#i revisit this interview more times than i should | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

koqabear · 7 months

Note

Hiii congrats on 2k sol obsessed with everything you write!!!!💓 Could I request revisiting emo boy? Like what their relationship is like after and dates and how sex is like? Maybe beomgyu’s band really blows up and he’s quite busy, how does oc respond to this? And with smut? Tysm!!💝

playlist // beomgyu's encore outfit hehe // cont. of hey emo boy!

“The day of your one-year anniversary with Beomgyu was expected to be spent away from each other— but not if either of you can help it, far too in love to let anything get in the way of you two.”

bassist!beomgyu x fem!reader // wc: 6.6K (everyone stfu rn) // genre: band au, opposites attract trope, established relationship, smut, tooth rotting fluff tbh, MDNI.

warnings: they are in love and it’s fucking GROSS!! barely edited, the two have hella piercings hehe (bg: snake bites, tongue, eyebrow // mc: smiley & nipple piercings) pet names (sweet thing, pretty, etc.) use of the L word bc they are literally obsessed w/ each other.

smut warnings: hard dom! gyu, sub!mc, needy sex sorry 😖, marking, manhandling, dry humping, biting, breast play, possessiveness, unprotected sex, bg picks the mc up, scratching, dacryphilia, dumbification, a lot of kissing lol, degrading, slight praise, fingering, creampie, cum eating…? lmk if i should add anything !

Notes: happy (late) birthday to the fic that’s probably my peak… this story single handedly changed the course of my blog me thinks. thank you to everyone who was just as affected by emo gyu as i was.

Being in a committed relationship with Choi Beomgyu, bassist of Tomorrow x Together and an absolute unattainable heartthrob, was not very easy.

It was at first; with their blossoming career, it was more about the music than their looks. Fans were loyal simply because they liked their sound, their message, the way their concerts were filled with such energy and passion it left their hearts beating with adrenaline after— but of course, it’s hard to not notice the absolute eye candy on stage; low-lidded gazes, dark stage lights that barely highlighted their stunning features, and clothing that was just as alluring and flattering as the rest of them; inevitably, their popularity sky-rocketed, for better and for worse.

Beomgyu was left with more money than he knew what to do with. Most of the time, it was used to spoil you, his pretty girlfriend he brought with him everywhere because he was just too obsessed with you— it made his band members wonder if he simply had attachment issues by how much his world revolved around you. But no, you were just as bad as him; present during rehearsals, always in the studio to cheer them on or give them a second opinion on a new song; it wasn’t long before you ended up befriending the rest of them as well, a tight bond forming simply because of all the things you went through together.

As unfortunate as it was, they weren’t the only ones forced to bear with negative and hateful encounters from the public; while they had their experiences of being mistreated early in their career, you had to deal with immature or creepy fans that had taken a liking to harass you— inboxes on all social media platforms flooded constantly, your number even leaked once as you were forced to buy a new phone all together from how badly you were being spammed— Beomgyu had been quick to lash out and tell them to leave you alone if they didn’t want a lawsuit on their hands.

Overtime, they adjusted to their popularity. Schedules slowly became filled to the brim, their dream now a reality as they spent months on tour— and while you were more than happy and proud of them and their flourishing career, it’d be a lie to say it was all one happy and perfect life.

You hadn’t seen Beomgyu in ages— decades, centuries, eons— in other words, two weeks.

The band had more interviews and performances than you could keep up with; if they weren’t on some random talk show, they were at a photoshoot, getting interviewed for the next issue of a magazine you’d undoubtedly have on your coffee table the day it came out. Promotions, nights at the studio, it all added up— and before you knew it, your one year anniversary began to creep up, and all hopes to celebrate it properly dwindled down in your heart— but, having him here with you today was enough.

You didn’t blame Beomgyu; you weren’t angry or upset, because it was simply something neither of you could control. And though it did suck knowing you wouldn’t be able to spend such a meaningful day together, it felt a little better to know that you weren’t the only one hung up on it.

On the contrary— you think Beomgyu might be handling this worse than you.

“Baby, baby please,” he cries, refusing to let go of you and cuddling closer to you instead, a mess of tangled limbs and blankets as he cups your face fondly, “pleaaase I know you said I shouldn’t feel bad but please come on tour with us this week, I think I’ll seriously die if you’re not here this time.”

“Gyu, baby, I really shouldn’t—” you say quietly, only to get cut off by his excessive whining and teary eyes. His bottom lip is jutted out in a ridiculous pout, squeezing your cheeks and holding back a smile at the way your lips puff out as a result; you attempt to push him off you, only for him to retaliate by rolling entirely on top of you, a loud squeal escaping you at the feeling of his weight pressing you into the mattress, his stupid face hovering over yours as he continues to plead you quietly.

“Pleaaseee?” he whines, pressing his flat palms against your cheeks and getting your lips to puff out again; he ignores your half-hearted protests for him to get the fuck off, choosing to punctuate his every word with a kiss instead, his piercings a sharp contrast to his plump lips that crash against you with every word.

“Please?” kiss. “Won’t you,” kiss. “come with us?” another kiss.

“Please. Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease—”

He’s practically suffocating you at this point, refusing to pull away and mumbling the words against your lips, laughs breaking between the two of you as you yell at him to get off, that you can barely breathe with him on top of you; you’re pushing at his shoulders weakly as he continues to tease you, your unabashed laugh contagious as he quickly finds himself smiling as well— he only pulls away once he hears you yell a loud fuck, okay! Hovering over you with bright eyes and a wide grin.

His arms snake around your waist before he’s rolling over, successfully switching so that you’re the one on top of him— he ignores the loud and exaggerated sigh of relief you let out.

“It won’t make much of a difference though,” you say quietly, hiding in the crook of his neck as you confess your doubts, “You’ll be too busy and exhausted the whole day, I really don’t want me to be added to your list of concerns.”

You went on tour with him, once— but you learned it was better off to not be anywhere backstage with him during those times, the boy too concerned and constantly doting on you to remain focused; any mistakes he made hitting much harder, a subconscious pressure to be perfect and give his all only trifolded by your presence.

“What? No,” he says immediately, sitting back on his elbows and causing you to look up at him in response; his brows are furrowed and he seems a bit baffled by your comment, shaking his head adamantly to emphasize his point, “I like having you there. I know you like being there, I want you there— I wouldn’t be asking you to come with me if I thought you were a burden.”

He managed to pull out the exact words you were trying to skirt around— your face heats up at his reassurance, much too intimidated by the intensity of his gaze as you bury your face into his chest instead; his chest bounces from the laugh he lets out, flopping onto his back once more and hugging you close, bodies pressed flush against each other and one of his legs thrown around your waist in a childish attempt to pull you even closer.

“Plus, don’t you wanna visit Europe with me?” he asks, a teasing lilt to his voice as he feels you nod shyly; he knows just how much you enjoy the travel aspect to his career, constantly asking for pictures or to facetime while he’s gone, “I wanna show you all my favorite spots this time, and not through some glitchy facetime— I wanna spend time with you, sweet thing.”

“Ugh, shut up,” you groan, hitting his chest weakly as he simply laughs at you softly, “you’re so corny.”

“You love it,” he coos, rubbing a soothing hand up and down your back, biting back a smile at the way he can feel your breath even out— you remain silent. Partly because you’re falling asleep from his touch, and partly because he’s right.

⤬⤬⤬

Europe is breathtaking— you’ve never been so grateful for Beomgyu’s stubborn, persistent mind.

The tour has gone as perfect as always, spending a few days at their shows before you simply resigned to stay at the hotel instead; after seeing that Beomgyu was so distracted trying to look for you during a show that he missed his cue (and played the notes wrong to another song) you found it better to wait for him and see him after instead— ready to help him wind down and relax after another energetic, adrenaline-inducing show.

Most nights consisted of you practically carrying him to the bathtub; cooing soft reassurance as he whined about how tired and sore he felt, shampooing his hair, massaging his scalp and tense shoulders— most of the time, he’d fall asleep then and there, and it’d be another hassle to wake him up and get him out. You’d lure him out of the tub and wait for him to change into your matching pajamas— hello kitty ones, his idea, not yours— and greet him in the bed with a warm embrace and lips that peppered kisses all over his face.

It was during these moments you found humor in the contrast of his stage persona to his true self; from his usual attire, chokers and ripped clothes, wardrobe consisting of black and multiple piercings that decorated his ears and face, your thumb brushing over his newest eyebrow piercing fondly— versus the man that slept soundly in your arms now, long hair tied back and cute pink barrettes clipping back his bangs, donned in hot pink fuzzy pajamas— and you’re sure that if his band members saw him like this, they’d never stop teasing him.

You didn’t have to wait long to confirm that thought; Beomgyu didn’t bother changing as he met up with the others in Yeonjun’s room for breakfast the next morning, tugging you along and remaining unfazed at the way his band members burst out laughing the moment he entered the room— you felt a bit bad at the way you found yourself laughing as well, even more so because you’re the only reason he’s found himself dressed like this. (But again, he was the one who bought these clothes in the first place.)

“Happy anniversary, you two,” Yeonjun muses, smiling at the way you’re the only one who seems to process that, chirping out a cheery thank you! as you proceed to drag Beomgyu to the couch, “I feel bad that we have a concert today, ___. As vomit-inducing as it is seeing you two, you do deserve to spend the day together.”

“It’s okay,” you immediately say, brushing his teasing comment off and holding back a smile at the way Beomgyu is still struggling to gain consciousness, more tired than you thought as he simply stares at his waffles for a moment before finally digging in, “at least he’s spending the day doing something he loves.”

“Gross,” Hueningkai says, scrunching his nose playfully before laughing at the glare you send him, “you two are so mushy, it’s painful.”

The rest of the day leading up to the concert is spent peacefully; once Beomgyu has gained enough coherence to fight back against the member’s jabs, he’s pulling you away to show you new sights and stores he discovered from his previous visits, spoiling you beyond belief and buying anything you look at for a second too long; you end up with more bags than you know what to do with, and Beomgyu refuses to let you carry a single one as he proceeds to take you one of his go-to restaurants, as he told you; saying he’s been wanting to bring you here since the moment he found it, smiling brightly when he sees you enjoying the food as much as he did.

