an album, then I made my own album in that same shape, it was called I Had Sex With God and I sent it to 4AD. Our first album contained three of the first five pieces of music I had ever written. Within a few years I was playing festivals for contemporary classical composers and new age artists who were thirty or forty years older than me. His Name Is Alive played the Musicas Visuales Festival in Mexico with Harold Budd, Paul Horn and Jorge Reyes. The mayor of the city presented me with a guitar but then dramatically walked out of the theater during our performance realizing he had made a terrible mistake. I remember the surreal moment when from across the room Harold Budd walked in and greeted me as “Mr. Defever.” He had a cold and was sniffling during his set, the audience thought he was crying. I recorded his show and when I got back home to Livonia I added my own guitar to some of his songs and then edited the tapes, looping my favorite parts and editing out the parts I didn’t like, also adding additional layers of reverb and echo. More recently I did a concert in a five hundred year old temple in Japan where the unamplified meditation music never rose above a whisper and the monk had to turn off the furnace because the heat molecules were too loud. The show was recorded and released under the name Mountain Ocean Sun and features Ian Masters and Hitoko Sakai.

Energy Dealer

Both my parents were born in Canada, my mother in Saskatchewan, my father in Ontario. I have dual citizenship as my father was American and my mother had Canadian citizenship. I spent summers, holidays and weekends in a tiny cottage on Lake St. Clair that did not have a telephone and had curtains instead of doors separating the two rooms. Myrt Fortin who lived next door would receive phone calls for my mom, walk over to our place and yell into the window, “Hey wake up your ma, your dad’s on the phone.” My mom took a lot of naps, so she was always asleep when something important was happening. I remember always getting cut on broken glass while swimming in the lake or getting stabbed by one of the neighbors and having to go wake up my mom to take me to the hospital.

Lord I Don’t Believe You Exist

When I was ten my parents sat me down and told me it was time that I got a summer job. There were only two businesses in town, a gas station and a hardware store so I walked up to the hardware store and asked the owner for a job and immediately fell to the ground crying. Completely fell apart. He asked me why I wanted to work in hardware. I didn’t know what to say, I was only ten but I knew not to tell the owner that his store was stupid and I didn’t think he could handle the truth. It turned out he also owned the gas station so that didn’t really work out. Later that summer, I began working for the Pickseed Corporation as corn de-tasseling season was just beginning. All the moms would drop off their kids in the church parking lot in Tecumseh, just outside of Windsor, around 4:30am where an unmarked windowless cargo van was waiting that had cinderblocks and 2'x4' boards instead of benches so they could squeeze in the maximum amount of children. There were three job requirements to work in a cornfield, the child (it was only children, no adults) needed to show up with a baseball hat, a thermos with water and a large black plastic garbage bag. I think this was before sunglasses were invented. Upon arriving at the cornfield, we were separated into pickers and checkers, younger kids each taking a row of corn (a row could extend a mile or more) and a slightly older kid would organize and manage several of the younger kids. In the morning we were instructed to poke two arm holes and a head hole into our garbage bags and put it on like a raincoat because the corn was covered in dew and kids wearing wet clothes would walk slower than dry kids. So almost every day there was a point, usually around 11am when the dew would dry and we would be roasted alive from the summer sun coming down on our ridiculous shiny black plastic outfits. We worked from sun up until sun down. I received three dollars and thirty five cents an hour. For all you city folks, corn is planted in alternating rows of types of corn so that when the top part of the plant is removed, or “de-tasseled,” it can seed or cross-pollinate easily. It’s a terrible job with a high turnover rate and every day I would hear the sound of kids in nearby rows that had given up hope, sat down in the middle of the field and crying for hours. The following year, at age 11, I was promoted from picker to checker, and was put in charge of a group of about ten sixteen year old’s.

Sleep It Off

Mostly I like to record – His Name is Alive has over a hundred releases and I’ve done another fifty records under various names, Control Panel, Warren Michael Defever, ESP BEETLES, ESP SUMMER, Forest People, Infinity People, Jeepers Creepers, Layla al-Akhyaliyya, Mirror Dream, Princess Dragon-Mom, the Dirt Eaters, the Fishcats, the Whales, plus way more I can’t remember probably because the names were so dumb. I’ve recorded about four hundred records for other bands at my house or other studios. I’ve worked on records with Danny Kroha, Ida, Fred Thomas, Elizabeth Mitchell, Wild Belle, Michael Hurley, and when I was a teenager I helped record the first Gories album which was especially unique as I was the junior assistant engineer who helped move their equipment into the dirt floor garage next to the studio where it was decided the acoustics would be way worse. Also, I helped collage about a hundred Destroy All Monsters tapes from the 70s for a couple of their releases which led to remastering a bunch of tapes from the John Sinclair White Panther Party archives. I’ve done remixes for Thurston Moore and Yoko Ono and when Iggy and The Stooges started touring again I got a phone call from Ron Asheton seeing if I would help them record demos for their reunion album with Mike Watt on bass. They wrote the songs together while they were recording in Niagara’s basement sort of simultaneously. Iggy didn’t have a notebook with all his lyric ideas, instead he just sang about whatever happened that day – one song was about the airline losing his luggage, one about ATM machines and another was about reading in a newspaper that Ray Davies of the Kinks had been shot in New Orleans. In the end they weren’t terribly excited by my suggested song titles including “No Shirt” (you know because it’s like “No Fun” plus you know Iggy never wears a shirt) and they didn’t seem to love the mixes that I did that sounded kind of like those crappy Raw Power bootlegs.

Cost Of Living

Two summers ago I recorded an incredible concert by Mdou Moctar live at Third Man Records in Detroit. They’re wild hypnotic Hendrix style jammers who live in the desert. The band didn’t speak much english but I think I was able to communicate to them how excited I was about their amazing fingerpicking and hot guitar solos after the show by screaming and replaying the best solos over and over again and then screaming the word fuzz and pointing at their fingers. It’s insane and having seen them a few times since then with a different drummer and the addition of a bass player, I’m convinced it’s their best album. It’s wild but it’s still not Tchin-tabaraden wedding wild.

Licked By Lions

Jonathan Richman walks into Ethan and Gretchen's studio and asks if I can remove all the rugs, take the acoustic treatments off the walls and strike the baffles which normally separate the instruments, drums and amps, so the room will have the most echo possible, he has also invited about ten friends including Johnny Bee Badanjek the drummer from Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels and Mary Cobra from the Detroit Cobras to dance, sing and play percussion in the studio while he records. He has two vocal microphones set up at either end of the room and has brought his own microphones for the drums along with his own desired placement for them. He notices a tamboura near the control room and asks if I know how to play it or if I know how to tune it. Within seconds he’s tuned it and proceeds to sing Indian classical music accompanying himself on tamboura drone for about thirty five minutes. It’s beautiful and very surprising. He asks me if I recorded it, I lie and say no. Later he asks me not to play it for anyone. We record for hours. Some songs are quite long – ten and fifteen minutes, some are medleys of oldies or soft rock hits from the seventies segueing into new songs of his. It’s a confusing session as it’s not clear when songs are starting and ending and he often plays guitar and sings nowhere near a microphone. The distance between him and the microphone seems to have some meaning, there’s some formula to when he chooses to walk away in the middle of a verse but I am unable to determine the secret code. At the end of the session three or four songs are deemed usable, edited and mixed, although, sadly, an attempt at a completely insane and unexpected fuzz guitar solo is left unreleased. (The Harold Budd piece is at the opposite end of this spectrum.)

Calling All Believers

Shortly after Tecuciztecatl was released, I received an email from Dr. James Beacham at CERN inviting us to perform at a series of concerts that would combine experimental music with experimental science at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland. He didn’t contact our booking agent, which would be how we generally receive offers for gigs, instead he sent an email to me, which would be how we generally receive crazy messages from our completely insane fans (murderous, delusional, poetic, threatening messages usually). I assumed the invitation was fake or a prank and replied that we would prefer to wait until they had successfully opened a pathway to interspatial dimensions and we’d play on the other side or that if that was unlikely to happen at a convenient time then perhaps we could set up our equipment right on the edge of a mini-black hole and perform as the Earth is being destroyed so we could release the concert film “Live At The End Of The World.” After a few messages back and forth, it was clear that he was legit and I apologized for being such a jerk. Soon I discovered poetry within the language of particle physics as well as a certain beauty in the idea that these scientists have devoted their lives to dreaming, searching and discovering basic principles that connect all things in existence. The song “Calling All Believers” refers to this devotion. “Energy Acceleration” compares the scientists to monastic life in medieval times and mystics trying to find and define the line between this world and the next and at the same time invoking the incredible amounts of energy needed to create the collisions experiments. The Patterns of Light LP was released in 2016 on London London Records and is about interpreting visions of light, trying to find universal truth with whatever tools available, it’s about the search for how everything works, why it works and how it got that way but also about being inspired on a basic level by the way a thing looks and how all your senses take in a thing. A thousand years ago Hildegard Von Bingen was writing about this same thing in letters, songs, medical texts, and had even developed her own language to use in her mystical writings, similar to Magma drummer Christian Vander using his own language for their concept albums or French black metalists Brenoritvrezorkre and Moëvöt.

The Light Inside You

We get a lot of letters from fans, mostly weirdos though. I think it started when we released Song of Schizophrenia, that sort of connected us to a certain demographic I suspect. Here’s a recent typical message we received. “Growing up in Panama City, Mouth By Mouth and Livonia were like passages to other realms. I drank a ton of cough syrup at the time but those albums helped make life more livable. I was about to go to art school for sculpture and graphic design and the textures I heard on those records had actual shapes to them. Most music I knew at that time was flat or linear. I got them on cassette via mail-order from an ad placed in a bmx magazine. Mouth By Mouth arrived just before going to work at the amusement park and I was able to listen to it twice on the way thanks to the never-ending beach traffic. As luck would have it, I worked on “The Abominable Snowman” ride, basically a tilt-a-whirl inside a dome with lots of fog machine action, blue lights, mirrors, and lots of air conditioning. It took about 10 listens that day before it wasn’t as weird as when I first put it on. Maybe it was my bubblegum flavor/robitussin combo slushie on top of no-doz that pulled it all together, but it was probably a weird ride for a lot of vacationing beach tourists and townies when all they really wanted to hear was “Naughty by Nature” by O.P.P. I had no business running those rides at the age of 17 but I really loved how disorienting that ride could be with all the mirrors, the fog, the cold and for the final 90 seconds the ride would go in reverse. I had a buddy named Kevin that did acid at work and would repeatedly run the mini-train off the tracks and all the riders had to walk back through the woods for about a half mile that summer.”

