#but apart from mania it would be folie a deux

[cringengl]

Sometimes I wish that Stranger Things was set in the 2010s just so I could see s4 Mike say his favourite bands are the 'emo trinity'.

[ansy-tea]

Y'all ever stopped listening to your favorite bands for about 2 years for reasons you don't even know yourself. Maybe it's because you're busy. Maybe it's because you thought you've acquired new tastes. You really don't know. But then suddenly you listened to one song of theirs again and now you're sobbing over how good the songwriting was? And now that you're not a dumb High Schooler without much experience you understand the lyrics even more?

Anyways that's me with Fall Out Boy right now lmao. It's high time I listen to their new album later.

[shark-myths]

Dizzy On Dreams

With the concept of dreaming showing up on almost every Mania track, I’ve been itching to dig into this metaphor that Pete has used so consistently over the years. Then I thought about IOH being framed and styled as entirely within a dreamscape; then I thought, what is Folie a Deux, a shared madness, but a dream shared by two—a madness outside of reality? And remember when Pete said of Patrick, on one of his many pre-hiatus blogs, I think I dreamt him?

And then I was like, fuck. I need to write this post.

Three days later, Pete posts THIS on Twitter, framing the whole tour and possibly even the concept of touring as a dream? HOW IS A GIRL SUPPOSED TO COPE WITH THIS SHIT HONESTLY?????

So hello and welcome to shark-myths’ DREAM EXTRAVAGANZA!

Lines like FUCT’s I’m sleeping on your folks’ front porch again, dreaming show us an early romantic association with the phrase. It lays early groundwork for the use of ‘dream’ as referring to an imaginary, might-have-been, wish of a relationship that is not grounded in reality. That is not grounded in waking life. (I woke up, no luck, if you’ll permit a brief time-traveling leap to Mania—and I do devoutly believe this is how Mania is meant to be used, as a time-traveling cipher to fill out more context for earlier songs and themes, earlier joyous, unsustainable madnesses from Pete’s life.)

One of the first really meaty appearances of the word is in notorious gay anthem Gin Joints. (The Petericks definitely made out inside a crashed car; some theories place the Van Crash on the way to the Grand Theft Autumn video shoot as the likeliest time point for their first kiss, as memorialized on the cover of FUCT.) Gin Joints gives us this: We’re making out inside crashed cars, we’re sleeping through all our memories. I used to waste my time dreaming of being alive, now I only waste it dreaming of you. This gives us an early division between his lived life and whoever (*coughPATRICKcough*) he’s dreaming of/with.

Next, IOH. It’s 2007 and, in his suicide song, Pete writes, You are the dreamer and we are the dream. This is generally read as a loving message to the fans, a reading that I fully support. The definition it gives us, of the band and/or the Petericks being the dream, is what I’m going to go with for most of this analysis.

Next significant invocation is of course, Disloyal Order, the anthemic opener for Folie, their most ambitious, artistic, and personal record yet. The record opens: I’m coming apart at the seams, pitching myself for leads in other people’s dreams. (And does this evoke the stitch line from Hold Me Tight or Don’t for anyone else? Just saying.) Disloyal Order, with the boycott love/detox just to retox chorus, is one of my all-time Peterick jams. The drug use metaphor that is so incredibly linked with Patrick alone it prominently in the realm of #trysttheory. Significant is the ‘someone else’s dreams’: it tells us Pete is focusing on a relationship, a shared and aspirational happiness he can only conceive of in dreamspace, that does not belong to him. Let’s just go ahead and assume he’s thinking about Patrick. The numbness and the blurry headedness of this song also speak to the pill addiction and other maladaptive coping Pete was relying on during this time period. He was erasing himself, trying to disappear into dreams that he hates himself for having. He was sick with what he could not have, with what he was trying to make work instead—sick on reality (Young and Menace, anyone?). And he sings about how sick he is, in Disloyal Order and throughout the album.

America’s Suitehearts, of course, is played entirely as a dream/nightmare/alternate reality. The video and the alternate personas of the boys gives us that much. And Pete writes why won’t the world revolve around me? In my dreams, trees grow all over the streets. Then the song turns into the anthem of I’m in love with my own sins; you can bow and pretend you don’t know you’re a legend; time just hasn’t told anyone else yet; I’m sorry, I just let my love loose again. What do we think this song is about guys. What sin i n  p a r t i c u l a r.