To say he’s reluctant to leave you to go to the concert venue is an understatement; you think he might start crying at any given moment as he stares at you with shining eyes, unable to let go of your hand as he stands by the door of the hotel room— not quite ready to leave yet, but knowing that he must eventually as he chooses to bring you in for another slow, loving kiss instead.

“Are you sure you’re not coming tonight?” he asks you, trying to hide the sadness in his voice and failing miserably.

“And make you fuck up your setlist? I don’t think so,” you try to joke, only to panic slightly at the way his eyes gloss over; your hand immediately jumps up to cup his face, laughing softly at his expression as he simply pouts at you ridiculously.

“Hey, hey, it’s alright,” you grin, pressing a chaste kiss to his lips before you lean over to his ear, voice dropping to nothing but a whisper as you let your lips brush against his ear, “I’ll have a nice surprise for you tonight, so you better give your best show out there, okay?”

The low lilt of your voice is enough to have him perking up immediately; mouth parted slightly as he stares at you, unsure of what else to do but nod pathetically, knowing he won’t be able to control himself if he thinks about what you might have in store for too long.

With one last chaste kiss, he’s leaving— and only because Soobin was pounding at the door, telling him they’d be late if he didn’t go out this instant— you think he might start crying as he gives you one last pouty glance, waving to you sadly before he slips out the door.

You’re left alone, the room suddenly much lonelier and quieter than it was a few seconds ago— and you laugh, checking the time and running to your suitcase to get your makeup and outfit for tonight.

A revealing shirt, a mini-skirt that’s a bit alarmingly short— you’re pulling out a sparkling, pink outfit like it’s nothing, throwing it all on and doing your makeup as you check the time absentmindedly; your phone lights up while you’re in the middle of doing so, and a notification reads that the staff are waiting for you outside to take you to the venue once you’re ready.

Beomgyu loves performing knowing you’re in the audience more than anything; it’s something he’s made blatant to you, knowing that despite his mistakes, despite his small distractions, his energy always goes out the roof the moment he spots you there. So you knew how distraught Beomgyu would be to hear that you’re not going to the show tonight despite being able to, but the thought of surprising him is much more enticing than you’d like to admit.

With one last check of your appearance in the mirror, you grab a jacket before you go; Beomgyu’s favorite oversized zip-up, the clothing item a stark contrast to the rest of your feminine and bright attire— and you smile, adjusting the purse on your shoulder before you’re off to the hotel lobby, where the staff are waiting and ready to escort you safely.

The venue is almost full by the time you get there; you’re escorted straight to your barricade seats front and center, smiling shyly and waving at fans that seem to recognize you; your face feels hot and you walk faster at the way they get excited at the sight of you, not used to the fame that comes with being Beomgyu’s girlfriend— hell, you really don’t know how Beomgyu does it.

You’re more than relieved once the concert begins, any attention that still lingered on you immediately getting stolen by the boys that appeared on stage; you winced slightly at the loud screams all around you, unable to help the way you eventually joined in— morphing into another fan in the crowd, the venue much too dark for any of the boys to recognize you just yet.

They looked stunning in their concert outfits; the professional, matching and dark outfits tailored perfectly to each member, intricate with chains and rosaries and pretty layers. Your eyes widen as you watch Beomgyu walk to his position, taking note of his hair that has now been dyed back to black— you hadn’t realized how long it’d gotten until now, the layers framing his face and falling into his eyes as he goes to push back his bangs with a delicate hand.

There are no introductions tonight— the music begins immediately, loud and abrasive and making the crowd jump along excitedly, screaming the lyrics and reaching out to try and get one of the members to pay attention to them— on the contrary, you try to remain hidden, looking away and bowing your head every time Beomgyu’s gaze sweeps around your area.

God, you wish Beomgyu didn’t turn into such a ditz whenever he spotted you in the audience— because then you’d be able to enjoy more of their concerts, addicted to the borderline euphoric feeling you get from attending them, only for it to be multiplied as your eyes catch onto your boyfriend performing, your heart pounding against your chest at the sound of his voice ringing out into the venue— a surge of pride and love fills you as a grin spreads on your face, and it isn’t until you notice a member walking around that you’re able to look away from him.

Looking up, you make eye contact with Hueningkai.

His mischievous smile and raised brows are immediately returned with a violent shake of your head; telling him to not say anything to Beomgyu, rubbing your hands together pleadingly the moment he glances back at the said man— then he turns to you, sending you a playful wink before he’s off to another section, not without sending you one last teasing grin and a wave; you’re glancing at Beomgyu in a panic, unsure if he’s spotted you, only to be relieved at the sight of him too concentrated on playing to even look up at the crowd.

It isn’t until the encore that they’ve all begun to move around, (save for Taehyun and Soobin, bound to their instruments as they’re resigned to simply wave at the crowd when they can) changed into more comfortable outfits during a small intermission— Beomgyu is decked in baggy jeans and an equally baggy shirt, long hair messy and makeup smudged as he walks along the stage, smiling and waving at fans that reach out for him— he plays his bass so effortlessly as he does, truly mesmerizing as he stops a few times to interact with fans; the sight has your heart fluttering hopelessly.

But the closer he gets, the more you’re buzzing with nervous energy. Gripping onto the barricade tightly, having stood up long ago with the rest of the fans that are eager to get their attention. Beomgyu’s eyes scan through the crowd thoroughly, smiling cutely and returning hearts until he spots you.

He freezes entirely.

He’s no longer playing bass— he’s just standing there, in complete shock as he stares at you. You can only muster to give him a sheepish wave, an uncontrollable grin on your face as you laugh at his dumbfounded expression, trying to yell at him to go back to playing. But he doesn’t, and you’re jumping slightly at the way he takes off his bass and jumps off the stage, security frantically following behind as he rushes over to you.

His hands are on your face and he’s pulling you in for a kiss quicker than you can process; you hear the screams of the crowd around you, but Beomgyu’s got you in his hold so tightly that you’re unable to pull away, left to give in and melt against him as he kisses you for a little longer. Your face feels as though it’s on fire by the time he’s pulled away, his own alight entirely with joy as he grins at you, your head still in his hands as he leans against the barricade excitedly— you think he might just jump over it any moment now.

“You’re here?” he says exasperatedly, eyes scanning you frantically as though he were imagining you, “why didn’t you tell me, you should’ve— I would’ve—”

“Beomgyu,” you cut him off, placing your hands over his and laughing at the way he can only stutter stupidly, brushing his hair behind his ear fondly— watching the way his eyes crinkle cutely as he smiles, your own sweeping over the array of piercings that decorate him, hello kitty earrings glinting under the light— and pry his hands off your face, ignoring the pout he sends you as you scold him instead. “Get back on stage!”

Your words seem to snap him out of his reverie; his head is whipping back to look at the stage, at the way his friends can only laugh at him teasingly and yell at him to get back here— the way Yeonjun yells directly into the mic is slightly embarrassing, shrinking at the way all eyes are on you as the man’s words ring out the venue— Beomgyu, get the fuck back here!

He’s only able to leave with one last chaste kiss— the crowd is screaming at the sight, and you’re resisting the urge to cover your face in weak hopes that it could take all this attention off you— but you’ll bear it, especially with the way Beomgyu mouths a cute I love you! before he’s jumping back on stage.

The poor boy is unable to take his eyes off you for the rest of the night— but on the bright side, there are no missed cues or wrong notes played. He’s just entranced with you for the rest of the encore, his energy seemingly replenished with the way he jams out to the music; mouthing the lyrics even when it’s not his part, maintaining eye-contact with you during songs he knows you’re particularly fond of— and suddenly, the idea of spending his anniversary at a concert isn’t as depressing as it was earlier tonight— because now, he had you by his side.

⤬⤬⤬

“Beomgyu— Beomgyu please, not here…” you whine, unable to do much but bite your lip and swallow back whines that threaten to escape you, left to Beomgyu’s mercy as he immediately led you to his dressing room after the show— the said man is much too focused on kissing and marking your neck to listen, soft hair brushing against your face as he pulls you flush against him; back pressed against the wall, arched prettily from the way his hands snake around your waist and press your lower half against his— you’re holding back a groan at the way he’s already hopelessly hard against you.

“Why didn’t you tell me you’d be coming? Hmmm? Just wanted to be a tease? Was this your little surprise?” he asks, biting at your skin and huffing out a laugh at the whine that escapes you; your hands are gripping onto his shirt tightly, fisting it in your hands and wrinkling the material as he lets his teeth sink slightly near your collarbones, “god, you look so good tonight, you’d really expect me to be able to hold myself back?”

His hands are wandering down your waist; over the swell of your ass, fiddling with the hem of your mini-skirt before he’s venturing under it— feeling the way you shiver against him the moment his hands squeeze at the soft flesh, fingers decorated with rings cold against your skin as he comes back up to kiss you. It’s rough and desperate, lip rings scratching as he kisses you with such hunger it leaves you breathless; he grinds his cock desperately against you, eliciting a small gasp from you and allowing him to slip his tongue inside— the piercing that decorates it scrapes along your mouth, unable to help the way your knees weaken at the feeling of him— his touch is everywhere, leaving you dizzy and lightheaded as you can only melt against him, allowing him to press you flush against the wall with his own body; your miniskirt is riding up along your hips as he situates himself between your legs, panties already a mess as he begins to rut his cock into you.

“Are you sure you want to wait now, pretty?” he asks, looking down at you with low-lidded and fucked out eyes— he punctuates his words with a particularly harsh thrust, laughing at the way you yelp and tighten your hold on him, “I could stop everything right now, send you back to the hotel like this and make you wait, just like you said— is that what you want?”

Oh, he’s cruel— even more so because you’re left shaking your head no deliriously, your mind fogged with such need that your eyes are glossing over at the very thought of not having Beomgyu inside you right now; your voice is pathetic as you plead Beomgyu to finish what he started, throwing a hand over his shoulder and entangling your fingers into his hair as you pull him back into you— he’s more than eager to return the kiss, tilting his head and pressing himself more against you as a hand reaches down to your thigh; grabbing the back of your knee, guiding you to hook it around his waist as he begins to rut into you mindlessly.

