#fnowae

[predoom]

2009 vs. 2012

[shattteredvisage]

REJOICE REJOICE AND FALL TO YOUR KNEES I GUESS

[thekidsarentalright]

im so scared of these last 4 fucking shows. if thats everything they just pulled out at the fifth to last show what the fuck are they gonna do the rest of the week. my god

[thekintsugikids]

i noticed the similarities between fnowae and pavlove about a year and a half ago?? something like that. and quite frankly, while i could panegyrize fob’s entire discography till the end of time, specifically hearing those songs back to back, hearing, “i’m the invisible man who can’t stop staring at the mirror,” followed by, “i’m just the man on the balcony, singing ‘nobody will ever remember me’” made me absolutely spiral. like…both songs feel like they’re about this heart wrenching, soul crushing loneliness and just wanting someone to understand, to feel the way you do, to just fucking get it already, but the difference is in the way they see that. the different perspectives.

to fully explain this i think it’s important to fully understand the amadeus of it all for which i cannot recommend enough zero’s post about fnowae.

to use some of their words/phrasing, the quote itself as the title…fascinates me. it is salieri (in this instance, pete) repudiating god, declaring him to be his mortal enemy from here on for having the nerve to bestow upon amadeus (patrick) such brilliance (and i will be referring to him as amadeus because that feels like it might be a little cleaner than calling him mozart throughout this whole Thing etc etc etc). to mock salieri’s mediocrity. he is so envious of amadeus that he feels amadeus’s gifts are a divine punishment from god himself. “from now on we are enemies, you and i.”

what does all of that have to do with pavlove, though? amadeus is the gifted one, whom salieri finds to be insufferably annoying, but staggeringly brilliant. indescribably so (the fact that they do eventually befriend one another, and when amadeus dies, it essentially drives salieri insane and many years later he even claims he murdered amadeus, despite the fact that amadeus was sick, having worked himself to exhaustion and death……all of that is another can of worms i don’t…i don’t have it in me to crack open right now). “nobody will ever remember me, rejoice and fall to your knees.” “i want to make you as lonely as me, so you can get addicted to this.” bone crushing loneliness clawing at the door like a dog just begging for companionship. i need someone, please be that someone. i don’t know what to do if i don’t have someone. but maybe it’s for the best. but i can’t leave well enough alone (historically, “i don’t do too well on my own”) so i need you to feel what i feel. empty. isolated. lonely. then maybe you’ll need me the same way i need you.

“their faces are dancing till they can’t stand it.” being the outsider, the wallflower, the lone observer, because what else can you do? what else is there to do? it’s three drinks too late to talk to anyone but myself. who even wants to be there with the lunatic on a downward spiral entirely of his own design, who has faded so seamlessly into the background that he doesn’t even know who he is or if he even exists anymore. getting worse till there’s nothing left.

from now on we are enemies is pete vs patrick. two brilliant artists duking it out because one is so enamored with, but absolutely cannot stand, the brilliance of the other. pavlove is…different. more distanced. it’s the realization. and if pavlove is the realization, from now on we are enemies is the final showdown.

pavlove is misery with the life he’s cultivated, with the parties and the tabloids running rampant in the 2000s. the drugs he’d been doing that his best friend didn’t even fully realize the severity of because, in his mind, drug abuse was this abstract thing that he couldn’t quite comprehend. fnowae is the culmination of isolating oneself from those which he loves and cares about, because he’s so lost in his misery.