[bananban-feature]

Stan Talent, Stan Pentagon

So many reasons to stan Pentagon:

1. Self-Produced

They just have a ton of talented songwriters in here! Cube is popular for self-produced idols after all, like BtoB, another super talented group.

Hui is a composer-producer, not really a secret because he’s well-known as a genius as he also composed hit songs for other popular groups (such as Energetic by Wanna One)

Kino and Wooseok wrote a lot of songs in their albums too, including some of my favorites Spring Snow (Kino) and Nostalgia (Wooseok). Kino also wrote their special single Eternal Flame. Wooseok had a big contribution in writing my absolute favorite, Daisy (but mostly written by Hui), and honestly his songwriting talent seems to be underrated.

Jinho has also composed a few and helped write a lot. Yuto also composed songs (aside from his rap lines), one song being Camella that a lot of “unis” love. *Universe/Unis = fandom name

Both Kino and Yuto have their own soundclouds for the songs they write/produce.

Yeo One composed his own solo songs (yes, even as rookies, they were already composing), and they’re actually so good. 

Also, in general, they are so creative in their songs and performances. Example: their Road To Kingdom performances, and also their super fun b-sides like Round 1 and Round 2!

My personal favorites: Obviously the genius Hui, Wooseok (I love him so much!), and Kino (such a talented person)

2. Vocal Kings

Their main vocals (Hui and Jinho) are absolutely top-tier vocalists, two of the strongest ones in the kpop world (imo).

Jinho was LITERALLY a vocal coach of kpop stars. Incredible vocal range.

Their lead vocals Hongseok (actually now a main vocal) and Yeo One are potential main vocals! And their sub-vocals, Kino (honestly surprised he was a sub-vocal cause he’s waaaay too good to be sub!), Yan An and Shinwon, are on par or better than other groups’ lead vocals, imo.

Vocal kings of harmonization. I love it so much, they sound so good! They take after their sunbaes BtoB, the OG harmonization kings. (Song references: You Are, and Shine acapella version).

Wooseok and Yuto’s rap are also so good! Honestly, I go crazy sometimes, especially with Wooseok’s delivery.

Edit, random trivia: I actually found out Wooseok auditioned in Cube as a vocalist and a model. Thank God, he discovered his talent in rapping later on, because dang, this guy is SICK. His rap touches my heart. He is proof that the basis of what a good rapper is doesn’t need to be about how fast you can say your words.

My personal favorites: Hui, Jinho, and Yeo One (what a beautiful voice, and he’s so good and stable live, halp huhu, totally underrated), Wooseok’s rap (I’m a big fan, my eyes are filled with hearts)

3. Musical ability (in general) and Dance

Being composers/producers, they have a good understanding of music theory and techniques, especially for Hui (obviously, the genius), Jinho (as a vocal coach) and Kino (I think).

Musical Instruments: Almost all of them (except for Hongseok) plays musical instruments

Piano: Hui, Jinho, Kino, Shinwon - I have to make a special note here. These guys can really play. They’re not the type to say they play the piano but only press a few chords here and there a bit and sing a song. They play their keys!

Guitar: Yuto (he is really good! he posts electric guitar covers on Twitter), Wooseok, Jinho, Hui, Yeo One, Shinwon

Erhu (Chinese traditional instrument): Yan An - studied it for 10 years. Haha! This is so unique, I’ve never seen him play it, and it’s not exactly a useful instrument to have for kpop music, but I love it!

Edit: I also found out Wooseok can play the violin. Not only that, he’s won a violin competition.. I couldn’t believe it! Violin it’s such a hard instrument. It’s not easy to be good at violin, let alone win a violin competition. Wooseok really surprises me with the musical talent he has sometimes.

Dance: Quite obvious as a kpop idol group, even though admittedly they aren’t exactly the best as a whole group. 

But anyway, Kino is the main dancer. (Also known for being such a good dancer of girl group songs. Hihi cute)

Lead dancers: Hui, Yuto, Yeo One

Apparently, Kino is also the choreographer! I think he was the main choreographer for Daisy. (Don’t @ me, I’m not sure. But in general, yes, he does choreograph for the group.)

My personal favorites: Kino, Hui - this also includes stage presence.

4. Visuals

Their official visual is Yan An. (Pentagon is whipped for Yanan, btw.)

Other unofficial visuals, at least in my book: Yuto, Hongseok, Yeo One, Kino (but tbf, as a well-loved idol group, everyone becomes an unofficial visual)

Shinwon was actually a legit model before being an idol, and he became viral for being “the handsome part-timer” at a cafe Exo went to.

Men’s Health Korea models (YES, ACTUAL MEN’S HEALTH COVER BOYS aka gym freaks): Hongseok, Yeo One. *PS: I have a feeling Yuto will also be on there soon, one of these days

Let me just reiterate though that while Hongseok is known for his muscles, he more than his abs. He’s smart, funny, and talented, as you can see in this whole post. So yeah, basically, please don’t objectify him.

My personal favorites: Yuto (the reason why I checked Pentagon out in the first place! my heart went deugun deugun), Hongseok (what a great face, beautiful eyes), Yeo One (cutie), Kino (very very pretty face)

*check ending for gifs/pics*

5. Other talents

Acting

Literally THREE of them are musical theatre actors, and all were actually the main characters in their respective musicals: Jinho (already a theatre sunbae), Hui and Yeo One. Honestly, this shows both acting skills and strong vocal ability. (Imagine the strong vocal ability of the lead vocal, in PTG, Yeo One, a main character of a musical. It gives you an idea of how good the vocal line up is.)

I think some of them had some acting in dramas, like Hongseok and Yeo One

Update: Yanan and Wooseok are also on dramas/will be on dramas now. That makes almost everybody in Pentagon (still waiting for Yuto and Shinwon) an actor.

Another update: Kino is now hosting his second podcast with Dive Studios! :)

Randoms

Hongseok, Jinho and Kino speaks three languages pretty comfortably: Hongseok/Jinho (Korean, English, Chinese), Kino (Korean, English, Japanese) ---not super fluent but able to have good conversations. And foreigners Yanan (Korean, Chinese), and Yuto (Korean, Japanese) are obviously fluent bilinguals.

Kino drew and painted the album art for WE:TH / daisy. He even gifted a painted version to Hui for his studio!

6. Personality

Let me start by saying Pentagon is a crazy group. They aren’t really kids but they are so chaotic. I love that they have no filter!

Even the leader, Hui, who’s not really young, is very chaotic! Hui is actually such a cutie pie. And also so funny, especially in their TMIs

Hongseok is so funny, so witty, and has absolutely no shame. I love it!

Shinwon is very witty, and is known to be the mood-maker of the group.

Yeo One is a little 4D. He’s like a messy kid and sometimes has his own world. :)) An absolute cutie!!!

Kino is the sweetest person ever! He never fails to tell Universe how much he appreciates us.

Jinho is known to be the kind and caring hyung they can depend on.

My personal favorites: Hongseok (hilarious and crazy, has me dying), Hui, Yeo One (ugghhhh super cute personality!), Kino also!!!

Overall: They have a bunch of all-rounders! (My personal favorite all-rounders: Hui, Kino, and Yeo One) They’re so talented and deserve a lot of recognition and support.

Hui is my bias and my ult, but I can’t decide who’s my next bias.

Update: I think Kino is my next bias, cause he’s just so good, so multi-talented! I can’t with this guy. I’m even considering adding him to my ult list.

But my gosh, Changgu is absolutely adorable. Wooseok talent. Huhu idk if second tier bias or...

***Not to be this obsessive OT10 fan, but I really like Dawn (formerly E’Dawn), so I’m writing his skills as well: Great composer (Shine, one of my faves huhu), such a great Rapper (he gets some amount of hate for his voice, but I actually really like it!), Main Dancer (what a good dancer tbh), and very unique personality. I love him, he’s so talented. (But anyway, even with him gone, Pentagon isn’t lacking! They’re still so great!)

If you wanna see my fave visuals, click below:

The legendary Yuto ponytail

PG-13 Hongseok GIFs only!!!

Also PG-13 Changgu only 

Sweet sweet Kino

[royallyprincesslilly]

Title: Rumor Has It {10}

Chris Evans x Famous Reader Uriah “Riah” Tyler-Evans

Warning: Plot, Cursing, Angst, Slight embellishment of actual real-world media

Word Count: 2.2K

Summary: You and Chris have been married for four years after a whirlwind romance. You are both happy and trying to navigate marriage in the public eye while balancing your successful careers. In the entertainment industry, not everything is as it seems, the flash of a camera lens impairs vision. As scandal and flashing lights put a strain on your once fairytale marriage is it possible your Hollywood marriage can stand the test of the rumor mill?

**Inspired by a video seen of Chris and his co-star Ana De Armas on their press tour for Knives Out at TIFF where she kept touching his chest and face standing about five inches apart.

**NOTE: A WORK OF FICTION. NOT CREATED TO GARNER HATE OF ANY SORT.

**Loosley Edited/Proofread**

**Interactive**

Thank you guys for reading!!!! If you enjoyed this please LIKE, COMMENT, REBLOG. 😊 ❤❤

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What’s not to like about photoshoots? Nothing really. You get to wear designer clothes, get your make up done and get pretty pictures taken. Sounds great. Unless you’ve been doing it for almost ten hours. That was your predicament. You’d been shooting pictures for your album cover for the better part of a day and there was no end in sight. You’d tried to keep your energy up, tried to remain in the zone but it was harder than it looked. You were quickly descending into the land of grumpy. All you wanted was your bed a bottle of wine and one of Chris’ shirts.

 “All right Uriah, that’s it. A few more shots and I think we’ll be good,” Boris shouted from behind the camera as he continued to snap away. Using that as some solace you held tightly to your resolve and pressed on.