“So cute, my pretty girl,” he mumbles against your lips, eyes trailing down your low-cut top to spot his favorite zip-up, a smile tugging at his lips as he merely sends you a cute smile, “did you miss me that much? Already so needy from a little bit of kissing— god, I love you so much…”

You think he’s mostly talking to himself at this point— spewing nothing but filth as his hands shove your shirt over your chest, grinning as he remains impatient enough to not take off a single item of clothing, choosing to push tug your bra down harshly before he’s swooping down to mark your breasts with a cruel smile.

“Looked so fucking hot out there, just made me wanna take you backstage and fuck you there,” he confesses, listening to the choked whine you let out, his pierced tongue playing with your hardened nipples, leaving them swollen and sensitive. He’s looking up at you with doe eyes that contrast greatly with the way he sticks his tongue out for you, letting you watch the way he circles and toys with the cute jewelry he bought for you earlier today, pulling away with a coy smile and leaving them soaked with his spit— he blows softly on them, watching with tentative eyes as you keen at the feeling.

“God, you know I’ve been wanting to do this every time I see you at one of our shows? To make sure that everyone that looks at you knows just who,” he rolls his hips into you, nice and slow and letting you feel the length of his cock press against you as you flutter your eyes shut from pleasure, “you’re here for?”

“Fuck, gyu,” you pant out, snaking your hands under his shirt and up his back, grabbing at his shoulders and pulling him into you— as if there’s still space between the two of you, as if you’d die if you weren’t touching him at all times, “‘m only yours, only want you…”

He’s sneaking a hand down to move your panties to the side, the two of you much too desperate to shed off any layers— and as you listen to the clinking sounds of his belt, undoing his jeans and pulling out his hardened cock, you busy yourself by sucking and biting at his neck, listening to his stuttered breaths as you suck and tease at the joint of his neck, his most sensitive spot as you bite at it playfully— you’re only pulling away at the feeling of Beomgyu grabbing at you hair and tugging you away, letting out a baffled laugh at the satisfied look you give him in return.

“Want everyone to know you’re mine,” you coo out softly, grinding your pussy slowly against Beomgyu’s tip that teases your entrance, your mouth falling open at the feeling of him mirroring the action, running along your folds and swiping at your clit, “all mine, my pretty boy…”

He laughs fondly against your lips at that— bringing you in for a slow kiss, feeling the way your mind goes blank the moment his tip slowing enters you; he’s swallowing a soft moan from you as he bottoms out slowly, keeping himself deep inside and grinding his hips slowly against yours— and he stays there, a tease like always as he watches your brows furrow and your lips pout, telling him softly to move, to do something.

“Mmmh, all yours,” he mumbles softly, pulling out slowly to let you feel the way every vein runs against your walls, clenching and fluttering against his length as he hisses at the feeling, “I’m yours, belong only to you, fuck…”

He’s not able to keep this agonizingly slow pace up for long— as much as he wants to tease you, to have you crying and pleading for him to fuck you stupid, he isn’t fairing that well himself— so it isn’t long before he’s beginning to snap his hips into you, cock curving and aiming for that spot that has your knees buckling, pretty nails digging into Beomgyu’s shoulders and biting at the skin in order to try to stabilize yourself.

“Such a perfect cunt— fuck, ah, just wanna fill you up, wanna see it dripping down those pretty thighs— stupid fucking skirt can’t hide anything, ugh—” his voice is deep and breathy as he continues to talk into your ear, his hands sliding down to the swell of your ass before he’s holding it there— lifting you up, forcing you to hook your legs around his waist as you’re left to his mercy; his chest is pressed flush against yours as he fucks you, and you can only bury your face into his neck to try and muffle your sounds, the rough way you bounce from his thrusts causing your nails to slip and scratch down his back— he hisses at the feeling, only to be spurred by the stinging sensation it leaves behind.

“So loud, shit,” he laughs meanly, grinning at the way you only bury your face into him more to try and muffle your sounds, “want everyone to hear you? All the staff, the members— I’m sure they’d like to see what a pretty doll you are for me.”

You shake your head at that— but your body gives you away as your cunt clenches around him pathetically, the wet sounds of skin against skin filling the room and undoubtedly filtering outside— but you remain persistent to keep your moans to yourself, choking back on sounds of pleasure as Beomgyu only begins to fuck you rougher; your silence is a challenge, one he’ll gladly take as he begins to roll his hips into you just the way you like it.

“Come on pretty, I wanna hear you,” he purrs into your ear, a hand snaking around to rub at your clit while the other remains firm on your ass, “don’t you feel good? I can make you feel even better— so, so so good, just let me hear your cute little sounds.”

You’re playing hard to get. And Beomgyu takes absolute pleasure in it, watching the way you shake and dig your nails into him helplessly, your body being wound up from how good he fucks you; your thighs are sticky and shining from your arousal, poorly concealed pleasure only fueling Beomgyu’s ego further as he reaches up to tug your head out from it’s hiding spot.

He thinks he might just cum on the spot; your makeup is ruined, tears of mascara running down your cheeks as you merely let out soft hiccups of moans, your lips parted and brain completely empty as you stare at him— he smiles at you in return, capturing your lips in another kiss as his hand begins to trail down; toying with your breasts, nimble fingers pinching and rolling your nipples as you jolt and whine into his mouth at the sensation.

“Gyu— gonna— need to, ah…!” the choked whimpers you let out aren’t enough for Beomgyu, and he only slows down at your request; fresh tears stream down your cheeks as you plead softly, breathy voice barely above a whisper as you whine quietly to keep going, don’t stop, please gyu, pleeaaase….

“Hmm? What’s that? I can’t hear you, baby,” he murmurs softly against your lips, slowing to nothing but a grind as he presses himself against you— pelvis grinding against your clit, the feeling making you tremble as you dig your nails into his shoulders once more. “Come on sweet thing, tell me what you need.”

You’re telling him— begging, pleading, breathy whimpers and soft cries escaping you as you roll your hips into him, biting your lip and sighing exasperatedly at the way he simply watches you with dark eyes, slowing down until he’s simply bottomed out inside you.

“What do you want?” he asks softly, breathy voice intertwined with a lilt so sweet you’d almost think he pities you— and by the way he’s looking at you, he just might, swollen lips caught between his teeth to try and suppress a smile. You’re still weak and quiet as you try to voice your wants, looking at him through wet lashes, a pout on your face as your hands run absentmindedly up and down his back.

“Wanna cum?” he coos, pretty hand reaching down to circle and pinch your clit teasingly, “Want me to fuck you? Fill you up? Hmmm?”

All you can do is nod along to his words stupidly— and obviously, it’s the very last thing your boyfriend wants, abandoning your clit and reaching up to grab your face roughly; fingers digging into your cheeks, forced to look at him as he merely glares at you and speaks through gritted teeth.

“Tell me,” he says, voice sharp and dangerous as he narrows his eyes, “use your words— or, don’t tell me I’ve fucked you dumb already.”

He’s unhooking one of your legs from his waist at that; you’re stumbling slightly, leg too weak to let you stand as you merely cry at him to wait, bringing him closer to you in fear that he might pull out and leave you like this— his fingers still dig into your cheeks as you speak, drool building up at the corners of your pouty lips as you stutter out exactly what you want— what he wants to hear.

“Want you to fuck me, use me— wanna cum, please,” you cry out, eyes squeezing shut as he shakes your head teasingly, as though to say and what else? “Want you to cum inside, baby please, just wanna feel good—”

You’re rambling at this point. But Beomgyu enjoys it nonetheless, telling you to keep going as he begins to move again; slowly at first, allowing you to feel the drag of his thick cock against your walls as your words become stuttered through weak moans, the sight making your boyfriend laugh as he slowly begins to pick up his pace.

“Like it when I fuck you like this, yeah?” you’re nodding in confirmation to his words; staring at him with pleading eyes, whimpering a soft harder, faster, that the man is immediately obliging as he coos at the way you yelp at the sensation. “Want it harder? Hmmm? Want me to fuck you ‘till you can’t even walk—? Have to carry you out of here, let everyone see the way your sweet cunt is filled up by me?”

All you can do is nod to his words at this point; whimpering a weak yes, yesyesyes, want you to fill me up, use me, more more please—

Everything crashes down on you unexpectedly; your eyes are shutting tight and you think you might just black out as your orgasm hit you suddenly, cunt squeezing and fluttering around Beomgyu’s cock as he groans at the sensation— he lets you ride it out, cooing soft praise into your ear before he’s pulling you in for another kiss; you’re barely able to kiss him back, moaning into his mouth and letting him do whatever he wants with you.

It isn’t long before he’s cumming inside you as well; you’re so tight he can barely move, your cute whimpers and warm cunt guiding him through it as he fucks into you slowly, making sure none of his release slips out as he continues to fuck you, even after he’s become horribly sensitive. Then he’s still, lips still on yours and arms wrapped tightly around you as though he’s afraid to let you go.

“You okay?” he asks quietly after a moment, still lingering close to you, taking in your appearance with tentative eyes. You nod softly, still attempting to catch your breath as you chest heaves against his; he huffs out a soft laugh, caressing your cheek fondly before he’s going to fix your clothes— your mini-skirt remains up on your hips, his cock still bottomed out inside you as he coos about how good you were for him, caressing any skin he can get his hands on (which is a lot, considering your wardrobe) with a smile.

“Pretty girl, so perfect,” he coos, finally pulling out and tucking himself in before he’s going to fix your clothing; not without slipping his fingers inside your cunt one last time, watching with hungry eyes as you curl into him and cry that you’re sensitive— he’s only satisfied after his cum is left snug in your pussy, smiling darkly at the way he brings his fingers up to your mouth for you to clean— you do it without any hesitation, and Beomgyu swears he might just be getting hard again.

“Love you so much, thank you for coming to see me today,” he says instead, bringing you in for a warm hug and a loving kiss; you merely hum tiredly in response, hands slipping out from his shirt only to be thrown over his shoulders leisurely.

Your face feels hot the moment he’s trying to get the two of you to leave back for the hotel— because your legs are absolutely not cooperating with you.

“Holy shit, I was joking about that whole fuck you till you can’t walk thing,” he laughs, only to get cut of by the way you hit him in response— he’s letting out an exaggerated whimper at that, rubbing his arm and telling you sorry, sorry baby, with a cute pout.

