#askin hours

[thebestredscout]

Yo mercs! And others workin for Mann Co!

If ya could pick a different codename or nickname for yaself, what would it be? Somethin like Tempo or Pulse or Rook, stuff like dat.

Bonus question, if ya had ta assign codenames to ya team (nine main mercs), what would ya pick?

[omegalomania]

What are some of your favorite aro-/ace-coded fob lyrics?

oh fuck yes a little bowl of seeds just for me

boycott love from disloyal order of water buffaloes is a personal favorite of mine. its a lyric i really really want tattooed at some point. that's not the only lyric i latch onto from an aro perspective but it's probably the biggest one

basically the entirety of it's hard to say "i do" when i don't but a special mention goes to you are appealing to emotions that i simply do not have as well as the only ring i want buried with me are the ones around my eyes

it's true romance is dead / i shot it in the chest and in the head from the music or the misery is also a favorite of mine, also just that whole song in general

i thought i loved you but it was just how you looked in the light in hum hallelujah resonates with a lot of queer folks i've found, and it's no different for me

same goes for it's a strange way of saying that i know i'm supposed to love you from g.i.n.a.s.f.s.

i'm outside the door, invite me in / so we can go back and play pretend from alone together brings me back to when i was trying to perform heteronormativity/amatonormativity even if it was making me miserable

i also hold to a very similar vibe with she said "i love you 'till i don't" / i am just playing house, no idea what i'm doing now from sunshine riptide and also most of burna boy's verse, frankly. i fell in love but i didn't fall down and feel like i'm bulletproof, baby in particular

american beauty/american psycho, particularly the first verse. i think i fell in love again / maybe i just took too much cough medicine

golden is a big one for queer folks in general i've found. the chorus especially hits hard from an aro and/or ace reading. and i saw god cry in the reflection of my enemies / and all the lovers with no time for me

i've got a dark alley and a bad idea that says you should shut your mouth is a heavy song no matter how you slice it. but that chorus gets to me in particular: we can fake it for the airwaves / force our smiles, baby, half-dead / from comparing myself to everyone else around me

the kids aren't alright reads to me as one big anthem for platonic love above anything romantic, which resonates super hard with me. the second verse has a lot of good lines that i latch onto from an aroace lens too. your love is anemic and i can't believe / that you couldn't see it coming from me

pretty much the whole chorus of HOLD ME TIGHT OR DON'T does it for me, and those verses have got some good aroallo vibes too! i never really feel a thing... confidants but never friends...

the whole of fake out is a gimme. that chorus rings real true. starts with love is in the air, i just gotta find a window to break out and finishing with but it was all a fake-out

i've got all this ringing in my ears and none on my fingers is one that has another highly applicable title but the whole refrain of the truth hurts worse / than anything i could bring myself to do to you paired with the one-two punch of that second verse REALLY gets under my skin

and of course, the culminating one: you are what you love, not who loves you from save rock and roll. obviously there are a LOT of ways to read that line

there are a couple other songs i latch onto - wilson (expensive mistakes); a little less "sixteen candles", a little more "touch me"; the (after) life of the party to name a few - but the ones listed above are the big lyrics that resonate with me on a personal level

just in general i have a shitton of fob over on my aro playlist (which doubles as a general aroace/queer playlist but has a lot of emphasis on aromanticism) in case i forgot to mention anything but like i said those are the big ones

[thebestredscout]

If ya had to pick one soopa—

soupa—

supanachral—

supanacharel—

super-natch-er—

[ Quiet cursing ]

Paranormal monster to exist for real what would ya pick?

I think I'd pick a Pegasus cos can you imagine ridin on a flyin horse??? Super cool! And I bet it goes wicked fast, too!

[omegalomania]

Wait why does everyone hate brendon urie again?

i was tempted to just say "google it" but honestly panic's pr team is working doubletime to sanitize this bastard so here's a quick primer for those who are out of the loop.

this got long so i’m putting it under a cut. as a warning, this is going to have discussions and screenshots of people saying and doing extremely morally reprehensible shit, including racist, homophobic, and transphobic language, sexual harassment of minors, and more. tread with caution.