 Twenty minutes turned to forty and forty turned to two hours. After three and a half hours Boris finally called wrap. You were exhausted. You sat down with the crew and went through the three hundred plus images hoping to mark your favorites and eliminate those that just didn’t go well. The final decision was going to be left up to you and the record company, but you knew how to make your voice be the final one. You, after all, were the talent. You’d gotten far enough in your career that you held plenty of weight.

 You didn’t get to crawl into bed with one of Chris’ shirts and a bottle of wine until near three in the morning. Taking comfort in his scent and the alcohol your unwind was easy. Once the bottle was finished you found yourself nodding off until Chris called. Once you saw his face, you lit up.

“You look tired.” Scoffing you nodded.

 “I’m exhausted. Yet another photoshoot for the album. Hopefully, we finally have the album cover art.”

 “Okay, that’s great. Are you happy with them?”

 “They’re fine. I’m happier to be done with it. How are you?”

 “Good, finally getting in.” You watched him set his phone down and peel his shirt off in the frame. Sighing you sunk deeper into the covers and watched the show. It was like he didn’t realize what he was doing. After he’d discarded his shirt his pants followed until he was only in his underwear. You laid there and admired your husband. You’d never get tired of this view.

 “It is a shame to be so damn fine.” As if realizing what he’d done he snorted and laughed then took up his phone and carried you with him to another room.

 “Me? Have you looked in the mirror lately Mrs. Evans?” You smiled then sighed.

 “Is that my shirt?”

 “I miss you,” you defended. His groan was long. You heard the rustling of sheets and once the motion of the camera stopped there he was laying in the bed with a sweet smirk on his face.

“I miss you too, dragonfly.” You changed your position in the bed not caring that now his shirt had risen up to your hip exposing your bare thigh to him. You watched as his eyes raked over your skin then back to your eyes.

 “I’ve been thinking, after the premier and the hoopla we should take a vacation. You, me, no phones, or work, just us,” Chris proposed. It sounded blissful.

 “My god that sounds so good. I think we’ve earned it.”

 “I think so too, sweetheart.” The two of you laid there not saying a word just staring at each other. Your connection felt stronger than ever. Therapy had done what it was supposed to. You guys were better than ever. In fact, you were so much better you’d completed your last session with Dr. Danquah feeling incredibly optimistic and pleased with how successfully you’d been.

 It didn’t take long for the two of you to fall asleep with each other still on the call with one thought to fall asleep to. Life was good.

  -Two Days Later-

“Sounds like a plan,” Zora responded once you’d finished going over your plan for the next three months.

 You and Chris had made such great progress in therapy that you felt more hopeful about the probability of your marriage surviving and not just surviving but thriving and becoming better than it ever had been. You’d both learned so much and every day the two of you were diligently working to put what you learned into play. He made a conscious effort to make you feel listened to and not just heard. You made an effort to give him the benefit of the doubt more times than not. Now after successful completion of near nine weeks of therapy, you both felt closer to each other. The love you felt for him had grown when you didn’t think it was possible to love him more.

 The rest of your team left your office and it left you, Zora and Kizzy. Zora perched on your desk and watched you sign off on the rest of the contracts that needed to be couriered out. The next three months were setting up to be busy. You’d taken all the time you could and so had Chris. He was now in Los Angeles for meetings and interviews. It was his time to actually be present for the press centered on Knives out especially with it opening in a week.

 “How’s Chris doing in LA? This is the first time in weeks you two have been apart.” You nodded at Zora’s inquiry.

 She was right. You’d gotten so comfortable having him so close. You’d created a routine that you fell in love with, a routine that you now missed. It had been a week since he’d been gone, and you felt his absence to your core.

 “He’s doing good. He says he’s trying to acclimate back into press touring and being away but it’s hard.”

 “Uugh, you two are so stinking cute I can’t deal,” Kizzy groaned out. you couldn’t help but smile.

 “I’m glad you guys are doing better and found a way back to each other,” Zora added.

 You stood and handed her the folder. Once she took them and she nodded and got to work on her laptop scanning them for your records. The next step was sending a copy to your lawyers before sending them back.

 Your phone rang loudly in your home office. When you looked at the screen you saw your mother’s name pop up.

 “Hi, mama.”

 “Uriah, who the hell is this white woman?”

 “Uh—what white woman, mama?” Kizzy and Zora both looked amused, they knew your mother’s antics and the way she spoke. They often got a good laugh from it.

 “This woman I’m seeing on The Wendy Williams show.”

 Your confusion took over. You sighed then groaned. “Mama, I don’t have time to walk you through the who is who of the celebrity world. Try googling her.”

 “Uriah Letecia Tyler-Evans. You better know who this woman is. From the things I’m hearing from Wendy, you should have her as top priority on your to-do list. By to do list I mean beat down list.”

 Kizzy was the one to snort loudly. You gave her a look that had her clamping her hand over her mouth in an effort to stop any others from escaping.

 “Mama, what are you talking about?”

 “Turn on The Wendy Williams show now!” Zora approached with the remote and turned the tv on then proceeded to find the right channel. Once Wendy’s face filled the screen the volume increased. You were just in time to hear the audible gasp and “ooh” from the audience.

 “Okay mama Wendy is on. What is so important?”

 “Wait for it and listen,” your mother instructed.

 “So, I don’t know what kind of marriage they have but if this were my marriage, and I know what you’re going to say my marriage fell apart from the same thing—an easy, trifling’ homewrecking whore.” Again, the audience gasped and “oohed”.

 “Yeah I know, if you live in a glass house you shouldn’t throw stones but look y’all. In no world is this okay.” A video played of Ana wearing the sweater Chris wore in character in Knives Out. It was evident she had on nothing else but the sweater. She danced around while giving her best sexy eyes to the camera. You didn’t hear a thing else, not from Wendy or the audience, or even the music that was playing on the video. The video stopped and flipped to a picture of her posing in the sweater. You zeroed in on the caption.

 “That was weird, anyway what I wanted to say is go see knives out. Also, thanks Chris for the sweater. I think it looks better on me this way, but you can feel free to come and take it and prove me wrong.”

 As if you were a bull in the pen you saw red.

 “This bitch!” Yours, Kizzy’s and Zora’s voice all merged into one as the three of you said the same thing, at the same time the same exact way. You looked at them and the looks on their faces made you wonder if you looked the same way. Pissed.

 “First of all, this is all levels of inappropriate. I may be jaded and reading into things too much but ol’ girl didn’t have to put his sweater on with nothing else on. She posted this for a reason besides promo for their movie. Second, this is a thirst trap if I’ve ever seen one, now it’s not as extreme as others but a low-level thirst trap is still a thirst trap. This is a thirst trap of testing the waters. This is definitely flirtatious. Also, the caption, girl.” Wendy’s face said it all.

 “Girl you know you not slick. This is disrespectful on all levels to this man’s real wife Uriah Evans. Again, I don’t know what kind of marriage they have but this isn’t the first time I’ve seen some suspect behavior from this woman toward Chris Evans. I get it he’s hot, he is a fine piece of white chocolate. The draw of a married man is appealing it’s like a competition but girl no. This man has a whole wife. Back off.”

 The audience clapped and cheered.

 “Do you see now Uriah. Now, who is this woman? You better tell me this isn’t the same trollop that tested your marriage a few months ago.”

 “Mama I’ll call you back.” You hung up and prepared to dial Chris but before pressing the green call button you paused and thought about what you were about to do and what you were about to say. Every instinct in your body was saying blow up and rain hellfire on him, but thanks to the last months of work in therapy, part of you hesitated.

 “Fuck!” You hit the desk and took several deep breaths. “This bitch really is grinding my last fucking nerve!”

 “For good fucking reason. What the hell is that? Did Chris really send that to her?”

 You had no idea. He very well could have. Again, you stopped and thought about things. He wouldn’t dare, not after everything you’d been through these last months, not after everything you came so close to losing. Still, there she was wearing the sweater. You looked back to the paused tv and examined the freeze frame of the picture. She looked so damn pleased with herself. Before you could fester anymore anger your phone rang again. This time it was Chris.

 “Give me a minute, guys.” Kizzy and Zora walked out giving you a little privacy before you answered your phone.

 “Hey, baby. I miss you,” Chris said with a smile on his face. You took another deep breath and tried to push away any ill will.

 “I miss you too.”

 “Are you okay?” He was walking around making you dizzy. When he finally stopped he sat down in perfect lighting.

 “Yeah, I’m good. How are you? What’re you doing?”

 “I just finished up wardrobe here in San Diego, getting ready to do yet another interview.” He leaned back and sighed.

 “Okay, cool.” You couldn’t find anything else to say. You didn’t want to blow up at him or even ask him because you didn’t want to give him the impression you didn’t trust him. You understood now, you trusted him you just didn’t trust her.

 “Are you all set to come out? I can’t wait to see you.”

 “Uh, yeah, I’ll be on a flight day after tomorrow. I’m just finishing up some loose ends.” His smile was bright, and a glimmer caught your eye.