“Ugh, I don’t want anyone to see me like this, fuck,” you mourn, only for Beomgyu to pull you into his side firmly, sending you a smile that’s not as reassuring as you wish it was.

“I’m sure no one will notice,” he says simply, swinging the door open and immediately being met with Soobin passing by.

He slows down at the sight of you two, glancing at your appearances briefly before he keeps walking.

“Try to keep it down next time please,” he yells out, turning the corner and disappearing from your sight before you can retaliate. You feel slightly mortified by his words, but Beomgyu isn’t affected in the slightest as he leans over to murmur softly into your ear.

“Should we continue this at the hotel, pretty?”

You don’t answer his question. But he already knows the answer, sending you a giddy smile and intertwining his fingers with yours as he leads you to where the staff car is waiting for you two— and you hold back a smile of your own as you trail (limp, kinda) behind him. It’ll be a long night, but you couldn’t ask for a better way to spend your anniversary, no matter how unconventional it is.

#txt fanfic #txt fanfiction #txt imagines #txt oneshots #txt ff #txt x reader #txt smut #txt hard hours #txt hard thoughts #beomgyu smut #beomgyu ff #beomgyu imagines #beomgyu oneshot #beomgyu x reader #[2k event!]#[nsfw]#[revisiting stories]

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vgperson · 4 months

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What Did I Do In 2023?

Whatever I wanted, mostly.

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As I mentioned last year, my site now has an RSS feed with basically everything I've done back to 2020, so this will mainly be going over the same stuff from that, just with added context.

In January, I finally sat down and properly realized an idea for a short story I'd had sitting around for a while: From the Sidelines, about a fantasy RPG expedition going sideways. I remain very proud of it in both concept and execution, and hope people read it.

In February, Your Turn To Die was released on Steam Early Access, receiving character profiles and some bonus mini-episodes, adding two more later in the year.

After finishing From the Sidelines, I carried that momentum to revisit my Ut0p1a story series about funny computer animals. I'd always meant to continue it - and conclude it - but hadn't been satisfied with the ideas I had for it until totally rethinking them this year. In March, I posted the remaining stories one after another: Right to Code and Left to Code. I'm very proud of these as well. Also in March, Kenshi Yonezu released LADY. (Video, interview)

In April, Uri released the Data Book of the Strange Men Series, a big collection of the writing she's done on the games in the series, with a lot of new parts as well, all translated by me.

Then in May... uh, well, let's see. In April, Capcom released the Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection. I always adored the Battle Network games, and was initially excited that they finally did the thing... but by the time it came out, I was pretty disappointed by how, while you certainly couldn't call them low-effort ports, the effort didn't extend everywhere I thought it should, with the biggest offenders being the total absence of any "convenience features" except Buster Max Mode, the bad font, and the almost entirely untouched translations.

So, I ended up deciding I might as well just replay the originals, and that was a fun time (aside from the parts that were bad). Doing this, I couldn't help but notice how... turbulent the translations were, even if I'd always known they were less than ideal. I mean, the first two games just used periods for ellipses despite the tight character limits, then in BN3 they had an ellipsis character... but it's center-aligned, Japanese-style? Aside from the intro, which has normal ones? Gosh, somebody should fix that - it's simple enough to find and edit in YY-CHR. "JapanMan" is silly, too - I wonder if anybody made a patch for that? Wait, what do you mean there's just a tool to extract and insert text in all the Battle Network games including the Legacy Collection???

Thus began a journey that sort of occupied the rest of my year. First I did the BN3 Translation Revision, trying not to worry too much about cross-referencing the Japanese text unless something seemed wrong, so that I didn't spend too long on the project. Then I began to consider BN2, with its unfortunate "foreigner" text that would need some more significant reworking. I established more convenient tools for comparing with the Japanese script, and thus did a much more thorough job with it, releasing the BN2 Translation Revision in June (AKA Princess Pride Month).

Finally, after giving myself time to recover and actually finish replaying the series, I knew what I had to do to close things out. With the BN4 Translation Revision, you can finally play Battle Network 4 with a translation that isn't such a mess. Whether you'd want to is for you to decide, though if you can get over the structure, I don't think it's the worst game in the series by any means. (Oh, and in December I also updated the BN3 Revision to 1.1, doing a thorough pass with the methods I'd honed. But I think I'm pretty much good on MMBN translations now.)

Anyway, backtracking to other things that happened during my Battle Network haze... June had Kenshi Yonezu's Moongazing (video, interview), and July had Globe (video, interview, interview).

Last but not least, released in November, I translated Refind Self: The Personality Test Game, a short game from Lizardry (creator of 7 Days to End with You) with a fun concept.

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Obviously I was right to have said "no promises" last year. But really, Your Turn To Die should get its final part on Steam sometime next year, maybe even early-ish in it. That's certainly the goal.

I'm also hoping to buckle down and finish one of my own games, but as usual, who knows how that'll pan out. Letting my whims carry me this year let me finally finish From the Sidelines and Ut0p1a, which was great, and it also led me down a Battle Network rabbit hole, which was... fine, but definitely for a narrower audience. I'd always like to get back to more free game translations and the like, too, but it takes effort to find things I'd want to translate. For now, I think my increasing desire to be able to let loose some of these original games I've been planning, and the stories in them, might come out on top.

#vgperson

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moonshynecybin · 3 months

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The current motogp grid is put into the hunger games who is winning?

so easily marc it is NOT even funny.... as babynflames has said if he got trapped in a situation where he needed to lop off a limb and it wouldnt effect his riding he'd get that done instantly np. he is insane he loves winning he EASILY compartmentalizes his other competitors as obstacles that he will shove aside in REAL LIFE let alone fictional hunger games world. hes taking it i fear. but he WILL come out the other side deeply scared both mentally and physically... maybe he DOES have to lop off his arm and they give him a prosthetic but sometimes it aches at night and he shivers...

anyways yaoi alert below the cut for those interested:

its the all-victor QUARTER QUELL where shit gets saucy in my opinion! vale as a fellow mentor... a well-liked victor that marc idolized as a kid who's been paraded around like a pony ever since... known for how fun (read: not fun comma scarring) his games were (vale was like 17 fuck ass bob big neon yellow tribute uniform internally screaming desperately playing to the cameras to survive. maybe won by doing equal parts looney tunes style pranks and his absolute ruthless efficiency with a blade.)

so him and marc see each other once a year for a few weeks around the games (similar to motogp they DO have to continually revisit the places they were most traumatized every year huh) and start a lil smth... gravitate towards each other when theyre both trapped in the capitol... wake up in each others beds most mornings and share looks across tables when the capitol socialites start soliloquizing... but they know cant do any more than that bc theyre in different districts (also: trauma.) so they keep it as casual as they can, even if marc's breath catches in his chest sometimes when vale looks at him, and when vale wakes up at home its with an arm reaching over the place in his bed he knows marc should be... and the capitol maybe doesnt know theyre fucking but IS certainly selling the friendship between two of its most popular victors to the cameras HARD... it is known that they tend to chat. it has been noted that they giggle. the panopticon has noticed the marc-being-a-weirdo-in-press-conferences stare.

anyways so the quell hits and marc gets reaped along with vale (who has been quietly supporting rebellious activity for years... gathering strength and numbers.... talking to the other aliens... using his icon status to sway the districts... ) and vale KNOWS the capitol will use marc against him. knows that they know he cares about him. knows that theyre doing this to get rid of them both—keep him in line. (actually in this scenario maybe marc pulled a katniss berry move to keep both him and alex alive. accidental revolutionary icon lol) and keeping marc close will only make the capitol try even harder to kill him which he cant STAND. and all marc knows is that suddenly vale pulls away hard, cold and abrupt. starts talking madddd shit about him in all of his interviews and press... and marc thinks vale is doing it to hype himself up to kill him in the arena and it KILLS him... he thought he was in tragic star crossed love... but he also keeps trying to convince himself he can bring himself to do the same when the time comes, even if it feels like a hole in his chest.... he has to get back to alex. so its awfullllllll until they get in the arena and (INSERT CATCHING FIRE PLOT WHERE THEY BUST TF OUTTA THERE...) and when marc wakes up, blinking and pale and groggy and without his prosthetic, vale is holding his hand by his bedside. and in a low, hoarse voice he starts to explain....

#only scenario marc doesnt win is if the final two is him and alex. it is katniss berry move or instant suicide.#im sure someone has already come up w an au like this like im positiveeeee but i cant find it :/ please link in replies if so #vale in this scenario also knows that a beef between victors of this caliber means that they will both get MAD sponsor money and he worries #he wants marc to have food medicine and his favorite sword in that arena and if throwing marc under the bus will accomplish that he will!#callie speaks #motogp #asks #rosquez

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rcmclachlan · 2 months

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Revisiting "Stuff Yuuri Katsuki Full of Cock 2k17"

AO3 should make you sign a contract in blood and have it notarized before you're allowed to orphan one of your stories. The "R" in "R.C." stands for regret in this case!

Of the many fics, ficlets, drabbles, and WIPs I churned out for the YOI fandom that I wish I could un-orphan, these four were my favorites:

immaculate dream, made breath and skin (E)

Almost half his life has been spent training for the day that Victor Nikiforov takes him to bed, so when it finally happens after the Grand Prix Final, Yuuri's prepared. More than prepared: he's ready. No one's ever touched him as a lover, sure, but there's nothing that he hasn't already dreamed about doing or having done to him to make anything that could happen a shock. But apparently Victor's sole purpose in life is to subvert all his expectations. (this is easily the filthiest thing i've ever written)

with the engine inside (E)

Victor brought this on himself.

Full (E)

On the second day of the 2017 Worlds Competition, he takes a bumpy taxi ride from where they’re staying at the Hilton Helsinki Kalastajatorppa to Hartwell Arena, skates a gold medal-winning singles program, gives at least an hour’s worth of interviews to every major network that exists, meets with an insanely wealthy couple that wants him to give pointers to their daughter who would much rather talk to him about horses than skating, and goes out for dinner and drinks with the usual suspects—all with a thick plug inside him that rubs up against his prostate every time he so much as breathes.

Mercalli (E)

There’s an earthquake in Yuuri’s hands as he slides them up the meat of Victor’s thighs, and it threatens to shake Victor to ruin.

Bonus: Thwarted (M)

Yuuri snorts. "Not even you would've taken 'Victor, I fantasize about getting pregnant' seriously."