i'm also going to top this off with the caveat that brendon has a history of saying generally stupid and casually shitty things that a lot of people have noticed and called attention to, but these were largely unremarkable in the sense that they were the sort of things that i was not surprised to hear a privileged cis dude say. so while that's definitely a factor - the guy has said very shitty, openly racist, gross things, etc., numerous times and on numerous platforms and i do not want to overlook that - i also don't want to pretend like that’s the only thing going on here because there is a lot of other heinous shit at work.

i’m also not going to go into the intricacies of song meanings or lyrics and the like aside from a couple touchstone examples. it’s pretty public knowledge by now that i don’t know how but they found me (henceforth referred to as idkhow, fronted by dallon weekes, who worked/toured with panic for a good eight years as its bassist) has quite a few numbers that take implicit and explicit aim at panic, most prominently the video for their single “do it all the time,” which featured dallon setting fire to all the suits he used to wear on tour with the band. it’s an open secret that dallon was not treated very well during his time with panic, but we’ll get to that. the point here is that i don’t want to focus on conjecture of speculation when we have a wealth of very hard evidence at our disposal.

so let’s get into it.

the real Poop started up late 2019 iirc, when numerous panic fans started passing around stories about zack hall, panic's bodyguard and security guy who had been with the band since the fever era. as the only person who had actually been with the band as long as brendon himself, zack had a fair amount of sway with the fans and was notably very very close with brendon. as more and more people spoke up, it became apparent that zack had done a whole lot of things that i would term as "incredibly fucked up" over the years with people being generally afraid to say anything. it’s been pointed out to me that these accusations only picked up traction around that time; fans have been raising flags about zack’s behavior for years without any reaction from panic’s management.

around this time, discussion began circulating that brendon himself had sexually harassed/assaulted multiple fans (many of them minors at the time). some of these accusations, such as his attempt to solicit nudes from fans, have proven to be way muddier to and harder to confirm, seeing as brendon was allegedly not in charge of his socials for some of this time and one of the people using his handles to solicit fans for nudes was reportedly a former stalker of his, chelsey lynn.

i think it is worth noting that brendon has brought up his history with “stage gay” with founding member, guitarist, composer, and lyricist ryan ross and mentioned that brendon’s attempts to get handsy on stage were not always taken kindly (emphasis mine):

For our first headline tour I would go up to Ryan our guitar player, and like kiss him on the neck or kiss him on the mouth and he would be so mad. I was like, I just want to kiss you bro.

(that’s also the interview where brendon tried to both-sides the issue of roseanne being a hideous fucking racist. so, fun stuff.)

in any case, it took brendon four months to respond to any of the accusations leveled at him and zack. he ended up doing so by filming a two-minute apology on his twitch account (which was locked to subscribers only, meaning it was essentially monetized) [twitter thread summary for those who can't stomach it], only to say that he was just too anxious to say anything and that while zack had been removed from his position, he and brendon would remain close friends. he did not respond to any of the allegations against himself, and proceeded to basically go completely radio silent on all social media until reemerging in 2022 to promote viva las vengeance.

(contrast to this to how speedily he fired touring guitarist kenny harris in 2018 when multiple allegations arose that he was soliciting underage girls. he was removed from the tour in less than twenty-four hours. while the expediency of this was praised at the time, it retroactively raises a lot of questions as to how much brendon and/or zack knew about this behavior beforehand and were simply waiting for a good PR call to do something about it.)

brendon seeing no issues with zack’s behavior and only doing something about it when backed into a corner is very much not a good look, and is suggestive of the possibility that he’s complicit in or at the very least tolerant of this kind of fuckery.

but wait. theres more.

beyond the genuine fucked up behavior, brendon also has a history of severely mistreating his bandmates. we could get into the politics of the infamous schism that split founding member ryan ross (along with bassist jon walker) from brendon and the band’s drummer, spencer smith, but that is its own bag of worms and this post is long enough already. that drama is very well-covered. however, i think it’s worth noting that out of every single member of the band that has come through it, both creative contributor and touring member, the only former member to depart the band amiably was spencer, who took his leave because of struggles with alcoholism. he’s the only one who remains on good terms with brendon to this day, but he’s also technically brendon’s boss at this point since he helps manage the label dcd2, of which panic at the disco is a part.