And even before Disloyal Order, FAD opens with the hidden pre-track Lullabye, a song tied closely with the album art and with many people’s reaction to the stitch line in Hold Me Tight Or Don’t. The chorus is pure hope, but tinged so sad: it’s not what it seems in the land of dreams. Don’t worry your head, just go to sleep—when you wake up the world will come around. To me, this song seems to speak almost directly to the questions asked in America’s Suitehearts. It reminds Pete of the reality—that whatever he shares with Patrick is not what he wants it to be, whether it’s sex or just intimate friendship—and it also shows his hope that maybe, one of these times, he’ll wake up and reality will come around to what he’s dreaming of.

You ready to kick things up a notch post-hiatus? We need, like, the Mario Kart star song playing double-time here, because this is a new intensity level. Like, fucking grab onto something. The albums are about to transition from gay reading to gay reality.

Because what is the first SRAR single but My Songs? Besides, in the mean time, I’m just dreaming of tearing you apart. Pete is becoming bolder and more explicit about what he’s dreaming of. He writes too, now the world can never get me on my level, as if saying—even with all we’ve been through, hiatus and not talking and everything, I still love you this much. There is no dose of reality that will talk me out of this dream. All these years and I’m still dreaming of tearing you apart. The whole song speaks very aptly to the idea of secret trysting in the pre-hiatus years too, doesn’t it?

Oh, fucking Where Did The Party Go. We were the kids who screamed ‘we weren’t the same’ in sweaty rooms, now we’re doomed to organizing walk-in closets like tombs speaks to clearly to the passage of time and the way their lives have changed, how fame and age have changed them, and to nostalgia for the Van Days era Pete has always glorified in his writing. Then: so let’s fade away together one dream at a time.

My. Fucking. Heart.

As we move into post-hiatus material, you’ll notice that very often, the dreaming of becomes dreaming with in implication—Pete is identifying a collaborator, a fellow dreamer. How many times do u want me to scream TRYST THEORY ‘cuzzzzzz…

The Mighty Fall: Your crooked love is just a pyramid scheme and I’m dizzy on dreams. But if you ask me two’s a whole lot lonelier than one. Baby we should have left our love in the gutter where we found it. ‘Cause you think your only crime is that you got caught. IF THIS ISN’T ABOUT TRYST THEORY I WILL TURN IN MY BADGE AND TIN HAT, GUYS. Our love—this is not Pete watching from a closet, anymore. This is a Pete who held in his hands what he wanted most in the world and has seen it sullied or slipped away or ruined. The loneliness of trysting and each pretending they don’t want more, believing the other doesn’t either. The idea of their love being a gutter-thing pulling up associations of queerness/social taboo and infidelity. The idea of crimes and getting caught. And Pete, not caring that the trysts would never pay out on the full bid of his aching heart, because he’s dizzy on dreams. His reasoning is shot and he’s outside of reality again, so intoxicated on the moments they do share. Our drugstore cowboy. Our self-identified medicine man.

And finally, we close out the album with this: I need more dreams and less life.

😭😭😭😭😭

I CANNOT

On Pax-Am, the track Demigods (which is, imo, an incredibly important Pete-reflecting-on-himself song) gives us the question: what if it were all a dream? What is we were demigods? They’d take to our knees, raging at the half of our sins. Someone who can think about something other than blowjobs and secret sinful queerness pls offer an alternate explanation because I’m having a heart attack. If they were demigods, they’d still be half-human. They could do anything, but they’d still have to answer to the human world, wouldn’t they? And if we knew even the half of their sins…

Cue AB/AP, the Gayest Album So Far. The title track gives us I wish I dreamt in the shape of your mouth/but it’s your thread count I really care about, which is explicitly about sex. As you’re drifting off to sleep, all those dirty thoughts of me, they were never yours to keep. If this is directed at Patrick, it’s the idea that when they slip off to sleep together—in every sense of the phrase, but especially in the sense of entering dreamspace, the sometimes-shared fiction that they can enjoy for a few hours: that they are together, that they love each other out loud to each other and everyone else—that when they slip into this, it is never yours to keep. Our boy cannot set down what he knows of reality. Not even here. Altar boys (once sacred, once holy), altered boys (who they are now), we’re the things that love destroys. AB/AP is so gay and so seeded with small hopes and so, so sad. I absolutely believe that the Pete who wrote it believed he had been destroyed.

I have a lot to say on the song Centuries and the theme Pete plays with about immortality through embracing gay love—Immortals, all his references to the afterlife, all of his Pete Pan/Lost Boys fuckery has this thread—but for now, let’s talk just about mummified my teenage dreams and who we think his teenage dreams were about. The idea of legends/demigods and gold comes back here, and he evokes the concept mistake, which is a way he often writes about trysting. And: I was only born inside my dreams; I am the opposite of amnesia. Pete won’t let himself be forgotten, won’t let Patrick forget. He’s only felt wholly, truly alive and realized in those moments where they were together, or where he dreamed they were.