#my latest yoi rewatch has got me feeling all nostalgic #yoi in its heyday was the best and most fun fandom i've ever been part of — i can't believe it's been almost 8 years #yuri on ice #stuff yuuri katsuki full of cock 2k17

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vampylily · 7 months

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Transcription of Fall Out Boy's interview with Rock Sound

Since I was going to read the article anyways, I thought I'd transcribe in case it'll be more accessible to read for others. The interview with Pete and Patrick goes in depth on the topics of tourdust, evolving as a band, So Much (For) Stardust, working with Neal Avron, and more.

Thank you to @nomaptomyowntreasure who kindly shared the photos of the article! Their post is linked here.

PDF link here. (more readable format & font size)

article in text below (and warning for long post.)

Rock Sound Issue #300

WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE

WITH THE TRIUMPHANT ‘SO MUCH (FOR) STARDUST’ CAPTURING A WHOLE NEW GENERATION OF FANS, FALL OUT BOY ARE RIDING HIGH, CELEBRATING THEIR PAST WHILE LOOKING TOWARDS A BRIGHT FUTURE. PETE WENTZ AND PATRICK STUMP REFLECT ON RECENT SUCCESSES AND THE LESSONS LEARNED FROM TWO DECADES OF WRITING AND PERFORMING TOGETHER.

WORDS: James Wilson-Taylor

PHOTOS: Elliott Ingham

You have just completed a US summer tour that included stadium shows and some of your most ambitious production to date. What were your aims going into this particular show?

PETE: Playing stadiums is a funny thing. I pushed pretty hard to do a couple this time because I think that the record Patrick came up with musically lends itself to that feeling of being part of something larger than yourself. When we were designing the cover to the album, it was meant to be all tangible, which was a reaction to tokens and skins that you can buy and avatars. The title is made out of clay, and the painting is an actual painting. We wanted to approach the show in that way as well. We've been playing in front of a gigantic video wall for the past eight years. Now, we wanted a stage show where you could actually walk inside it.

Did adding the new songs from ‘So Much (For) Stardust’ into the setlist change the way you felt about them?

PATRICK: One of the things that was interesting about the record was that we took a lot of time figuring out what it was going to be, what it was going to sound like. We experimented with so many different things. I was instantly really proud. I felt really good about this record but it wasn’t until we got on stage and you’re playing the songs in between our catalogue that I really felt that. It was really noticeable from the first day on this tour - we felt like a different band. There's a new energy to it. There was something that I could hear live that I couldn't hear before.

You also revisited a lot of older tracks and b-sides on this tour, including many from the ‘Folie à Deux’-era. What prompted those choices?

PETE: There were some lean years where there weren't a lot of rock bands being played on pop radio or playing award shows so we tried to play the biggest songs, the biggest versions of them. We tried to make our thing really airtight, bulletproof so that when we played next to whoever the top artist was, people were like, ‘oh yeah, they should be here.’ The culture shift in the world is so interesting because now, maybe rather than going wider, it makes more sense to go deeper with people. We thought about that in the way that we listen to music and the way we watch films. Playing a song that is a b-side or barely made a record but is someone’s favourite song makes a lot of sense in this era.

PATRICK: I think there also was a period there where, to Pete’s point, it was a weird time to be a rock band. We had this very strange thing that happened to us, and not a lot of our friends for some reason, where we had a bunch of hits, right? And it didn’t make any sense to me. It still doesn’t make sense to me. But there was a kind of novelty, where we could play a whole set of songs that a lot of people know. It was fun and rewarding for us to do that. But then you run the risk of playing the same set forever. I want to love the songs that we play. I want to care about it and put passion into what we do. And there’s no sustainable way to just do the same thing every night and not get jaded. We weren’t getting there but I really wanted to make sure that we don’t ever get there.

PETE: In the origin of Fall Out Boy, what happened at our concerts was we knew how to play five songs really fast and jumped off walls and the fire marshal would shut it down. It was what made the show memorable, but we wanted to be able to last and so we tried to perfect our show and the songs and the stage show and make it flawless. Then you don’t really know how much spontaneity you want to include, because something could go wrong. When we started this tour, and we did a couple of spontaneous things, it opened us up to more. Because things did go wrong and that’s what made the show special. We’re doing what is the most punk rock version of what we could be doing right now.

You seem generally a lot more comfortable celebrating your past success at this point in your career.

PETE: I think it’s actually not a change from our past. I love those records, but I never want to treat them in a cynical way. I never want there to be a wink and a smile where we’re just doing this because it’s the anniversary. This was us celebrating these random songs and we hope people celebrate them with us. There was a purity to it that felt in line with how we’ve always felt about it. I love ‘Folie à Deux’ - out of any Fall Out Boy record that's probably the one I would listen to. But I just never wanted it to be done in a cynical way, where we feel like we have to. But celebrating it in a way where there’s the purity of how we felt when we wrote the song originally. I think that’s fucking awesome.

PATRICK: Music is a weird art form. Because when you’re an actor and you play a character, that is a specific thing. James Bond always wears a suit and has a gun and is a secret agent. If you change one thing, that’s fine, but you can’t really change all of it. But bands are just people. You are yourself. People get attached to it like it’s a story but it’s not. That was always something I found difficult. For the story, it’s always good to say, ‘it’s the 20th anniversary, let’s go do the 20th anniversary tour’, that’s a good story thing. But it’s not always honest. We never stopped playing a lot of the songs from ‘Take This To Your Grave’, right? So why would I need to do a 20-year anniversary and perform all the songs back to back? The only reason would be because it would probably sell a lot of tickets and I don’t really ever want to be motivated by that, frankly.

One of the things that’s been amazing is that now as the band has been around for a while, we have different layers of audience. I love ‘Folie à Deux’, I do, I love that record. But I had a really personally negative experience of touring on it. So that’s what I think of when I think of that record initially. It had to be brought back to me for me to appreciate it, for me to go, ‘oh, this record is really great. I should be happy with this. I should want to play this,’ So that’s why we got into a lot of the b-sides because we realised that our perspectives on a lot of these songs were based in our feelings and experiences from when we were making them. But you can find new experiences if you play those songs. You can make new memories with them.

You alluded there to the 20th anniversary of ‘Take This To Your Grave’. Obviously you have changed and developed as a band hugely since then. But is there anything you can point to about making that debut record that has remained a part of your process since then?

PETE: We have a language, the band, and it’s definitely a language of cinema and film. That’s maintained through time. We had very disparate music tastes and influences but I think film was a place we really aligned. You could have a deep discussion, because none of us were filmmakers. You could say which part was good and which part sucked and not hurt anybody’s feelings, because you weren’t going out to make a film the next day. Whereas with music, I think if we’d only had that to talk about, we would have turned out a different band.

PATRICK: ‘Take This To Your Grave’, even though it’s absolutely our first record, there’s an element of it that’s still a work in progress. It is still a band figuring itself out. Andy wasn’t even officially in the band for half of the recording, right? I wasn’t even officially the guitar player for half of the recording. We were still bumbling through it. There was something that popped up a couple times throughout the record where you got these little inklings of who the band really was. We really explored that on ‘From Under the Cork Tree’’. So when we talk about what has remained the same… I didn’t want to be a singer, I didn’t know anything about singing, I wasn’t playing on that. I didn’t even plan to really be in this band for that long because Pete had a real band that really toured so I thought this was gonna be a side project. So there’s always been this element within the band where I don’t put too many expectations on things and then Pete has this really big ambition, creatively. There’s this great interplay between the tour of us where I’m kind of oblivious, and I don’t know when I’m putting out a big idea and Pete has this amazing vision to find what goes where. There’s something really magical about that because I never could have done a band like this without it. We needed everybody, we needed all four of us. And I think that’s the thing that hasn’t changed - the four of us just being ourselves and trying to figure things out. Listening back to ‘Folie’ or ‘Infinity On High’ or ‘American Beauty’. I’m always amazed at how much better they are than I remember. I listened to ‘MANIA’ the other day. I have a lot of misgivings about that record, a lot of things I’m frustrated about. But then I’m listening to it and I’m like, ‘this is pretty good.’ There’s a lot of good things in there. I don’t know why, it’s kind of like you can’t see those things. It’s kind of amazing to have Pete be able to see those things. And likewise, sometimes Pete has no idea when he writes something brilliant, as a lyricist, and I have to go, ‘No, I’m gonna keep that one, I’m gonna use that.’

On ‘So Much (For) Stardust’ you teamed up with producer Neal Avron again for the first time since 2008. Given how much time has passed, did it take a minute to reestablish that connection or did you pick up where you left off?

PATRICK: It really didn’t feel like any time had passed between us and Neal. It was pretty seamless in terms of working with him. But then there was also the weird aspect where the last time we worked with him was kind of contentious. Interpersonally, the four of us were kind of fighting with each other…as much as we do anyway. We say that and then that myth gets built bigger than it was. We were always pretty cool with each other. It’s just that the least cool was making ‘Folie’. So then getting into it again for this record, it was like no time had passed as people but the four of us got on better so we had more to bring to Neal.

PETE: It’s a little bit like when you return to your parents’ house for the holiday break when you’re in college. It’s the same house but now I can drink with my parents. We’d grown up and the first times we worked with Neal, he had to do so much more boy scout leadership, ‘you guys are all gonna be okay, we’re gonna do this activity to earn this badge so you guys don’t fucking murder each other.’ This time, we probably got a different version of Neal that was even more creative, because he had to do less psychotherapy.

He went deep too. Sometimes when you’re in a session with somebody, and they’re like, ‘what are we singing about?’, I’ll just be like, ‘stuff’. He was not cool with ‘stuff’. I would get up and go into the bathroom outside the studio and look in the mirror, and think ‘what is it about? How deep are we gonna go?’ That’s a little bit scarier to ask yourself. If last time Neal was like a boy scout leader, this time, it was more like a Sherpa. He was helping us get to the summit.

The title track of the album also finds you in a very reflective mood, even bringing back lyrics from ‘Love From the Other Side’. How would you describe the meaning behind that title and the song itself?