 Squinting your eyes, you locked in on it then looked back to the tv at her background. Your eyes went back and forth for several moments before you felt the pit of your stomach fall. The backgrounds were one hundred percent identical. Her picture and video were taken from his room. 

~~~~~~~~~

***If you want to be tagged please SEND AN ASK SO IT WILL BE EASIER FOR ME TO KEEP TRACK OF. Thank you for reading!!! ❤️❤️

~~~~~~~~~

TagList: 

@chaneajoyyy @sonjashuterbugjohnson @caramara3 @vannahvannahhh @lorainnebabyy @patzammit @yourwonderbelle @pennywisesmistress @theblulife @kelbabyblue @bugngiz @disneysdarlingdiva @toniilaney @areubeingserved @thinkxlovexloud @cocothewriter @periodtcevans @southerngracela @bellaamor88 @mack-jay @titty-teetee @pananegra @wellthirsted @sup3rn0va13 @ nova3312 @ hello-therree @valkyriesnymph @ squeackygee @niyashell @allmonstersxarehuman @zsuzstyina @peggy-potts @amelatonin @lvlyab @sullyosully @renesmeeharelds @ capslut2014 @ ilovehatembj @thelittlemoistcarrot @sarcastic-sunshines @a-dizzle777 @taylorveebee @allnamesicouldthinkofweretaken @choices97 @chrisgalore @rynabarnesrogers  @ab-baybay  @motivation-idontknowher @lo-cheu @momobaby227 @thatrandomhetaliachick @missdeerstalker15 @queenbetter @jesseswartzwelder @briellableu @zaddysqueen7  @melaninhawtie  @simplyyamberr @airis-paris14 @ashanti-notthesinger @afraiddreamingandloving @ajspencer1892 @wakanda-inspired @chillavesss @drsunshine97 @cleothegoldfish @builtalongthewayside @theunsweetenedtruth @geeksareunique @aykanna @hanasamara @profilia @ollieveracity @autumn242 @missyperle @forbeautyandlife @kreolemami @designerwriterchic @firedolphin04 @academic-glowup @periodtcevans @nova3312 @hello-therree @squeackygee capslut2014 @ilovehatembj @taylorveebee  @thatcrazymarvelfan @oceanscorazon @90sinspiredgirl  @mizcaptainwidow @angrybirdcr @cherrystainedlipsbaby @marvelfansworld @blowmymbackout @almostpurelysmut @impossiblegiantrebelbasketball @choices97  @phreshouttherunwaaayy @heladoom @alyxkbrl @evemej @queensevansackles @rosey1981 @laketaj24 @munteanhore @minton131 @trillistb @purplehairgawdess @ollieveracity  

[shhh-no-ones-home]

lion tamer izzy stradlin x reader

+++++++++

a little break from motionless and def leppard lol. i havent written for izzy in a while but he baby so here you go, have something cute. i have two more lepp fics coming out in the next couple days though so enjoy 

she unedited lol sorry if there are mistakes

song: caffeine cold by fall out boy

Edit cause I forgot to add:

Tag list: @cynic-spirit

+++++++++

"come on iz, youre last."

i sighed, grabbing his arm and pulling him out of the backseat of my car. i swung his arm over my shoulder and tried to distribute the weight but it wasnt really working. he was basically dead at this point, stumbling around as i walked us to the door. we had all gone out to celebrate the new album release and they had all drank a little too much. i of course was left as the designated driver per usual since i didnt really drink, nor did i usually mind. tonight however was a task, like herding kittens, each member getting side tracked at something new as i tried desperately to get them into their houses or hotel rooms and into their beds. Izzy of course was last, letting me stay with him while i was in town for the release party and start of the press tour.

"youre really good at this."

izzy complimented, a long string of words pouring out of his mouth as i unlocked the door and shoved his keys back in his jacket pocket.

"thanks iz, someones got to be or else you would be on the floor more often."

just as i was closing the door he moved forward without me and tripped, dropping straight to the ground. i sighed as he rolled over and laughed.

"like that."

i pointed out. he kept laughing as he sat up, taking the hand i offered to him. instead of getting up though he just pulled me down with him, me dropping to my knees with a loud thud. he giggled some more at the exasperated look on my face.

"now youre on the floor too."

he laughed out, poking his finger at me. i rolled my eyes and stood back up, walking around him, pushing my arms under his and lifting him to his feet.

"woah."

he said a little stunned that i had just dead lifted him off the floor.

"have you been working out?"

he questioned as i turned him and put his arm around my shoulders again.

"yeah, its called moving five drunk toddlers around."

he sent me a sleepy smile as we finally made it down the hall.

"that sounds like a lot of work."

he said matter of factly, dropping the bottle i didnt know he had onto the soft carpet of his bedroom floor.

"you have no idea."

i grumbled as i leaned into him and pushed him to the bed with my shoulder, watching him roll onto his side and his hand drop to his stomach.

"oop, nope, hold on."

he said standing quickly and dropping in front of the trash can by his nightstand. i looked to the ceiling as he threw up, cringing at it. i looked back down when he inhaled deeply and he was already on his way back to standing.

"okay sir, time to brush your teeth now."

he whined as i helped usher him to the bathroom.

"do i have to?"

he protsested as i squirted the toothpaste onto the brush and wet it, handing it to him.

"yes, if you dont i will."

he dropped his shoulder and stuck the brush in his mouth, moving it around and leaning in to look at himself in the mirror. as he pushed it around his gums he grinned widely at himself, the bubbles around his mouth making him look like a clown. i shook my head at him.

"dont forget your tongue."

i reminded and he turned to me to stick it out, closing his eyes and brushing down it.

"thank you."

i said, crossing my arms over my chest and he bent down and spit into the sink, holding his head under the faucet so he could rinse his mouth out. when he stood back up he sent me another sleepy smile, dropping the toothbrush onto the counter.

"now what?"

he asked like a giddy child. i placed my hand firmly at his back and pushed him back out into the room.

"now you go to bed."

i said a little hopeful. he pouted at me in return.

"aww but y/n i dont want to go to bed. the night is still young and so are we."

he said, plopping down on the side of the mattress.

"we'll still be young in the morning when you get up. in a pain and possibly hungover but young none the less."

he frowned at me as i moved to take the denim jacket off his arms.

"do i get to take your clothes off?"

he asked, wiggling his eye brows at me.

"no, now take your shirt off, i dont even want to know what it is you have down the front of you."

he looked down at it confused before shrugging and doing as told.

"anything else you want me to remove?"

he said reaching out for my hand and holding it, looking up at me intently.

"shoes, off."

i demanded and he smiled widely at me, kicking them off.

"pants too?"

he said seductively. i rolled my eyes.

"only if you dont want to wear jeans to bed but you had better have underwear of some kind on this time izzy stradlin or i swear to god."

he laughed before standing up and undoing his pants, and there it was, of course he wasnt wearing any. i groaned and turned around.

"oh come on y/n its not like you havent seen it before, you practically lived here for three months."

i shook my head and went to his dresser.

"i know that izzy but that doesnt mean you have to just have it out all the time."

i shook my head and grabbed him some underwear and pajama bottoms, tossing them his way. i didnt want to look but it was kind of hard to miss, he was standing fully nude now in the middle of his bedroom, hands on his hips in fully glory.

"get dressed."

i demanded, making him laugh again before doing as told. i crossed my arms over my chest as he fumbled around to get dressed, plopping back down onto the bed when he was done.

"better?"

i asked a little annoyed, walking to him and trying to tuck him in. getting him under the covers was more of a task than i thought it would be.

"wanna join?"

he asked, raising a brow and smirking at me.

"no thank you, i have my own bed in this house."

he grabbed my hand and pulled me forward. i caught myself before i could fall into him and was face to face now. he smelled like vodka and mint.

"please? itll help me sleep better knowing youre here."

he said, pouting. i sighed.

"fine, but im only doing this to make sure you dont vomit in your sleep and kill yourself."

he smiled widely before scooting over and letting me in, me kicking my shoes off first and readjusting the dress i had on. before i knew what was happening he was snuggled into my side, face pushing into my neck and arm around my waist. my eyes got wide as he got comfortable.

"iz?"

he hummed in response.

"what are you doing?"

he just shushed me. a minute later he was snoring softly and i was left there in the dimly lit room defeated.

°°°°°°°°°

when i woke up i could smell something burning, making me jolt upright. izzy wasnt in the bed next to me like he was last night and it was only ten thirty. i found that odd given that we didnt even go to bed till almost four. i stood quickly, flattening my dress down and making my way down the hall to the kitchen. i stood in the doorway dumbfounded at the sight in front of me. there was izzy, smoking a cigarette and cooking breakfast. bacon and pancakes by the smell of it.

"morning sunshine."

he said fairly chipper, taking a sip from his mug. i raised a brow, pushing my bra strap back up onto my shoulder.

"morning."

i said confused. i stood and watched him flip the pancakes.

"you just gonna stand there all morning or are you gonna come eat?"

he half laughed at me, looking up with light eyes.

"uh yeah, sure."

i said slowly, trudging to him and taking the plate he offered up.

"drink?"

he asked, picking up the second mug that was on the counter. i took it without think and went to the bar. as soon as i took a sip i cringe.

"what the hell is this izzy?!"

i asked setting the plate down.

"orange juice and vodka."

he said matter of factly and i just sighed in defeat. no wonder he was so happy. that asshole still had alcohol in his system and was just adding more.

"you are gonna feel like shit later."

i noted, walking to the sink and pouring it down the drain. he sent me a wicked smile and cheersed me before taking a drink.

"i promise its nothing but coffee for me after this."

i sent him a disapproving look.

"sure it is."

he finished stacking pancakes onto his plate and joined me at the counter, sitting in the bar stool beside me.

"so, how did you sleep?"

he asked, resting his leg against mine comfortably.

"fine."

i said shrugging. he sent me a weird.

"you were in bed with me and just slept fine?"

i laughed at him and shook my head, pouring syrup on top of my food.

"well it wasnt exactly fun. you were so drunk it was a task to even get you into pajamas, much like last time you werent wearing anything under your jeans which i dont appreciate."

i said sternly and he smiled to himself, nodding like he'd accomplished something.

"yeah i forgot about that."

he said proudly. i rolled my eyes, taking a bite.

"well youre wearing some now and thats what really matters."

i said and he laughed.

"no im not."

i looked up at him with wide eyes.

"when i got up to pee earlier i realized i was wearing them and took them off, fuck that."

i sighed deeply but didnt respond. i just shook my head and kept eating.

"do you like it?"

he asked and i raised a brow.

"breakfast i mean."

i nodded.

"yes its very good."

he smiled widely at me.

"great cause its my apology for last night."

i looked at him confused.

"i know im a handful when drunk, hell i know we all are. you always take care us though, so i guess its a thank you too."

i smiled at him.

"thanks izzy."

he leaned over and nudged me with his elbow.

"dont mention it."

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

HALESTORM's 'Reimagined' EP To Include AMY LEE Collaboration + Cover Of 'I Will Always Love You'

HALESTORM has set an August 14 release date for "Halestorm Reimagined", a collection of reworked original songs as well as a cover of "I Will Always Love You", the love ballad made famous by Whitney Houston and Dolly Parton. The six-track effort will also include a reimagined version of the HALESTORM song "Break In", featuring a guest appearance by EVANESCENCE's Amy Lee. The new version of the track, which originally appeared on HALESTORM's second album, 2012's "The Strange Case Of..." , was recorded last October at a Nashville studio with producer Nick Raskulinecz, who had previously worked with both bands.