Uma Thurman: I slept in last night’s clothes and tomorrow’s dreams. Is Patrick tomorrow’s dreams? If you went to your own home for the night, rather than someone else’s, you wouldn’t be left wearing last night’s clothes…

Immortals: I’ll be the guard dog of all your fever dreams, I’m the sand in the bottom half of the hour glass (meaning: something that’s already gone past), I try to picture me without you but I can’t. Also, the line you pull the blackout curtains down (just not for long) seems like Patrick denying feelings, moving away from Pete and the tryst—plunging them into daylight, reality, wakefulness. Denying him at daybreak and all that Judas-y stuff. And then returning, again and again, to the shared and darkened space of dreams.

And then. And then there’s fucking Mania.

Young and Menace: Woke up on the wrong side of reality, and there’s a madness coursing right through me. Is Pete saying he’s tired of this waking life reality that doesn’t hold space for him and Patrick to be together? Is that the madness he means—that he’s ready to throw caution to the wind and really ask for, and believe he deserves, to love Patrick out loud for the first time?

Champion: I’m back with a madness… I got nothing but dreams inside.

Last of the Real Ones: I’m here at the beginning of the end of infinity with you. I’m done with having dreams, the thing that I believe, you drain all the fear from me.

Wilson (Expensive Mistakes): on the wrong side of paradise (evokes Y&M, the idea that he’s on the wrong side of something that could be so perfect and good.) There’s nothing more cruel than to be loved by everybody but you.

Hold Me Tight Or Don’t (and the all caps here is consistent across sources and deliberate, I think—like. Pete is not being subtle anymore and he wants us to know it.) I just pinch myself, no longer comatose. I woke up, no luck. I woke up, no luck. …I want to sleep on every piece of fuzz and stuffing that comes out of you.

Hold Me Tight, Or Don’t. Is Mania Pete’s way of saying—I don’t want to wait anymore? Let’s not just pretend, let’s have it all? Even if he’s growing out of the idea of running away down south from all of their problems, is he asking Patrick for—whatever version of a big poly happy ending he can have? Is he saying, I’m tired of pretending I don’t love you? I’ve taken too many hits off this memory and now I need more? We were never just friends? Hold ME TIGHT or DON’T????

ARE YOU GUYS WITH ME HERE????? BC I AM D Y I N G

 Some gems from related themes for my true believers out there:

Grand Theft Autumn: when I wake up, I’m willing to take my chances on the hope I forget that you hate him more than you notice I wrote this for you.

Reinventing The Wheel To Run Myself Over (the lyrics of which are written by Patrick, so it doesn’t fit as well with this obsessively deep dive into Pete’s interiority, but let’s acknowledge it in the canon): I can’t wake up to these reminders of who I am

I’m Like A Lawyer: me and you, setting in a honeymoon, if I woke up next to you (AAAAAAAH)

She’s My Winona: Never the same person when I go to sleep as when I wake up (likely about the fickleness of media coverage and the vagaries of fame, etc)

w.a.m.s.: when all the others were just stirring awake, I’m trying to trick myself to fall asleep again

20 Dollar Nose Bleed: Who will I be when I wake up next to a stranger?

Alone Together: I’ll check in tomorrow if I don’t wake up dead

Novocaine: I am your worst, I am your worst nightmare

 Thank you for joining me for a thorough screechy documentation of Pete’s use of the dream metaphor and how I think it relates to Peterick! Hit me up with your own thoughts and theories and let me know if you’ve got any meta requests! More to come, and check out my lyrics meta and/or tryst theory tags to tide you over.

 Brought to you by Fyne Purveyors of Bandom Crafts, the manufacturers of Tryst Theory ™, and our mother organization, the Peterick Institute

[sukajunin]

The last of the real ones

As I write this, From Under the Cork Tree is streaming on my Spotify. It’s amazing how an intro to a song can suddenly place you back in a moment in time.

‘It’s just past 8 and I’m feeling young and reckless / the ribbon on my wrist says “do not open before Christmas”’ - Our Lawyer Made Us Change The Name of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued

Little did I know back then, that Fall Out Boy would be the band that followed me through the ages. It was the emo punk-rock band that I was obsessed with; I watched all the ‘making of’ their music videos, plastered cut-outs of their faces on my wardrobe door, wrote their lyrics all over my pencil case.