PETE: The record title has a couple of different meanings, I guess. The biggest one to me is that we basically all are former stars. That’s what we’re made of, those pieces of carbon. It still feels like the world’s gonna blow and it’s all moving too fast and the wrong things are moving too slow. That track in particular looks back at where you sometimes wish things had gone differently. But this is more from the perspective of when you’re watching a space movie, and they’re too far away and they can’t quite make it back. It doesn’t matter what they do and at some point, the astronaut accepts that. But they’re close enough that you can see the look on their face. I feel like there’s moments like that in the title track. I wish some things were different. But, as an adult going through this, you are too far away from the tether, and you’re just floating into space. It is sad and lonely but in some ways, it’s kind of freeing, because there’s other aspects of our world and my life that I love and I want to keep shaping and changing.

Patrick: I’ll open up Pete’s lyrics and I just start hearing things. It almost feels effortless in a lot of ways. I just read his lyrics and something starts happening in my head. The first line, ‘I’m in a winter mood, dreaming of spring now’, instantly the piano started to form to me. That was a song that I came close to not sending the band. When I make demos, I’ll usually wait until I have five or six to send to everybody. I didn’t know if anyone was gonna like this. It’s too moody or it’s not very us. But it was pretty unanimous. Everybody liked that one. I knew this had to end the record. It took on a different life in the context of the whole album. Then on the bridge section, I knew it was going to be the lyrics from “Love From The Other Side’. It’s got to come back here. It’s the bookends, but I also love lyrically what it does, you know, ‘in another life, you were my babe’, going back to that kind of regret, which feels different in ‘Love From The Other Side’ than it does here. When the whole song came together, it was the statement of the record.

Aside from the album, you have released a few more recent tracks that have opened you up to a whole new audience, most notably the collaboration with Taylor Swift on ‘Electric Touch’.

PETE: Taylor is the only artist that I’ve met or interacted with in recent times who creates exactly the art of who she is, but does it one such a mass level. So that’s breathtaking to watch from the sidelines. The way fans traded friendship bracelets, I don’t know what the beginning of it was, but you felt that everywhere. We felt that, I saw that in the crowd on our tour. I don’t know Taylor well, but I think she’s doing exactly what she wants and creating exactly the art that she wants to create. And going that, on such a level, is really awe-inspiring to watch. It makes you want to make the biggest, weirdest version of our thing and put that out there.

Then there was the cover of Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’, which has had some big chart success for you. That must have taken you slightly by surprise.

PATRICK: It’s pretty unexpected. Pete and I were going back and forth about songs we should cover and that was an idea that I had. This is so silly but there was a song a bunch of years ago I had kind of written called ‘Dark Horse’ and then there was a Katy Perry song called ‘Dark Horse’ and I was like, ‘damn it’, you know, I missed the boat on that one. So I thought if we don’t do this cover, somebody else is gonna do it. Let’s just get in the studio and just do it. We spent way more time on those lyrics than you would think because we really wanted to get a specific feel. It was really fun and kind of loose, we just came together in Neal’s house and recorded it in a day.

PETE: There's irreverence to it. I thought the coolest thing was when Billy Joel got asked about it, and he was like, ‘I’m not updating it, that’s fine, go for it.’ I hope if somebody ever chose to update one of ours, we’d be like that. Let them do their thing, they’ll have that version. I thought that was so fucking cool.

It’s almost no secret that the sound you became most known for in the md-2000s is having something of a commercial revival right now But what is interesting is seeing how bands are building on that sound and changing it.

PATRICK: I love when anybody does anything that feels honest to them. Touring with Bring Me The Horizon, it was really cool seeing what’s natural to them. It makes sense. We changed our sound over time but we were always going to do that. It wasn’t a premeditated thing but for the four of us, it would have been impossible to maintain making the same kind of music forever. Whereas you’ll play with some other bands and they live that one sound. You meet up with them for dinner or something and they’re wearing the shirt of the band that sounds just like their band. You go to their house and they’re playing other bands that sound like them because they live in that thing. Whereas with the four of us and bands like Bring Me The Horizon, we change our sounds over time. And there’s nothing wrong with either. The only thing that’s wrong is if it’s unnatural to you. If you’re AC/DC and all of a sudden power ballads are in and you’re like, ‘Okay, we’ve got to do a power ballad’, that’s when it sucks. But if you’re a thrash metal guy who also likes Celine Dion then yeah, do a power ballad. Emo as a word doesn’t mean anything anymore. But if people want to call it that, if the emo thing is back or having another life again, if that’s what’s natural to an artist, I think the world needs more earnest art. If that’s who you are, then do it.

PETE: It would be super egotistical to think that the wave that started with us and My Chemical Romance and Panic! At The Disco has just been circling and cycling back. I remember seeing Nikki Sixx at the airport and he was like, ‘Oh you’re doing a flaming bass? Mine came from a backpack.’ It keeps coming back but it looks different. Talking to Lil Uzi Vert and Juice WRLD when he was around, it’s so interesting, because it’s so much bigger than just emo or whatever. It’s this whole big pop music thing that’s spinning and churning, and then it moves on, and then it comes back with different aspects and some of the other stuff combined. When you’re a fan of music and art and film, you take different stuff, you add different ingredients, because that’s your taste. Seeing the bands that are up and coming to me, it’s so exciting, because the rules are just different, right? It’s really cool to see artists that lean into the weirdness and lean into a left turn when everyone’s telling you to make a right. That’s so refreshing.

PATRICK: It’s really important as an artist gets older to not put too much stock in your own influence. The moment right now that we’re in is bigger than emo and bigger than whatever was happening in 2005. There’s a great line in ‘Downton Abbey’ where someone was asking the Lord about owning this manor and he’s like ‘well, you don’t really own it, there have been hundreds of owners and you are the custodian of it for a brief time.’ That’s what pop music is like. You just have the ball for a minute and you’re gonna pass it on to somebody else.

We will soon see you in the UK for your arena tour. How do you reflect on your relationship with the fans over here?

PETE: I remember the first time we went to the UK, I wasn’t prepared for how culturally different it was. When we played Reading & Leeds and the summer festivals, it was so different, and so much deeper within the culture. It was a little bit of a shock. The first couple of times we played, I was like, ‘Oh, my God, are we gonna die?’ because the crowd was so crazy, and there was bottles. Then when we came back, we thought maybe this is a beast to be tamed. Finally, you realise it’s a trading of energy. That made the last couple of festivals we played so fucking awesome. When you realise that the fans over there are real fans of music It’s really awesome and pretty beautiful.

PATRICK: We’ve played the UK now more than a lot of regions of the states. Pretty early on, I just clicked with it. There were differences, cultural things and things that you didn’t expect. But it never felt that different or foreign to me, just a different flavour…

PETE: This is why me and Patrick work so well together (laughs).

PATRICK: Well, listen; I’m a rainy weather guy. There is just things that I get there. I don’t really drink anymore all that much. But I totally will have a beer in the UL, there’s something different about every aspect of it, about the ordering of it, about the flavour of it, everything, it’s like a different vibe. The UK audience seemed to click with us too. There have been plenty of times where we felt almost like a UK band than an American one. There have been years where you go there and almost get a more familial reaction than you would at home.

Rock Sound has always been a part of that for us. It was one of the first magazines to care about us and the first magazine to do real interviews. That’s the thing, you would do all these interviews and a lot of them would be like ‘so where did the band’s name come from?’ But Rock Sound took us seriously as artists, maybe before some of us did. That actually made us think about who we are and that was a really cool experience. I think in a lot of ways, we wouldn’t be the band we are without the UK, because I think it taught us a lot about what it is to be yourself.

Fall Out Boy’s ‘So Much (For) Stardust’ is out now via Fueled By Ramen

#fall out boy #fob #tourdust #pete wentz #patrick stump #fob interview #so much for stardust #smfs era #your unemployed friend at 2pm on a monday:#anyways. hope this is helpful i loved the interview!

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cheemscakecat · 2 months

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What happened to the BLU Meet the team

So I headcanon that BLU Team is a lot more distant, private, and professional than RED. Before Scout joined, Medic was the only one who knew Pyro was a woman and had somewhat befriended her. Soldier was the only one who bothered to talk with Spy of he didn’t have a medical issue.

So when the other director rolled up to BLU, Soldier and Medic were the only two who willingly gave an interview. And Scout got shoehorned into it as the youngest member [since Cheryl’s masked].

Soldier’s interview went the best. He basically said they weren’t fighting regular civilians, and weren’t tearing up a country over the gravel; they got to choose to fight without the same consequences of a “real war”.

Scout heard the director stupidly list things about him that he shouldn’t know, like his hometown and details about his early life. Things that he had to provide for his BLU paperwork, but this rando shouldn’t have. Pauling had to beg him to finish the interview since she couldn’t get the rest of the team to cooperate.

Now BLU Scout and Pyro are a developing power couple, and he has no romantic interest in Pauling; so his reason for finishing the interview was not fueled by love. Rather, he didn’t know what sort of punishment awaited her if she failed to get the interviews. He got her call over the phone about her yearly test where Admin sends assassins, and decided it would be better to throw her a bone than let her face Helen’s wrath.

He chose to go with the workplace drama angle since Spy always talks down to him for being the youngest. And kept the details as vague and optimistic as possible.

Medic’s interview was the reason why Admin abandoned the director shtick after this specific BLU team was told they were making a documentary for new hires. BLU Medic was deemed an expert during the respawn failure crisis and had to be present at failure sites, perform surgeries, and document in excruciating detail [per Archibald’s demands]. The director tried to get him to go into detail on the failure drama, and he refused.

“Those cases are classified. I am only permitted to show the footage to a patient’s teammates if there is a new, relevant respawn accident occurring. But the issue was resolved years ago, and I have not received clearance to share the documents and footage. Besides, I do not want to worry the new recruits if the failures are not a risk anymore.”

The director however, was very similar to the one sent to RED team and would not take that for an answer. He kept trying to goad Dr. Ludwig into giving him the gory details on respawn failures and the number of dead patients, to Pauling’s horror. She knew that either Helen or her mother had put that confidentiality policy into place, and it was not wise to break it.

The doctor suddenly looked to his right and jolted like he saw a ghost, and stayed distracted for about a minute before he managed to shake it off and give another curt refusal to defy the rules. That was one of the last things they recorded, the actual last being a forced assurance that times were much better now and the new recruits should not worry themselves about respawn.