"Halestorm Reimagined" track listing:

01. I Get Off 02. Miss The Misery 03. I Am The Fire 04. Break In (featuring Amy Lee) 05. I Will Always Love You 06. Mz. Hyde

Lzzy and Amy performed a quarantine rendition of "Break In" this past May on Hale's Internet show "Raise Your Horns With Lzzy Hale".

Speaking about the collaboration, Lzzy told Amy: "What I love about dueting on that song with you is that it started out as as love song that I wrote for my significant other" — referring to HALESTORM guitarist Joe Hottinger — "but when we sing it together, it's this act of unity, especially with the two of us being women and being women musicians. It's like we have each other's backs. And the lyrics mean something completely different when I sing it [with you]."

Regarding the way the new version of "Break In" was recorded, Lzzy said: "We did it performance-style, literally next to each other in the same room — from beginning of song to end of song, singing with each other.

"I've never done anything like that, but especially with a female singer of your prowess."

Amy added: "Nick always gets the challenge and gets the most out of me… So he made us stand there in the room and sing it live together a bunch of times. What that really means is that editing, you couldn't use when you did something cool but I messed up; it would have to be that we both nailed it for it to make the cut. So to do it in that way was really challenging and it was really cool and it fits the song so well.

"I remember you saying, and we both were saying, when we were listening back, it's really weird, at times — I know my part, but you can't pick out whose voice that is in that one particular moment, 'cause we started matching each other, 'cause it was on the spot. It's really cool how that happens.

"It feels like a match. It doesn't feel like any one person is pulling the other person along a little bit or leading the train. It really felt like an evenly matched dance."

Lzzy and Amy originally performed "Break In" together in 2012 during the "Carnival Of Madness" tour, which was headlined by EVANESCENCE and featured HALESTORM in the support slot. At the time, Hale told Zoiks! Online about how the live collaboration came about: "It's funny. We had talked in the beginning of the tour, 'Oh, we should do something.' What would we do? Do we do a cover? Do I come out during her set? She came up to me, I think it was two weeks in and said, 'I'm obsessed with your song 'Break In' right now.' I was like, 'Thank you so much.' Then she said, 'I know all of your parts, all the backing parts and everything.' I was like, 'Sweet, that's awesome.' Then she said, 'This is going to sound really weird and please feel free to say no, but do you think I could come up during that song and sing it with you?' I'm, like, 'Of course. This is awesome.' We didn't have a whole lot of time to rehearse. We literally ran through it once before our show in El Paso, right before the doors opened. It was perfect. I told her, queue insane crowd noise. She was like, 'Oh, I don't know.' 'No, seriously — they're going to freak when you walk out on stage.' ... [And] they did. We couldn't hear each other for the first four lines."

Lzzy said in a recent interview with SiriusXM's "Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk" that she is using the downtime during the COVID-19 lockdown to keep working on material for HALESTORM's fifth studio LP.

HALESTORM has been writing and demoing material since January, with Hale saying she can record almost everything except drums in her home studio.

The next HALESTORM album will follow up 2018's "Vicious".

[hippriestess]

Part 3 - “ I thought we had some kind of agreement but with you it was just prurience”

So, where were we. Ah yes....Record Store Day 2019.

It was, perhaps inevitably, a heavy day for Fall fans. Lead-in times both for the manufacture of vinyl records and for participation in RSD are such that Smith's death came too late for the impact to be evident in the 2018 event but for 2019, we were absolutely flooded in a way that caused some, quite rightly, to question the judgement of the organisers in allowing so many obvious vultures to swoop in for an easy bite. 

The “monitor mixes” from the 2CD edition of “The Unutterable” were pressed to vinyl for the first time. “Whoo-fucking-pee” quoth the faithful and you will have absolutely no difficulty acquiring it today should you be down to few enough marbles for it to seem like a good investment. BMG hold the rights to the group's Rough Trade recordings and went with a box set of five 7” singles under the awful title “Medicine For The Masses”. This was the exact same format as “The Rough Trade Singles Box” from 2002 although with the bonus of containing the correct Peel Session versions of “Container Drivers” and “New Puritan” (Castle/Sanctuary had updated the 5 disc CD edition once they had acquired the rights to the BBC tracks but the vinyl edition of Italy's Earmark Records retained the Grotesque and Totale's Turns versions used in the initial pressings). Given not only that none of this material is any way scarce but that an excellent single LP release had been given to all 10 tracks in the box (Peel takes included) by US imprint Superior Viaduct in 2018, it was perhaps inevitable that “Medicine For The Masses” pretty much flopped on the day and can now be acquired brand new for a good £10 less than the asking price on the day itself.

Ah yes, Superior Viaduct, let's not forget them. A well-regarded reissue label with a smattering of current artists, they had already issued some Fall vinyl in 2016/2017, putting all the studio albums up to “Perverted By Language” back onto vinyl as well as the first 2 singles and the eternally category-defying “Slates” 10”. Following Smith's passing, they have (almost) completed the task with the aforementioned “Rough Trade Singles” LP and a new pressing of “Totale's Turns”. These editions have been very well received and have been praised for the quality both of the mastering and of the pressings but they remain largely inaccessible to UK fans due to licensing restrictions preventing the editions from being imported. As such, you'll hafta pick these up on a one-to-one basis off your own bat.

Right, back to Record Store Day 2019. We also had the “opportunity” to buy a number of live albums. 5 of them, in fact. All of these had previously been released on CD towards the end of 2018...so this was going to be called Crap Rap Part 14 but it's now called “Stop Releasing Every Gig You Can Find On Some Mouldy Third Generation Maxell C90 on a double LP”

Live albums have always been canon with The Fall. “Totale's Turns” was their 3rd LP release, “Live In London 1980” was issued by Chaos Tapes with the group's permission in 1982, “Fall In A Hole” was allowed until copies were exported. We had “Seminal Live” and “The 27 Points” mixing live with studio, as did “I Am Kurious Oranj” with several tracks recorded during the original Edinburgh run of the ballet. Even the “Perverted By Language Bis” video was largely live material. Even once the shark was jumped in the late 90s/early 00s with the endless recycling of those outtake/live compilations, there were official live missives, such as the excellent “Last Night At The Palais” in 2009, the wonderfully titled but patchy “Uurop VIII-XII Places in Sun & Winter, Son” in 2014 though to the terrible “Live In Clitheroe” in 2017. So, all in, it comes as no surprise at all that over 20 more live albums have been added to The Fall's discography since Smith's sad departure from this realm.

There were no less than 5 live albums dumped merrily onto the shelves for RSD 2019, 3 of them doubles. On their own, this would have been an outlay of over £100...in fact, if you wanted the full RSD Fall, you'd have had little or no change on the day from £250. For exactly no unreleased music. No unreleased music? What were these live albums then? Let's wind back to late in 2018... (I told you this was tough to do in any kind of linear fashion).

Arriving via the PledgeMusic site, “Set Of Ten” released by “Cog Sinister”, worked like this: 10 previously unreleased live recordings were contained in a sturdy square box with spiffy new artwork from Pascal LeGras. The tariff? £100. Ouch. Now, a handful of them were announced as separate releases, however, if you bought the box you would receive an exclusive disc – a recording from Derby, 1994. Cometh the hour, the Derby CD was one of the first to be released on its own. Huh.

A small amount of digging revealed that this set was the work of Rob Ayling. With the dates running from 1980 to 1999, the general opinion re: Set Of Ten was that these tapes were very likely to be in Ayling's possession due to the “Live From The Vaults” series on Voiceprint, Ayling's previous imprint, from 2005. When that series was announced, the five releases were said to be simply the first batch.  It could therefore be deduced that these tapes had been destined for future batches. At the time, there was a minor dust-up over them and no further volumes were issued. Whatever the motivations, presenting an 11 CD set of old bootlegs with so little quality control being put into the audio and asking £100 for it felt like cold ash in the mouth. Worse still, PledgeMusic went bust before many customers could receive their sets, leaving them to either claim chargebacks on their credit cards or simply out of pocket as ordinary creditors to the failed business. It must have been galling for those who lost money to see the CDs arriving on their own and several cut onto expensive vinyl.

I've picked up a couple of the CDs separately and these have been largely fine. Recording quality is listenable but obviously audience derived. The best one by far of those I've heard is “Live 23rd June 1981 @ Jimmy's Music Club New Orleans”, a great recording of a full-tilt Fall performance from a critical time in their existence (pictured) . There's a palpable tension, possibly due to the return of Burns, brought back not just out of practicalities but also to even the group up a bit, now that Smith was beginning to reconsider the wisdom of having a team of childhood friends for a group. Rehiring Burns was designed to put some grit back into the machine and it worked. Having a full set from this line-up is a worthy addition to the canon and it should be snapped up before it vanishes – this is the only one of the “Set Of Ten” CDs that seems to be thin on the ground. The artwork and credits show the level of care taken over the release; that is – pretty much none. The CD artwork has the 6 piece “Hex” line-up – Karl Burns is the only drummer here as Paul Hanley was at home doing his O Levels. However, the sleeve credits Paul Hanley and not Burns, adding a credit for Duncan Burndred, who was the group's driver at the time. The info had been sourced from the “Slates & Dates” press release which credited Burndred with “the rest” (ie anything other than music and management). Likely pilfered from thefall.org, this missive was retooled for the artwork without any real consideration.

However, it seems there was sufficient demand out there and, cometh the tail end of 2019, cometh another Set of Ten, given the snappy title...”Another Set Of Ten”. They must have been up all fucking night thinking of that one. Again, it has 11 discs. It does get interesting here insofar as most of the tapes come from between 2009 and 2013 suggesting not only that there wasn't much left from the original “Vaults”- destined batch but also making it unclear from whom these tapes were being licenced. They are, of course, under no obligation to discuss such matters publicly and, indeed the current incarnation of Cog Sinister would likely feel aggrieved at having the question asked. They are, after all, a legitimate enterprise. 

A quick skwizz at the Discogs page tells you that “Another Set Of Ten” is not a triumph; all the tapes are listed as being audience tapes, one disc has just six songs from the gig and several others are also incomplete and/or mislabelled. The main contributor to the Discogs entry (to whom, hello!) notes that the tracklistings appear to be taken from photographs of setlists uploaded to thefall.org's justly revered and thoroughly sublime gigography but, where the setlist didn't match what was played, no attempt has been made to correct this. They haven't even matched up the content with the tracklistings!!! At time of writing, these ones are just starting to slip into the shops on their own, possibly Covid delayed as you could get them via online retailers for a while. The cover for a Manchester gig from 2009 looked like a sick joke and it was hard not to think similar (albeit at lower pitch) about the inclusion of an infamous Motherwell gig at which MES was completely plastered and Brix had quit the band an hour or so before the show. What's next? Worthing? Brownies?