most apparent and well-documented of brendon’s spotty history with his own bandmates is his treatment of dallon weekes and his wife, breezy weekes, while the former was writing and touring with the band. in that little zack hall clusterfuck above you can see places where breezy talked about being repeatedly harassed but electing to keep quiet so that dallon wouldn't risk losing his job. reportedly they both went to panic's management to put a stop to it, but the bad behavior continued, with both zack hall and brendon’s wife, sarah urie, as propagators. there was public outcry as people insisted that dallon and breezy were making this up for attention. however, eventually former touring guitarist (from 2009-2012) ian crawford (along with his sister), both spoke up to corroborate that zack's behavior (and brendon's enabling of it) were very much recurring issues and were part of the reason that ian left panic in the first place. ian's twitter is no longer active, so all i have are screenshots on tumblr for this one.

dallon has not spoken of his time spent with panic with much fondness. he replaced bassist jon walker in 2009 and contributed creatively on both vices and virtues (2011) and too weird to live, too rare to die (2013). for the former, he was responsible for the concept and album art. for the latter, he got writing credit for all but two of the tracks (casual affair and end of all things), and you can even find an early version of "far too young to die" that was originally penned for one of dallon's earlier projects, the brobecks. the controversial track "girls/girls/boys" (as well as “all the boys”) from too weird was written for dallon's wife, breezy, as a celebration for her pansexuality. the finished product would end up being about an alleged threesome brendon had.

in 2015 dallon stated that he would no longer be involved in panic’s writing process but would continue to serve as touring bassist before departing officially in 2017 and focusing all his efforts on the aforementioned idkhow along with former falling in reverse drummer (and former fellow brobecks bandmate) ryan seaman. while dallon has remained relatively cagey about his time with panic (as is entirely within his rights), he has on occasion commented that he often felt bullied and belittled in the workplace, and once referred to zack hall as "the actual worst person [he had] ever met."

breezy has been more frank about what dallon had to deal with during his time with the band and over time, dallon has been more up front about this as well. turns out dallon was underpaid to the point where he had to take up a second job cleaning carpets while touring with panic, and working side jobs and donating plasma for gas money between tours. this continued well into 2010 and possibly for longer. the ratio was reportedly something like $400 a night compared to brendon's $15k paycheck, so take that as you will.

that's most of what i can remember. i tried to sauce everything i could but please let me know if i missed anything. i also tried to embed the images but doing so kept breaking the damn post cause this is a webbed site so you only get links SORRY

tldr brendon urie is self-absorbed prick who hoards credit, mistreats his musicians, shelters predators, and may very well be a predator himself. fuck him.

also, while i definitely don't want to downplay the severity of just how horrendous a lot of this shit is, in the interests of not wrapping this on a totally down note i do want to mention that people were writing brendon and panic out of the "emo trinity" legacy as early as mid-2019 because everyone hated pray for the wicked that fucking much. after having to endure the musical travesty that is high hopes innumerable times during every single 20-minute grocery store run i was ready to chalk up my dislike of him to sheer annoyance so you can imagine my surprise when i learned that not only was this annoyance justified i wasn't actually hating him nearly enough.

[omegalomania]

tumblr user omegalomania i would like to profusely thank you for the “why brendon urie sucks” masterpost. it has been a fantastic resource these past few days

ill be honest i forgot that thing existed. uh glad people are still making use of it i guess

[omegalomania]

Hi! Do you know where or if Joe talked about having bipolar disorder? I just hadn’t seen anything about it until your post. Thanks, have a good day!

he talked abt it a bit in interviews leading up to and after the release of none of this rocks! i think the first time he mentioned it was back in this podcast here where he mentions the Extremely Relatable scenario of just kind of hearing this from his doctor who was like "oh yeah especially cause youre bipolar" and he was like sorry im what. say that again.

[omegalomania]

is there some drama with fob and mcr fans? sorry i'm not really into their fandom

we fuck sometimes

[omegalomania]

hi in your tags about my post about pavlove, you said the last time they released a demo it turned into an ep? please share the lore 💖

lake effect kid!

which was initially a demo that debuted in 2008 in the "welcome to the new administration" mixtape. it went essentially unfinished for a decade until they released the lake effect kid ep in 2018, in which they actually properly recorded the song and released it. which was...apparently a mistake, because they initially did "city in a garden" to kind of celebrate chicago and acknowledge getting to play wrigley that year and then because pete and patrick Cannot Fucking Communicate, patrick went and Also rerecorded lake effect kid. so they decided to add in super fade (initially a b-side to young and menace) and make the misunderstanding into a whole ep based on how much they want the city of chicago carnally