“what good comes of something when i’m just the ghost of nothing?” because progression in any capacity is a threat to your self preservation. creative integrity, personal growth, whatever it is, it has begun to feel like it’s unattainable because the risk is too high. so what’s the point? it’s a three-and-two pitch to walk to anywhere else. so stay where you are. don’t bother. patrick is brilliant, patrick is gifted and he doesn’t even know it and i’m just a painter looking at the walls trying to finger paint and he’s the only one who has been able to finish these half-baked paintings i throw at him. if this thing is breaking down, what am i good for?

trick question. stalemate. stay right here. if anything, move back.

but there’s a wife to try to make a life with and a child on the way and if i do move forward, who’s to say i don’t just find new ways to make it all worse? my anchor has started to completely detach—get engaged, make a solo record, make himself a life, eventually…soon, even—and i’m let out to sea all on my own and i don’t want to be here, i wanted to go back to land. i wasn’t prepared to still be here. but somehow, i am, and i don’t know what to do. i’m the just the man on the balcony, singing, “nobody will ever remember me,” because amadeus over here is doing the things that are worthwhile. he’s the one people will revere, and i will fade in the distance as the blurry shadow whose features have smudged and disappeared with time, because my contributions pale in comparison to his genius, because i wasn’t blessed with the ability to sing or write music or do so many of the ten billion things he is capable of. because who knows how i’ll be remembered now that the ship i’ve spent the last 8 years manning is possibly about to sink and maybe that means that will be my legacy, if i even have a legacy. if anyone remembers that i was ever here. but that doesn’t mean i don’t want to be remembered. that doesn’t mean i like what i’ve become, how my meaning has become dependent on the twin skeleton beside me. i’m the invisible man who can’t stop staring at the mirror. begging to be remembered…because that’s the point of it all, right?

i said it at the beginning, fall out boy had to be fall out boy and leave the world on a cliffhanger for three years. but it’s been 14 years since believers never die vol 1. we know what happens next. we’ve read the next chapter, watched the sequel, seen how it all pans out. they get to be happy middle aged men playing these songs, reclaiming the trauma and horrors and pain within them, making them into newer, happier memories, because they’re not about that pain anymore. and they haven’t been for a long time. they haven’t been theirs in ages. and so they can finally let it go, with their spouses and kids in the audience cheering them on (well, maybe not the kids. they’re dads, after all, they can’t think they’re cool). with stronger bonds between them and a stronger sense of self in each of them. because they’re not defined by each other anymore, no, this is their fun little art project. patrick composes for a living now (a composer but never composed, who always saw himself as a composer first, now literally a composer by trade), joe and pete each have multiple different ventures they explore in their free time (the symphonies of the overdosed, now being sung by yourself because you don’t need someone else to do it for you anymore), andy is in a million different bands at any given time. they don’t need each other—they don’t need to be defined by each other—they want to be with each other now.

no amadeus, no salieri, no jealousy, no enemies in sight, just four dudes who love making music together. who can make music on their own, who do make music on their own and/or separate from fall out boy, but can’t make their music without all of them together. at the end of the day, “no matter how obsessed you’ve been with your own vanishing, there will always be someone who still wants you whole.”

[signals-over-the-air]

me @ tonight's setlist😭

[foliejpg]

anyone else wake up every day with a fob stuck in their head or am i incapable of being normal

[therevengeoffrankenstein]

alpha dog tonight 👀

alpha dog tonight queen ??

alpha dog tonight 👀

[mortalfortaxpurposes]

ultimately I really really really don't care what happens and as long as they play saturday I'm happy BUT I did cry when afterlife of the party showed up for the north american leg because I thought it meant I couldn't get it, and now I CAN

[coolkidstable]

seeing fob this week

[somuch4stardust]

me when i lie accidentally 😬😬

[predoom]

to me fnowae is about pw v. himself, pw v. his jealousy, pw v. his belief (or lack there of) in a higher power

[iiboronii]

thank god we get a fucking break tonight bc imagine if they played alpha dog or pavlove or something. i fear that we would have all collectively died.

[thekidsarentalright]

convinced at this point that im not just manifesting things anymore pete and i are literally just psychically linked and or he’s following me and loves me so much he wants to make me so so happy by doing everything i want <3

[teenagehandz]

so it’s officially confirmed that fall out boy just wants all of us dead yes???

[artificalem]

Killing myself bc I lost miss missing you and from now on we are enemies literally a week away from my show

[josephtrohman]

FNOWAE DEBUT IS INSANE I CANT GET OVER THIS IM NOT KIDDING