Yet it is very hard not to be continually tempted. There's some juicy setlists in these discs and the artwork at least has some effort – Pascal LeGras has done a very fine job here and his art certainly gives the right feel to the releases. I'm guessing that was the plan. I’ve got my eye on a few. It’s a disease this, I tell you...

Anyway, one way of the other, 5 of the “Set Of Ten” discs found their way onto vinyl on RSD, courtesy of reissue imprint Let Them Eat Vinyl and all of these are still easy to score, should you wish. The whole Gonzo/Let Them Eat Vinyl hookup is interesting for scholars of who-owns-what in terms of The Fall's catalogue. As above, we know that BMG have the Rough Trade recordings but LTEV's “Grotesque”, issued in 2017, states it is licensed by Sanctuary.

LTEV have also been putting some of the other lesser releases from the catalogue onto vinyl, including 2 mid 90's live albums (Phoenix 1995 and “The Idiot Joy Show” - nothing that was wasn't available for buttons on CD in the early 00s) as well as “Interim”, the demos and live cobble-together that attempted to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in 2004. The latter had never been pressed to vinyl before and with bloody good reason.  Yr mileage, as always, may vary.

Whilst not The Fall, acolytes will doubtless want to know that Ed Blaney issued a 2CD edition of “The Train”, containing the full 40-minute “(Part Three)” CD, a similarly lengthed alternate version and a clutch of remixes. Blaney also uploaded a properly touching tribute to Smith on YouTube, including reminiscences with other friends of Smith.

One more part to come, in which we burn the spotlight of shame onto a couple of the worst products ever to have had the name The Fall unwillingly emblazoned upon their sleeves and take a quick look over some of what we know is in the pipeline.

[demonboidies]

𝓼𝓲𝓬𝓴𝓵𝔂 - 𝓶𝓲𝓷 𝔂𝓸𝓸𝓷𝓰𝓲, 𝓳𝓾𝓷𝓰 𝓱𝓸𝓼𝓮𝓸𝓴, 𝓴𝓲𝓶 𝓷𝓪𝓶𝓳𝓸𝓸𝓷

pt. 5 

word count: 2,775

<this is a yandere story, therefore this is a trigger warning for emotional abuse, manipulation, toxic relationships and overall unhealthy obsession towards the reader/mc/yn>

tag list: @taezeus​ @jooniescupcakes @aesthetically-messed-up @okpoke​  @aysha489​ @iwannabeanidol (comment under this post to be added, if you comment anywhere else i won’t see it) 

➣min yoongi

      producer, song-writer, and lyricist. 25 years old and enjoys his own personal times as much as he enjoys naps. has dark brown hair and pale skin. (similar to his wings era looks but brown hair)

you locked the door after dropping the boys off. on the journey to the college, you discovered how energetic the trio really was. you figured they would've been as tired as you were to be up at 7 am when you were in college.

checking the paper that was still in your hand, you saw the name Min Yoongi next. walking back to your room, you unlocked the cabinet door with your key and saw a pill bottle with the patient's name on it.

you knocked softly on his door and a grunt was the only response you got. entering the room you took note of how much darker the aesthetic was prior to the previous male. his walls were painted gray and his sheets were gray and black. everything matched a minimalist aesthetic and you appreciated the chill music that was playing from the record player in the corner of the room.

"yoongi?" you called out softly, shutting the door as quiet as possible.

"hng..." was the only response and you smiled softly at his relatable tone. no one in your book enjoyed waking up so early.

"i have your medication you have to take." at your words he slowly, very slowly, sat up with his hand sticking out. you placed the capsule in his hand and looked for water for him to take it with. "ah. sorry. please wait as i get you the water."

he dismissed your worry, swallowing the pill right down, a sigh leaving his lips afterward. "what time is it?" he asked quietly in a meek voice.

"its 08:45." you answered, peaking down at the schedule in your hand. it was really short for this individual. simply turn on his desktop and switch his record playing to a hip hop album. then get him a fresh cup of instant

so you did as it said, not noticing the trailing eyes that were on you the whole time. yoongi watched with a small smile as you diligently worked, even if you only had to shake the mouse awake. he loved the smile on your face when it finally turned on. but your expression faltered at the sight of his lock screen.

"uhm. yoongi? who's your lockscreen?"

his one eye peeked open, trying to hide his panic. he had forgotten to change it before you came. "uhm, no one. i got it off of the internet."

he threw the covers aside, softly moving you aside from the desktop. "just-just could you change the record and get me my coffee..." he smiles weakly, trying to hide his nerves, "i can't function without it. especially in the mornings." he explained to try and cover himself up. you nodded, letting it slide. you probably were the one at fault anyway, why did you even question him? ugh, you were being so stupid.

there was no way that it was actually you as the lockscreen...that's impossible considering you only met the lot yesterday. your eyes were probably just playing a game with you.

you delicately switched the music, hearing the crackly, yet relaxing beat of a rapper you didn't know the name of. you went to the kitchen and came back up to his room a few minutes later with a steeping cup of hot coffee. he smiled thankfully to you, taking the mug from you.

"thank you." he said and you turned away, about to leave. but the light pressure around your wrist made you turn around with a confused expression. the expression on his face looked as if he was hurting as he touched you, like your contact of skin on skin was burning him.

"so-sorry if I offended you earlier. i-you just caught me off guard with that question." he retracted his hand and scratched a spot behind his ear, a habit you assumed was formed out of anxiety.

"oh, don't worry about it. I should've watched my own mouth. it's not my business what your lockscreen is anyway." you said with a light chuckle. he shook his head with a small pout, which was the cutest thing in your opinion.

"don't blame yourself. it really is my fault." he retorted with the shake of his head. almost like he was disappointed in himself.

"why don't we meet in the middle and say it wasn't any of our faults?" you proposed, deeming it useless if you continued arguing about whose fault it was.

he chuckles at the proposition and nodded. "fine." a smile graced your lips and you continued to take your leave from his room.

"have a nice morning, yoongi." you said softly and he returned it with a grateful smile. shutting the door behind you, you didn't hear the breath of relief he let out.

"such an oblivious girl~~" was the tiny mutter he let out as he clicked away on his desktop, getting right to work.

➣jung hoseok

      choreographer, dancer, and produces and raps occasionally. always working although he does enjoy joking around with the maknae line and being goofy with them. he's a child at heart, beaming with energy and curiosity, although he does get a switch in aura due to his mental disabilities occasionally. has a light tinge of red in his hair although the undertones are true brown color (DNA era). 25 years old.

the giddy dancer was the next to be confronted. upon entering his room, you saw the immediate difference and contrast between the two.

his room was painted a bright, but not obnoxious, yellow. it was dulled down a bit and he had an eccentric colorful poster on his wall, just above the headboard of his bed. reading the color font, you made out the words 'HOPE WORLD.' perhaps it was a movie that you haven't heard of.

as for the male you were supposed to wake up, he was already sitting in front of the large screen of his room.

"good morning hoseok." you said cheerfully, almost like your mood had brightened by the mere sight of his wallpaper.

"ah, good morning!" his eyes didn't leave the screen. "sorry, unfortunately, i can't pause Tetris 99 and i'm ranked pretty high right now..." his voice was fading as he continued to focus on the colorful blocks on his screen.

you maneuvered around him, making sure not to cover his vision from his intense game. you sat at his desk, placing the pills labeled with his name into your hand. you had to wait until he was finished until you could give him his pills.

so you watched and got unreasonably attached to his game as well.

"shit..." he cursed lowly under his breath when it showed he was eliminated. honestly, you were yelling at which directions to put the blocks and how to edit their position, but for the sale of professionalism, you held that urge to yell back.

"better luck next time," you said with an encouraging smile. his annoyed expression was washed away immediately like he had taken off an invisible mask, and a wide smile spread his face.

"yup! thanks for the encouragement. it means a lot!" he took the pills on his desk, swallowing without a problem. "have the others been treating you well? the little ones aren't causing trouble right?"

you chuckled at the reference of the maknae line, shaking your head. "everyone is super sweet and nice~ no one has caused trouble." you pushed away the thought of the minor bump in the road at yoongi's room.

"i'm a good boy too right? i don't act up~~" he put his hand under his chin and pursed his lips cutely. he surely was cute. you held back the urge to pinch his cheeks. so all you could do was laugh with a light blush and nod.

"yes, hoseok. you're a good patient." you ruffled his hair slightly.

"awe, am i only a patient to you?" a cute pout now was on his lips, putting his hand on his sides as an upset child would.

"well, hopefully, we become closer as friends." you said in a sing-song voice stepping towards his door. "would you like me to come back to remind you of your studio opening? or do you think you could manage?"

hoseok thought. he always remembered when his studio opened, he was the owner and couldn't let his students down by being late. usually, he was a good 20 minutes early just to clean up. but that would mean you would come back and see him. so, with the two options, he obviously chose the latter.

"just for safety precaution, please come back around to remind me." you nodded in understanding.

"have a nice morning then, and see you soon hoseok." you were about to shut his door before his voice called out to you.

"wait!" he rushed to the doorway, opening it wider as he smiled, "call me hobi from now on. after all, we are gonna wanna become comfortable if you wanna be close friends! i hear nicknames are good ways of doing so. so call me hobi from now on, okay?"

you couldn't say no, especially when he was beaming with a smile like a little puppy. he was so unreasonably cute, it was unfair.

"alright then, hobi, have a good rest of the morning." you made sure to exaggerate the new nickname, thinking it would make him happy. and it did and it showed through his bright smile.

this time you shut the door without him interrupting, continuing on with your job and going down the hallway a bit more to namjoon's room.

meanwhile, hoseok was on his bed, face down in the pillows. in his arms was one that was suffering from his tight hug that he was enveloping it with. he had to bite back a squeal knowing you were only a few feet away from his room.

'i'm a good boy, she said so herself.' he said with a light blush, kicking his feet in ecstasy. 'i can't let her down now, i'll be good for her and only her.'