Helen was never a good person. She used people for a living, including Pauling and Saxton Hale. But she was not stupid about it. She was good at reading people. And when she watched the footage of the Medic’s interview, it peaked her interest enough to go through her old files and revisit the respawn disaster.

83 mercenaries on both BLU and RED teams died before Jules Archibald and his lackeys were sufficiently threatened pressured into finding the actual solution. 179 other mercenaries were injured in some way by a respawn failure and lived to keep the tale a secret. And from the very first failure, this BLU Medic had been attempting to treat the mutilated mercs.

It was a special kind of person who would stay through Jules hmming and hawing about putting money and resources into finding the solution. With 262 total respawn failures concentrated in the Americas and no other Medics labeled experts and given clearance to operate, there was enormous pressure on this man. And it had cracked him somehow. He’d been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and the hallucination caught on camera was that illness in action.

With the BLU medic being so loyal and so damaged mentally, Helen wasn’t willing to reveal her trick to BLU team as she had with RED. He was too valuable an asset for her to sour his allegiance to BLU and her Administration. There would always be someone like Redmond and Blutarch and Jules looking to cut costs, making a terrible decision like the one that caused the respawn crisis. Helen needed people with the heart and naivety to clean up those messes.

After she had managed to get Pauling to shut up and stop apologizing, she told her she had changed her mind about the rest of the interviews. She would instead rely on the spies around the world that were mining their teammates’ information and sending it to her, as she had been. And BLU team would never know the purpose behind the documentary director.

The director was not wise enough to stop asking Fritz to break his confidentiality contract. He just kept trying to make him spill the secrets. Ludwig hated talking about it, hated it back then and hated it now. He didn’t want to picture the death and gore that surrounded the respawn crisis.

The heartbroken and panicked teammates asking why he couldn’t save the affected patient, the mass departure of quitting mercenaries. Some of them were fearful of experiencing a failure and left before it could happen to them. Others had to quit because their injuries left their bodies scarred and weakened for life.

This director reminded Fritz of Jules’ middlemen that always had their noses upturned and asked endless questions. Stupid, weak men who never lifted a finger to help operate or prepare a cadaver for its funeral. Men who were too uninvolved to see what he’d seen and made excuses not to see the carnage with their own eyes.

His blood was about boiling when it appeared. It sometimes did, in the corner of his office, or his bedroom, or just barely in his peripheral view. But he wasn’t expecting it to be sitting so close it could have snatched him up. The demon.

Its skinny, black clad form was surrounded by black smoke, which was not unusual. What was unusual was that it was roiling like an angry sea and whipping in irritation like a cat’s tail. When the demon tried to play “friendly” and lull him into a false sense of security, the smoke was always slow moving like it was meant to look soft and safe to touch.

Even more alarming was the look on the pale, sunken eyed, stolen copy of his face that the demon wore. Its black eyes glittered maliciously with furrowed brows and stared into the director, as though it was trying to burn a hole through his face. Its mouth was set in a deeper frown that Ludwig had ever seen from it previously, jaw clenched in fury.

Fritz nearly jumped out of his seat when he turned and saw it hunching its shoulders like a panther waiting to lunge at the man across from them. Looking about as evil and dangerous as he had always known it to be. He was wise not to fall for its false gentleness.

The thing must have seen him move out of the corner of its eye, because it too smoothly turned its head and looked at him, abruptly softening its gaze. It was very little comfort that he knew it was an act, when that thing could easily get him if it decided to give up the deception and attack. The black eyed demon stared at him for an uncomfortable amount of time before the director saying “Hello-o? Anybody home?” drew it’s attention back towards him, looking surly and cruel once more.

Fritz choked out a final statement for his part of the documentary, trying not to let the pounding heart in his throat jump out onto the floor. By the time he was done, the demon had moved to the right wall and was staring at him with the more docile look. Stupid demon. Thinking I’m going to fall for that.

#tf2 #emesis blue #blue medic #angst fanfic #sad lad hours #tf2 medic #Helen is a jerk wad and we forget that.#I bet somebody money laundered and replaced a part or chemical in the American respawn machines. Causing the respawn failures to happen.

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softnsquishable · 7 months

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Thanks to this lovely post, I have been able to transcribe the entirety of the new Rock Sound magazine interview with Pete and Patrick. Find the entire transcript below the cut!

WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE

WITH THE TRIUMPHANT ‘SO MUCH (FOR) STARDUST’ CAPTURING A WHOLE NEW GENERATION OF FANS, FALL OUT BOY ARE RIDING HIGH. CELEBRATING THEIR PAST WHILE LOOKING TOWARDS A BRIGHT FUTURE. PETE WENTZ AND PATRICK STUMP REFLECT ON RECENT SUCCESSES AND THE LESSONS LEARNED FROM TWO DECADES OF WRITING AND PERFORMING TOGETHER.

You have just completed a US summer tour that included stadium shows and some of your most ambitious production to date. What were your aims going into this particular show?

Pete: Playing stadiums is a funny thing. I pushed pretty hard to do a couple this time because I think that the record Patrick came up with musically lends itself to that feeling of being part of something larger than yourself. When we were designing the cover to the album, it was meant to be all tangible, which was a reaction to tokens and skins that you can buy and avatars. The title is made out of clay, and the painting is an actual painting. We wanted to approach the show in that way as well. We’ve been playing in front of a gigantic video wall for the past eight years. Now, we wanted a stage show where you could actually walk inside it.

Did adding the new songs from ‘So Much (For) Stardust’ into the setlist change the way you felt about them?

Patrick: One of the things that was interesting about the record was that we took a lot of time figuring out what it was going to be, what it was going to sound like. We experimented with so many different things. I was instantly really proud. I felt really good about this record but it wasn’t until we got on stage and you’re playing the songs in between our catalogue that I really felt that.It was really noticeable from the first day on this tour - we felt like a different band. There’s a new energy to it. There was something that I could hear live that I couldn’t hear before.

You also revisited a lot of older tracks and b-sides on this tour, including many from the ‘Folie à Deux’-era. What prompted those choices?

Pete: There were some lean years where there weren’t a lot of rock bands being played on pop radio or playing award shows so we tried to play the biggest songs, the biggest versions of them. We tried to make our thing really airtight, bulletproof so that when we played next to whoever the top artist was, people were like, ‘oh yeah, they should be here.’ The culture shift in the world is so interesting because now, maybe rather than going wider, it makes more sense to go deeper with people. We thought about that in the way that we listen to music and the way we watch films. Playing a song that is a b-side or barely made a record but is someone's favorite song makes a lot of sense in this era.

Patrick: I think there also was a period there where, to Pete’s point, it was a weird time to be a rock band. We had this very strange thing that happened to us, and not a lot of our friends for some reason, where we had a bunch of hits, right? And it didn’t make any sense to me. It still doesn’t make sense to me. But there was a kind of novelty, where we could play a whole set of songs that a lot of people know. It was fun and rewarding for us to do that. But then you run the risk of playing the same set forever. I want to love the songs that we play. I want to care about it and put passion into what we do. And there’s no sustainable way to just do the same thing every night and not get jaded. We weren’t getting there but I really wanted to make sure that we don’t ever get there.

Pete: In the origin of Fall Out Boy, what happened at our concerts was we knew how to play five songs really fast and jumped off walls and the fire marshal would shut it down. It was what made the show memorable, but we wanted to be able to last and so we tried to perfect our show and the songs and the stage show and make it flawless. Then you don’t really know how much spontaneity you want to include, because something could go wrong. When we started this tour, and we did a couple of spontaneous things, it opened us up to more. Because things did go wrong and that’s what made the show special. We’re doing what is the most punk rock version of what we could be doing right now.

You seem generally a lot more comfortable celebrating your past success at this point in your career.

Pete: I think it’s actually not a change from our past. I love those records, but I never want to treat them in a cynical way. I never want there to be a wink and a smile where we’re just doing this because it’s the anniversary. Thai was us celebrating these random songs and we hope people celebrate them with us. There was a purity to it that felt in line with how we always felt about it. I love ‘Folie à Deux’ - out of any Fall Out Boy record that’s probably the one I would listen to. But I just never want it to be done in a cynical way, where we feel like we have to. But celebrating it in a way where there’s the purity of how we felt when we wrote the song originally, I think that’s fucking awesome.

Patrick: Music is a weird art form. Because when you’re an actor and you play a character, that is a specific thing. James Bond always wears a suit and has a gun and is a secret agent. If you change one thing, that’s fine, but you can’t really change all of it. But bands are just people. You are yourself. People get attached to it like it’s a story but it’s not. That was always something that I found difficult. For the story, it’s always good to say, ‘it’s the 20th anniversary, let’s go do the 20th anniversary tour,’ that’s a good story thing. But it’s not always honest. We never stopped playing a lot of the songs from ‘Take This To Your Grave’, right? So why would I need to do a 20-year anniversary and perform all the songs back to back? The only reason would be because it would probably sell a lot of tickets and I don’t really ever want to be motivated by that, frankly.

One of the things that’s been amazing is that now as the band has been around for a while, we have different layers of audience. I love ‘Folie à Deux’, I do, I love that record. But I had a really personally negative experience of touring on it. So that’s what I think of when I think of that record initially. It had to be brought back to me for me to appreciate it, for me to go, ‘oh, this record is really great. I should be happy with this. I should want to play this.’ So that’s why we got into a lot of the b-sides because we realized that our perspectives on a lot of these songs were based in our feelings and experiences from when we were making them. But you can find new experiences if you play those songs. You can make new memories with them.

Pete: We have a language, the band, and it’s definitely a language of cinema and film. That’s maintained through time. We have very disparate musical tastes and influences but I think film was a place we really aligned. You could have a deep discussion, because none of us were filmmakers. You could say which part was good and which part sucked and not hurt anybody’s feelings, because you weren’t going out to make a film the next day. Whereas with music, I think if we’d only had that to talk about, we would have turned out a different band.

Patrick: ‘Take This To Your Grave’, even though it’s absolutely our first record, there’s an element of it that’s still a work in progress. It is still a band figuring itself out. Andy wasn’t even officially in the band for half of the recording, right? I wasn’t even officially the guitar player for half of the recording. We were still bumbling through it. There was something that popped up a couple times throughout that record where you got these little inklings of who the band really was. We really explored that on ‘From Under The Cork Tree’.