It was the band I ‘discovered’, which turned out to be one that stuck. No one suggested me to check them out; I stumbled upon them when my channel surfing expedition landed me on MTV (back when it still played music videos). I thought, “what the heck is this guy mumbling? Something about Sin City?”

MTV was playing ‘This Ain’t A Scene, It’s An Arms Race’.

It wasn’t love at first sight. It was something that just didn’t go away and I found myself humming to their catchy riffs and choruses. They were in every magazine I bought and I eventually succumbed to their influence. I borrowed Infinity On High from a friend and couldn’t find myself returning it.

'The only thing I haven’t done yet is die / and it’s me / and my plus one at the afterlife’ - Thriller

A song named after one of the greatest albums of all time has its expectations but I used to think - and still do - that ‘Thriller’ is one of those songs that was the perfect opening song, whether it be for an album or a concert. Especially with Jay Z serving as some master of ceremony to the show that is Infinity On High. It was my first proper introduction.

The friend that lent me her CD? We didn’t stay friends, but I could never repay her for giving me that first taste. I studied the album cover thoroughly and knew all 15 songs by heart. We even watched their concert together when they were in town. But I needed more, I thought. After sad attempts of Limewire-ing, I got From Under The Cork Tree for my 13th birthday.

As a pre-teen with very little rebellion and angst, Wentz’s lyrics were nothing more than pure poetry to me. The crypticness of the lyrics weren’t relatable at all; they were mostly organised nonsense that was cool to scribble on your notebook (or as your bio line on Instagram these days). I didn’t find out till much later that this frontman bassist was wearing his heart on his... lyrics.

Where FOB’s early fans had to wait every three years for new material, I found myself binging and backtracking all their albums. Past Take This To Your Grave and all the way to Evening Out With Your Girlfriend. All four records had distinctively different sounds, yet all of them had a special place in my heart. I realised, it wasn’t just because it was good music anymore - I had fallen in love with the band itself.

When it came to Folie à Deux being released, it was exciting but strange. I was now one of those fans waiting. I wasn’t sure why this record didn’t leave a pleasant taste in people’s mouths; could it be because I was blinded by my heavy anticipation? Ignoring the haters, Folie à Deux became the soundtrack of my middle school life.

‘They say the captain goes down with the ship / so when the world ends / will god go down with it?’ - What A Catch, Donnie

Sadly, FOB announced their hiatus not long after the release of Folie à Deux. Devastated. I endured a FOB-less journey through high school, with the occasional songs that appear on shuffle, of course. I tried out Stump’s solo Soul Punk out for size; albeit amazing, it failed to fill the FOB-shaped hole.

And when you least expect it, the boys returned and dropped a new song and video to match. It’s the old boyfriend that disappeared from your life for a while: it’s familiar, safe but there’s something different about it. About him. They’re different. And it’s better.

‘Sometimes before it gets better / the darkness gets bigger / the person that you’d take a bullet for is behind the trigger’ - Miss Missing You

They came back with Save Rock and Roll while I was completing my IB diploma. It was an ambitious title and they dropped all the ridiculously long song titles. It was serious, mature, refined. It was as if we both grew up while we were apart. It was also as if nothing has changed.

Skip a few years ahead to when I started university and FOB released American Beauty/American Pyscho - a mainstream, chart-topping success, as if their five-year hiatus was a thing of the past. I managed to go through my first year accompanied by these tracks, doing mundane student things. At this point, the obsession subsided and FOB was simply... comfortable.

‘And I slept in last night’s clothes and tomorrow’s dreams / but they are not quite what they seem’ - Uma Thurman

Now nearing the end of my degree, MANIA came out. Their first single ‘Young and Menace’ was lightyears different to anything they’ve ever done. I wasn’t amazed at first, but given our history, I decided to give them a chance. So much so I went to see them in concert again without having listened to the record at least 17 times.

‘I’m here in search of your glory / there’s been a million before me / that ultra-kind of love / you never walk away from’ - The Last of the Real Ones

Let’s just say, I Spotify-ed the shit out of MANIA after that. After a few years of complacency, I renewed my vows to FOB; I know that no matter how much you’ve strayed from the sound I fell in love with, I will always continue to blast your music through my earpods.

So, I thank you Fall Out Boy for being that past lover, who has never really done anything wrong except becoming victim to life’s trials and tribulations. Who always knew a way to get back in my life when I never expect it. Unlike the other boyfriends bands I used to listen to during my teen angst days, you have outlived them all.

Thank you for growing up with me and being there all these years. I’m thankful to have a band like you to tie me down when I get lost in a sea of today’s pop, top 100 scene.