➣kim namjoon

      online college courses so most of his mornings are spent in his office doing work. very smart and excels in most of his classes. occasionally will accompany jin on his out of country trips, just to be a helping hand if needed. blondish, blonde hair, usually exposing his forehead. he's 25 years old and does also confide in his lyrical book to relieve stress.

you stopped a moment in front of the door, leaning your head against the door. your eyes were widened a bit, seeing how long his list was. you soon realized that is was like that because it contained his school schedule (which was several pages long, he didn't keep out details.)

suddenly, the door was swung open, leaving you to fall out of balance. luckily, namjoon acted fast enough to catch you. he was careful with his hands, not wanting to intrude on your personal space. he kept his arms stiff as he caught you from your underarms.

"oh my go-! i'm so sorry namjoon," you bowed profusely, trying to hide the embarrassment in your voice. although, it didn't help much. his familiar chuckle left his lips as he shook his head.

"it's fine," he said with a sweet smile, "i suppose i should apologize too for scaring you. sorry, i had just seen someone's shadow by the door, wanted to see who it was." he explained, keeping the same sweet smile on his face.

you nodded in understanding, digging into your small bag for his dosage. "would you like water?"

"ah, yes. i do need water, unlike the others, i have trouble swallowing these pills down."

rushing to get water, you came back upstairs with a full small glass and a tired smile. "sorry, i should've added that to your notes. i'll be sure to add that on later." he said before swallowing his dose.

"well, i would hate to cut our conversation short but i do need to continue on working. duty does call, unfortunately." he said with a heavy sigh. he didn't want to leave you prescence, but he needed to finish his work before anything else. maybe if he worked hard enough, he would get to spend alone time with you before lunch.

so as you nodded and shut his door, he dashed to his desk and worked as fast. but effectively as possible. without taking a second glance at the click the whole time, he was clicking through pages of pages of articles. at with all this rushing to get finished, he was done at a new record speed of an hour and forty-five minutes.

that was half his time than usual. and he was giddy and excited to have some personal time spent with you. he left his room, shutting the door and bringing his cup of water with him as he walks down the stairs.

however, his rushed feet paused as he heard you laughing. along with a familiar laughter mixed in with yours.

"hobi! stop, i won fair and square!" giu exclaimed as hoseok stomped his feet childishly. he was acting like a child and that was what triggered your laughter. meanwhile, namjoon was scowling at the scene.

of course, he had to ruin the moment. he was supposed to talk to you for some time longer. whatever, he would get his way with you eventually, he told himself.

"what are you two doing?" namjoon voiced, walking closer to you two. in the center of the room there was a giant flat screen TV and it displayed the image of mario kart. "ah, nevermind. i'll let you two have your own time."

hoseok smirked victoriously seeing namjoon's disheartened attitude. "no! come on join us! hoseok had to leave for his studio anyway."

the younger of the two lifted his head hopefully, the cutest smile basking his features.

"really?"

"what-no-!"

"hobi, we can have a rematch mater. you have to go to your studio remember?" you reminded the male, who slouched on defeat. his victorious smile long gone as he stood from his position on the couch.

his bag was already packed for the studio and he hid you two a farewell, not without glaring at namjoon when you weren't paying attention. the other simply smiled innocently, waving bye almost mockingly to hoseok's retreating figure.

"to be honest, i'm kinda scared to go against you. hoseok is second best to jin in this house, so you must be really skilled."

you smiled confidently, "not to toot my own horn, but i've been playing since i was a kid." the newfound fact about yourself made namjoon smile fondly at you.

"well let's hope lady luck is on my side today."

she wasn't. he just all the races you two played, leaving you to pat his shoulder reassuringly even though a prideful smirk was on your lips.

"i demand a rematch, that was not fair!"

tou checked your phone, standing up with a smile. "afraid not at this moment. i've got to get the younger ones from school."

namjoon stood up and followed your walking figure, that was getting closer to the door. "we can send a driver to pick them up, come on just one more."

"sorry, duty calls, like you said earlier." namjoon let out a weak chuckle, not liking how his own words bit him in the butt.

"fine, but i expect a game when you come back."

"we will see namjoon, see you later." you waved and departed, leaving the male to slouch where he stood.

as you drove off to the college, jin sat in his wheelchair as yoongi leaned against the stairwell railing observing Namjoon.

"he's smart, but too selfish." yoongi noted, glaring at namjoon's figure.

"you're one to talk, you maniac."

"oh shut up, poser."

"ah, yoongi, you know I prefer romancer." the eldest winked as the other rolled his eyes at the statement.

| and that's the hyung line! sorry for the long wait =/ maknae line coming up next, apologies for any typos|

[spookyspemilyreid]

Happy Anniversary “Meteora”! (March 25, 2003)❤️

Meteora is the second studio album by American rock band Linkin Park. It was released on March 25, 2003 through Warner Bros. Records, following Reanimation, a collaboration album which featured remixes of songs included on their 2000 debut studio album Hybrid Theory. The album was produced by the band alongside Don Gilmore. The title Meteora is taken from the Greek Orthodox monasteries sharing the same name. Meteora has a similar sound to Hybrid Theory, as described by critics, and the album took almost a year to be recorded. It is the first Linkin Park studio album to feature Dave Farrell after he rejoined the band in 2000.

Meteora debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling over 810,000 copies in its first week. Linkin Park released singles from Meteora for over a year, including "Somewhere I Belong", "Faint", "Numb", "From the Inside", and "Breaking the Habit". The song "Lying from You" was released as a promotional single. Meteora received generally positive reviews, although critics noted that the album's musical style was similar to its predecessor Hybrid Theory .

Meteora has sold over 27 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time. It is certified 7x Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It was ranked number 36 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums of the 2000s. Some songs from the album were remixed with some of Jay-Z's songs for the EP Collision Course (2004). "Session" was nominated for Best Rock Instrumental Performance at the 46th Grammy Awards.

Initial writing for a second album dated back to early 2001, while still touring in support of Hybrid Theory. The band had written around eighty different demos during their Hybrid Theory World Tour and LP Underground Tour, within the span of just eight months. Rough song ideas written then would find its way to the final album; notably the intro for "Somewhere I Belong". Bennington recorded guitar notes for it, but found it too folk rock sounding. However, Shinoda and Joe Hahn reworked it, adding effects to it, and then played it backwards, molding it into something the band was happy with. As explained by Shinoda: "Since I reversed it, it was playing 4-3-2-1. The chord progression was reversed. Then I cut it into four pieces, and I played it 1-2-3-4. And that's why it has that sweeping sound.

In early 2002, after the touring, the writing continued in Mike's home studio, pre-production of the album began there. The band worked in pairs during the writing process, whereas Shinoda was always involved in all the songs. The recording of the songs mainly used Pro Tools, whereas the band used the traditional method of writing, in main studio. In June, pre-production terminated and the band headed for main production. The band finalized Don Gilmore as their producer. When Reanimation was released, the band had started to write the main content. Rob Bourdon spent eight hours a day in the studio for the recording of the album. By August, the band entered NRG Studios as Bennington also began writing songs with the band.

Linkin Park had finished versions of many songs before the actual recording process had begun, but they majorly wrote the finalized songs included in the track list in the studio. By October the drums were finalized and guitar parts were introduced by Brad in the control room of the studio. By the end of October, the bass parts were introduced. Don Gilmore himself being a bass player helped Farrell in his recording. The sampling part by Hahn was introduced just a month before the deadline, thereby Mike finished the recording of "Breaking the Habit" with strings arrangement by David Campbell; the song had been worked on by Shinoda for five or six years. The vocal production started in November. The mixing process as well as the album itself was finished in New York City.

Lyrically the album contains elements including depressing emotions, anger, and recovery. Explaining to MTV, Bennington said: "We don't talk about situations, we talk about the emotions behind the situations. Mike and I are two different people, so we can't sing about the same things, but we both know about frustration and anger and loneliness and love and happiness, and we can relate on that level." In the same interview, Shinoda explained it as: "What we really wanted to do was just push ourselves and push each other to really find new ways to be creative." He continued: "We wanted each sample that was in each song to be something that might perk your ear – something that you might not have ever heard before." In a promotional interview, Rob Bourdon stated: "We wanted a group of songs that would sit well together because we wanted to make a record that you could pop into your CD player and, from beginning to end, there would never be a spot where you start daydreaming." In titling the album, Mike said that "Meteora was a word that caught my attention because it sounded huge." Dave, Joe, and Chester elaborated that just like how Meteora, the rock formations in Greece, is very epic, dramatic, and has great energy, the band wanted the album to have that same feeling.

Genre-wise, the album is categorized as nu metal, rap metal, rap rock, and alternative rock.

The promotion for the album began well ahead before its release, as pictures of the band recording were distributed to the media. To support the album, there were many photo shoots of the band on October 29 at the Ambassador Hotel, where the band took a break from recording the album for two days, for designing the cover art of the album. "The Flem" and "Delta" helped the band for the art works, for the album as well as for the singles spawned by it. A TV commercial for the album was premiered on January 1, 2003. "Somewhere I Belong" was released as the first single, premiering on US radio on March 18, 2003. Being released only nine days before the album release, it influenced the album sales performance worldwide. The second single off the album was "Faint", released before the band started its world tour. The third single "Numb" was released when Linkin Park performed it live in Madrid. "From the Inside" was released as the fourth single off the album before the North American leg of the world tour. "Breaking the Habit" was released while the band was in Indonesia. The album was released with various limited edition content for promotional purposes.

There is a special edition of Meteora, which includes the "Making of Meteora" DVD documentary. The special-edition package was packaged in a blue tinted case with the blue Meteora cover that can be found in some parts of Asia, United States, and more commonly in India. An alternate Indian version contains an alternate DVD and alternative cover that is packaged in a slimline case with the disc in original packaging. The "Tour Edition" of Meteora is packaged in a two disc set. The second disc, which is a Video CD, has the music videos for "Somewhere I Belong", "Faint", "Numb", and "Breaking the Habit". The tour edition is packaged in a standard Compact Disc case, rather than their trademark digipak case. The album was also released on a very limited quantity of vinyl records (spread across two LPs) under Warner Brothers. These are coveted by collectors and fetch high prices at auction. In 2014, Linkin Park released a demo version of Shinoda singing the song, on their 14th annual fan club CD, LPU XIV. 