So when we talk about what has remained the same…I didn’t want to be a singer, I didn’t know anything about singing. I wasn’t planning on that. I didn’t even plan to really be in this band for that long because Pete had a real band that really toured so I thought this was gonna be a side project. So there’s always been this element within the band where I don’t put too many expectations on things and then Pete has this really big ambition, creatively. There’s this great interplay between the two of us where I’m kind of oblivious, and I don’t know when I’m putting out a big idea and Pete has this amazing vision to find what goes where. There’s something really magical about that because I never could have done a band like this without it. We needed everybody, we needed all four of us. And I think that’s the thing that hasn’t changed. - the four of us just being ourselves and trying to figure things out. Listening back to ‘Folie’ or ‘Infinity On High’ or ‘American Beauty’, I’m always amazed at how much better they are then I remember. I listened to ‘MANIA’ the other day. I have a lot of misgivings about that record, a lot of things that I’m frustrated about. But then I’m listening to it and I’m like, ‘this is pretty good.’ There’s a lot of good things in there. I don’t know why, it’s kind of like you can’t see those things. It’s kind of amazing to have Pete be able to see those things. And likewise, sometimes Pete has no idea when he writes something brilliant, as a lyricist, and I have to go, ‘No, I’m gonna keep that one, I’m gonna use that.’

Patrick: It really didn’t feel like any time had passed between us and Neal. It was pretty seamless in terms of working with him. But then there was also that weird aspect where the last time we had worked with him was kind of contentious. Interpersonally, the four of us were kind of fighting with each other…as much as we do anyway. We say that and the myth gets built bigger than it was. We were always pretty cool with each other. It’s just that the least cool was making ‘Folie’. So then getting into it again for this record, it was like no time had passed as people but the four of us got on better so we had more to bring to Neal.

Pete: It’s a little bit like when you return to your parents’ house for a holiday break when you’re in college. It’s the same house but now I can drink with my parents. We’d grown up and the first times we worked with Neal, he had to do so much more boy scout leadership, ‘you guys are all gonna be okay, we’re gonna do this activity to earn this badge so you guys don’t fucking murder each other.’ This time, we probably got a different version of Neal that was even more creative, because he had to do less psychotherapy.

The title track of the album also finds you in a very reflective mood, even bringing back lyrics from ‘Love From The Other Side’. How would you describe the meaning behind that title and the song itself?

Pete: The record title has a couple of different meanings, I guess. The biggest one to me is that we basically all are former stars. That’s what we’re made of, those pieces of carbon. It still feels like the world’s gonna blow and it’s all moving too fast and the wrong things are moving too slow. That track in particular looks back at where you sometimes wish things had gone differently. But this is more from the perspective of when you’re watching a space movie, and they’re too far away and they can’t quite make it back. It doesn’t matter what they do and at some point, the astronaut accepts that. But they’re close enough that you can see the look on their face. I feel like there’s moments like that in the title track. I wish some things were different. But, as an adult going through this, you are too far away from the tether, and you’re just floating into space. It is sad and lonely but in some ways, it’s kind of freeing, because there’s other aspects of our world and my life that I love and that I want to keep shaping and changing.

Patrick: I’ll open up Pete’s lyrics and I just start hearing things. It almost feels effortless in a lot of ways. I just read his lyrics and something starts happening in my head. The first line, ‘I’m in a winter mood, dreaming of spring now’, instantly the piano started to form to me. That was a song that I came close to not sending to the band. When I make demos, I’ll usually wait until I have five or six to send to everybody. I didn’t know if anyone was gonna like this. It’s too moody or it’s not very us. But it was pretty unanimous. Everybody liked that one. I knew this had to end the record. It took on a different life in the context of the whole album. Then on the bridge section, I knew it was going to be the lyrics from ‘Love For The Other Side’. It’s got to come back here. It’s the bookends, but I also love lyrically what it does, you know, ‘in another life, you were my babe’, going back to that kind of regret, which feels different in ‘Love For The Other Side’ than it does here. When the whole song came together, it was the statement of the record.

Aside from the album, you have released a few more recent tracks that have opened you up to a whole new audience, most notably the collaboration with Taylor Swift on ‘Electric Touch’.

Pete: Taylor is the only artist that I’ve met or interacted with in recent times who creates exactly the art of who she is, but does it on such a mass level. So that’s breathtaking to watch from the sidelines. The way fans traded friendship bracelets, I don’t know what the beginning of it was, but you felt that everywhere. We felt that, I saw that in the crowd on our tour. I don’t know Taylor well, but I think she’s doing exactly what she wants and creating exactly the art she wants to create. And doing that, on such a level, is really awe-inspiring to watch. It makes you want to make the biggest, weirdest version of our thing and put that out there.

Then there was the cover of Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’, which has had some big chart success for you. That must have taken you slightly by surprise.

Patrick: It’s pretty unexpected. Pete and I were going back and forth about songs we should cover and that was an idea that I had. This is so silly but there was a song a bunch of years ago I had kind of written called ‘Dark Horse' and then there was a Katy Perry song called ‘Dark Horse’ and I was like, ‘damn it’, you know, I missed the boat on that one. So I thought if we don’t do this cover, somebody else is gonna do it. Let’s just get in the studio and just do it. We spent way more time on those lyrics than you would think because we really wanted to get a specific feel. It was really fun and kind of loose, we just came together in Neal’s house and recorded it in a day.

Pete: There’s irreverence to it. I thought the coolest thing was when Billy Joel got asked about it, and he was like, ‘I’m not updating it, that’s fine, go for it.’ I hope if somebody ever chooses to update one of ours, we’d be like that. Let them do their thing, they'll have that version. I thought that was so fucking cool.

It’s also no secret that the sound you became most known for in the mid-2000s is having something of a commercial revival right now. But what is interesting is seeing how bands are building on that sound and changing it.

Patrick: I love when anybody does anything that feels honest to them. Touring with Bring Me The Horizon, it was really cool seeing what’s natural to them. It makes sense. We changed our sound over time but we were always going to do that. It wasn’t a premeditated thing but for the four of us, it would have been impossible to maintain making the same kind of music forever. Whereas you’ll play with some other hands and they live that one sound. You meet up with them for dinner or something and they’re wearing the shirt of the band that sounds just like their band. You go to their house and they’re playing other bands that sound like them because they live in that thing. Whereas with the four of us and bands like Bring Me The Horizon, we change our sounds over time. And there’s nothing wrong with that either. The only thing that’s wrong is if it’s unnatural to you. If you’re AC/DC and all of a sudden power ballads are in and you’re like, ‘Okay, we’ve got to do a power ballad’, that’s when it sucks. But if you’re a thrash metal guy who also likes Celine Dion then yeah, do a power ballad. Emo as a word doesn’t mean anything anymore. But if people want to call it that, if the emo thing is back or having another life again, if that’s what’s natural to an artist, I think the world needs more earnest art. If that’s who you are, then do it.

Pete: It would be super egotistical to think that the wave started with us and My Chemical Romance and Panic! At The Disco has just been circling and cycling back. I remember seeing Nikki Sixx at the airport and he was like, ‘Oh, you’re doing a flaming bass? Mine came from a backpack.’ It keeps coming back but it looks different. Talking to Lil Uzi Vert and Juice WRLD when he was around, it’s so interesting, because it’s so much bigger than just emo or whatever. It’s this whole big pop music thing that’s spinning and churning, and then it moves on., and then it comes back with different aspects and some of the other stuff combined. When you’re a fan of music and art and film, you take different stuff, you add different ingredients, because that’s your taste. Seeing the bands that are up and coming to me, it’s so exciting, because the rules are just different, right? It’s really cool to see artists that lean into the weirdness and lean into a left turn when everyone’s telling you to make a right. That’s so refreshing.

Patrick: It’s really important as an artist gets older to not put too much stock in your own influence. The moment right now that we’re in is bigger than emo and bigger than whatever was happening in 2005. There’s a great line in ‘Downton Abbey’ where someone was asking the Lord about owning this manor and he’s like, ‘well, you don’t really own it, there have been hundreds of owners and you are the custodian of it for a brief time.’ That’s what pop music is like. You just have the ball for a minute and you’re gonna pass it on to somebody else.

We will soon see you in the UK for your arena tour. How do you reflect on your relationship with the fans over here?

Pete: I remember the first time we went to the UK, I wasn’t prepared for how culturally different it was. When we played Reading & Leeds and the summer festivals, it was so different, and so much deeper within the culture. It was a little bit of a shock. The first couple of times we played, I was like, ‘Oh my God, are we gonna die?” because the crowd was so crazy, and there was bottles. Then when we came back, we thought maybe this is a beast to be tamed. Finally, you realize it’s a trading of energy. That made the last couple of festivals we played so fucking awesome. When you really realize that the fans over there are real fans of music. It’s really awesome and pretty beautiful.

Patrick: We’ve played the UK now more than a lot of regions of the states. Pretty early on, I just clicked with it. There were differences, cultural things and things that you didn’t expect. But it never felt that different or foreign to me, just a different flavor…

Pete: This is why me and Patrick work so well together (laughs).

Patrick: Well, listen; I’m a rainy weather guy. There is just things that I get there. I don’t really drink anymore all that much. But I totally will have a beer in the UK, there’s something different about every aspect of it, about the ordering of it, about the flavor of it, everything, it’s like a different vibe. The UK Audience seemed to click with us too. There have been plenty of times where we felt almost more like a UK band than an American one. There have been years where you go there and almost get a more familial reaction than you would at home.

Rock Sound has always been a part of that for us. It was one of the first magazines to care about us and the first magazine to do real interviews. That’s the thing, you would do all these interviews and a lot of them would be like ‘so where did the band’s name come from?” But Rock Sound took us seriously as artists, maybe before some of us did. That actually made us think about who we are and that was a really cool experience. I think in a lot of ways, we wouldn’t be the band we are without the UK, because I think it taught us a lot about what it is to be yourself.

Fall Out Boy’s ‘So Much (For) Stardust’ is out now via Fueled By Ramen.

#fall out boy #fob #patrick stump #pete wentz #rock sound #so much for stardust #so much (for) stardust #rock sound issue 300 #fueled by ramen

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