The band promoted the album with their Meteora World Tour and various other supporting tours. The world tour was supported by Hoobastank, P.O.D. and Story of the Year. The band played shows at Pellissier Building and Wiltern Theatre on the day before the album release and on the release date. The shows were called "'Meteora' Release Show". The European leg was cancelled because Chester was having severe back and abdominal pains. As a result, half of the music video of "Numb" was shot in Los Angeles and the Czech Republic. The album was also promoted by the Projekt Revolution festival. A live album was released in support of the album titled Live in Texas. Linkin Park played various special shows worldwide, including "Reading Ireland", as well as performing during the Kerrang! Awards, "Livid", "X-103's Not So Silent Night", "The End's Deck The Hall Ball" and "KROQ Almost Acoustic X-Mas", in promotion of the album.

Meteora received generally positive reviews, although critics noted that the album's musical style was similar to its predecessor, Hybrid Theory (2000). The overall Metacritic score is 62. E! Online rated it A, and expected it to "shoot straight for the stars". Entertainment Weekly described it as "radio-friendly perfection". Dot Music described it as a "guaranteed source of ubiquitous radio hits". Rolling Stone said the band "squeezed the last remaining life out of this nearly extinct formula". Billboard Magazine described Meteora as "a ready-made crowdpleaser". The New Musical Express said it had "massive commercial appeal" but left the reviewer "underwhelmed". 

AllMusic described the album as "nothing more and nothing less than a Hybrid Theory part 2.", but added that the band "has discipline and editing skills, keeping this record at a tight 36 minutes and 41 seconds, a move that makes it considerably more listenable than its peers... since they know where to focus their energy, something that many nu-metal bands simply do not." Sputnikmusic writer Damrod criticized the album as being too similar to Hybrid Theory, but praised the album's production quality and catchiness, stating "the songs just invade your brain".  

Blender described it as "harder, denser, uglier", while Q described it as "less an artistic endeavor than an exercise in target marketing." Entertainment Weekly gave the album a B+, calling it a "thunderously hooky album that seamlessly blends the group's disparate sonic elements into radio-friendly perfection".  

The song "Session" was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance in 2004.

In its first week, Meteora debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. The album sold at least 810,000 copies its first week of release. As of June 2014, the album has sold 6.2 million copies in the US, and over 27 million copies worldwide. The album was ranked number 36 on Billboard's Hot 200 Albums of the Decade.

[foliea]

Rubber Band - Tyler Joseph Imagine

Paring: Friend!Tyler x Fem!Reader

Word count: 1,630

warnings: brief mention of self harm, a bit of angst but mainly sweet

authors note: this has been plaguing my mind for days now. And honestly it’s probably my favorite fic i’ve written ever. I’m super proud of this and I hope you all like this as well. Also I spent like two and a half hours writing this, it’s 4 am I’m tired.

March 17, 2006

as I walked down the halls on my way to the gym, I tugged down the sleeves on my hoodie. Insuring no one would see what tortures I put myself through. 

Just as I rounded the corner into the next corridor I felt someone run right into my chest. “Uh, sorry...” I muttered as I stuck my hand out to help the girl, who had fallen to the floor. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

She took my hand and hoisted herself up. “No harm done.” She smiled while dusting off her jeans. She slowly looked me up and down, eyes lingering on my arm. I quickly looked down only to see that my sleeve had been scrunched up near my elbow.

The girl sighed as I yanked the sleeve down. There was a brief slapping noise before she extended her hand out to me. In it was a singular rubber band. “Here take this. And uh when ever you feel the need to...” She trailed off looking to my now covered arm. I nodded understanding what she meant. “Just pull it back and let it go. Keep doing that until the feeling goes away.”

Hesitantly, I took the rubber band from her. “Thank you...” I looked up realizing I had no idea what her name was.

“Y/N.” She smiled.

“Thank you Y/N.” I quickly pulled the rubber band onto my wrists, just as the warning bell rang. 

“I’ll see you around...”

“Tyler.” 

“Tyler.” She repeated with a small nod before walking off.

Over the next few months Y/N and I swapped numbers to keep in touch over summer.

July 6, 2011

As I walked into the small coffee shop, a bell signified my entry. Despite living in Columbus my whole life, I had still yet to come here. “I’ll be right with you!” A small yelp was left out slightly after.

I walked up to the counter and stood there awkwardly waiting for the girl to appear from the back of the shop. As I stood I inspected the store. There were two other people there, an elderly couple, sitting by the window.

“Okay sorry about that.” The girl appeared behind the counter with a grin on her face. She seemed familiar. “What can I getcha?” 

I froze realizing I had no clue what I wanted. Hesitantly I looked up to the chalk board behind the girl. As I searched for something that I knew would please me I fiddled with the rubber band on my wrist.

“Ya know I gave you a rubber band in our sophomore year of high school not thinking too much about it.” Suddenly it hit me.

“Y/N?” 

“That’s my name don’t wear it out.” She let out a light chuckle at her own joke. “How are you these days, Tyler?”

“Honestly? Pretty good. My band has our CD Release party in a couple days. Well I say band... It’s really just me and my friend Josh on stage singing and playing drums...”

“Sounds like a wonderful time. Maybe I’ll show up.”

“Really?” she nodded with a toothy smile on her face. 

“Now, have you decided on what you want?” 

I quickly ordered my drink and handed her the money, making sure to leave a little extra in the tip jar.

Maybe I’ll have to come back to this cafe more often.

July 8, 2014

I nervously stood in front of the mirror when there was a knock at the door. “Come in!” 

“Hey, Ty.” Y/N smiled. “Ready for your big day?”

Although on the inside I was screaming yes. I still shook my head. “No... What if she walks out on me?”

“Tyler there is no way in hell that Jenna is going to walk out on you. You two are so in love its disgusting.” We both chuckled.

There was another knock at the door. “Tyler, Y/N c’mon we gotta go.” Quietly, we both stood up. She patted my shoulder giving me one last reassuring smile before running off to find Josh.

Ever since I had introduced the two, Jenna and Y/N became inseparable. Meaning that when it came time for Jenna to pick her bridesmaids, Y/N had to be on the list. And of course Josh would be one of my groomsmen.

----

“And yeah I know I probably should have ‘practiced’ my speech but I felt like wigging it would be better...” as josh when off on a tangent about how he didn’t practice his speech and everyone was listening intently, my mind wandered to how incredibly lucky I am. I just married my best friend and along with her, I have two of the greatest other best friends.

“Okay it looks like it’s my turn to talk.” Y/N let out a dry chuckle as as stood up. “The first time I ever met Tyler, I was on my way to chem, totally dreading it cause I had a test, when all of a sudden I run right into someone’s chest.” As she retold the story her face would falter only to perk of at certain points. “... It’s crazy to think that I made three life long best friends because of a stupid rubber band...”

She passed the mic onto one of Jenna’s other bridesmaids as she sat down, hands fiddling with something in her lap. From the distance I was at I couldn’t see but the look Josh had given me said it was something familiar. 

August 25, 2016

Josh and I quickly ran off stage only to be greeted by the open arms of Y/N. “You boys did amazing.” We smiled pulling her into another hug.

“Couldn’t do it without our number one fan cheering us on!” Josh laughed poking her stomach

“Cheering? No. Taking the best concert pics you’ll see in your life? Yes.” All three of us laughed again walking back to our dressing room to gather out belongings.

As we packed I could see Y/N’s smile falter while she quietly pulled at something on her wrist. “You boys... and girl... ready to hit the road?” Our tour manager asked, peaking his head through the door slightly.

“Yep!” Y/N jumped up off the couch quickly, turning to us. “I’m gonna head out to the bus to get ahead on editing these photos.” and with that she walked out.

December 28, 2018

“I remember the day pretty well for it being twelve years ago.” Slowly I told the story of how Y/N and I met, how I invited her to our CD Release, how she comforted me when I got nervous before my wedding, how she would take photos for us on tour. 

I could see her family crying in the front row, Josh quietly wiping his tears away as he held onto her little sister. Jenna was staring at me, silently encouraging me to finish. 

“But most importantly I remember the last time I saw her. There was something broken behind her E/C eyes. Something that I knew was too late to fix.” I sighed. “I didn’t think too much of it at the time though, I thought maybe she had spilled coffee on herself this morning, or maybe she was stood up on a date. I just wished I would have noticed that she was grabbing the rubber band on her wrist just a bit more than usual.” 

I rubbed my hand over my face, messing with my own rubber band. “I’m sorry.” I swiftly put down the microphone and ran off the to bathroom.

September 30, 2019

“Hey Y/N. Sorry I haven’t talked to you in a while. Tour, you know how it is. Anyways I thought I should say hi since it is you’re birthday and everything. Life’s been hectic recently. Josh and I just finished the final leg of the Bandito tour. The fans love it, they miss your photos by the way. Like a crazy ton. We’ve already started working on our next album. It’s gonna be better than any of our others. Okay maybe not Regional since that’s always been you’re favorite- actually scratch that, it will definitely be better than Regional. Everyone misses having you around. Especially Josh, but he’s been doing better recently. Jenna misses having another girl on tour with her. Oh that reminds me, Jenna designed our newest tour bus. Its awesome. Or I guess in Twenty One Pilots fashion, sick as frick. My mom misses you as well. She says I need someone around to convince me not to get anymore tattoos. I still have that uke you made me. The one with the art from each album. Don’t get mad at me but I added yellow tape so that Trench fits into it as well. Wait I almost forgot, Jenna and I have a kid coming soon, we don’t know if they’ll be a boy or girl but we decided that if it is a girl we’ll name her after you since you mean so much to us. I still have all the Polaroids you would take of me, you, and Josh. It’s crazy to think of how long it’s been since those were taken. It’s getting pretty late so I think I should go... Bye Y/N.” I slowly stood up brushing the dirt off my pants. I started to walk away before stopping in my tracks and turning around. “Wait I was going to sing for you... one sec.”

I sat down again pulling my ukulele out of my bag before starting to play Truce. “Take pride in what is sure to die.” I sang as I strummed the last cord. Silently I removed the rubber band from my wrist and gently placed it on the ground. “I’m sorry friend.” I said turning away from the grave.