#tryst theory

[shark-myths]

we’re spinning out

and all I think of is you

if I get out of this alive

I’ll make everything right

[leyley09]

Alpha Dog - Welcome to the new deja vu

“Alpha Dog” was originally released as a partial demo on the “Welcome to New Administration” mixtape, part of the publicity campaign before the release of Folie a Deux in 2008. The entire song was released on the Believers Never Die album, released in 2009 just before FOB announced their “indefinite hiatus”.

As it’s never been covered before in the curriculum of the Peterick Institute, we decided it was time for a lecture. Please take your seat and hold your questions to the end.

Clap until your hands hurt Standing ovations or boos

Written in and around the same period as “I Don’t Care”, this has a similar vibe to me. It’s got a very “any audience is a good audience” feel.

Watch us until we blur Walk off into the sunset

Pete’s big on these “walk off” references - if you’re a regular attender, you may remember previous mentions of disappearing, usually “down south”. But there’s something very pop culture about “walking off into the sunset”, the hero and his love interest disappearing into the horizon, aided by a soft focus lens blur to (theoretically) live happily ever after. It’s very Pete Wentz, is it not?

Tell rock n' roll I'm alone again I want to put the Midwest home again

In light of Lake Effect EP, can we speculate that “the Midwest” might be another coded reference to Patrick? I think we can, since we’re now interpreting “Chicago” as a reference to Patrick - see this post.

It’s also interesting that this set of lyrics is the only one edited in this particular way, and it does sound electronically edited to me. I feel like we’ve established that Patrick uses different voices to indicate different “speakers”, and this is one way of accomplishing that. Is it meant to be quoting someone else? Maybe. Or maybe someone just thought this sounded cool and didn’t duplicate it in the next verse for some reason.

It is a weird thing to say. Normally, I’d expect someone to say “I want to make the Midwest home again” if they were talking about themselves and being literal or maybe “take the Midwest home again” if Midwest is an object that can be moved. There are a lot of verbs I would use here instead of “put”, but I’m just going to call this one of Pete’s less well-put lyrics and move on.

Your time has passed they say never means never Solar flare stares won’t last but never means forever

(Full disclosure, if you check your lyrics on genius.com, this is not the lyric that shows up - but it is the lyric in the liner notes for the album, so I’m going to go with this because it makes more sense to me. And if I have to pick between lyrics from who-knows-who or the ones approved by the band for publication…. ANYWAY.)

Sun references generally imply Patrick, within the bounds of our curriculum. For those of us not knowledgeable about them, solar flares are sudden flashes of brightness, powered by the “sudden release of magnetic energy” (to quote the Wikipedia page because it’s PERFECT).

(In case you aren’t familiar, solar flares actually look really cool.)

So a “solar flare stare”... I mean, I think we all know what that means. (If you need to have that explained, message one of your instructors here - our inboxes have permanent office hours.)

This sounds like people telling him (them) “this will never last” - but never means forever. Or, to translate, fuck you people, this is going to last forever.

Alpha dog and oh oh omegalomaniac

There’s a lot of layers of meaning to this line, which we’ll cover in steps. So, in no particular order…

Layer 1:

The first thing that jumped out at me when I heard this song back in 2009 was the religious reference. (Blame it on 13 year of religious school.)  “Alpha and omega” is used to describe Jesus in the New Testament. Alpha and omega are letters in the Greek alphabet - alpha is the first letter, and omega is the last letter.

They’re the Greek equivalents to the English “A to Z”, and it means basically the same thing - this “thing”, whatever you’re talking about, is “THE thing”, the first and last simultaneously because nothing compares. It is the only thing; it is everything.

Layer 2:

As I was driving to work the other day and looping this song, I was thinking about the way this lyric is written on genius.com - “Alpha dog” and “Omegalomaniac”. (Grammar nerd warning) When we capitalize words in English, that means those words are special for some reason. The things most commonly capitalized are the first word of a sentence and NAMES. The word “omegalomaniac” is not capitalized in the liner notes, but this really made me consider the possibility that these terms are referring to two separate people which actually makes the third layer much more obvious.

Layer 3:

“Alpha dog” is a probably a familiar term for most people, as “alpha” is commonly used to refer to the highest ranking animal in a group of social animals. It’s particularly common in discussions of dogs/wolves. The alpha is generally considered to be the dominant animal in the group, a position often achieved through the use of force/aggression. I don’t want to point any fingers, but we’ve all read the articles about how Patrick used to win arguments about songs in the studio…

The comparison here is the “Omegalomaniac”. This is a fun compound word (thanks Pete). “Omega”, in relation to “alpha dog”, refers to the animal at the bottom of the social hierarchy. They’re usually considered to be weaker than the rest of the group, more submissive, and (this is my favorite quote from the Wikipedia page) “may also be used as communal scapegoats”. Now I don’t think the other members of the band think of Pete as a scapegoat, but we know he did. He went out of his way to be the public target, the media scapegoat. I’m going to refrain from comment about the “submissive” aspect….argue about that amongst yourselves… but I think all of us with some mental/emotional issues have thought of ourselves as weaker than our friends and family at one point or another (no matter how inaccurate that might be). When you can’t do something that other people find easy (whether it’s a task or just living), it’s a thing you think. It’s not a good thing, but I think we can empathize and understand why Pete might have thought this about himself at this point in time.

The second part of the compound word is “megalomaniac”, which is someone who suffers from megalomania - a symptom of mental illness marked by delusions of greatness, wealth, etc. or an obsession with doing extravagant or grand things. Does that sound like anyone we know? I also think it’s particularly interesting that this term shows up in a song connected to Folie - the album named after a psychiatric syndrome.

So we have the Alpha dog - someone who’s “in charge” due to their displays of dominance and aggression - and the Omegalomaniac - a communal scapegoat with delusions of grandeur. What a pair, eh?

Alpha dog and oh oh mega mega low

This is the way the line is written in the liner notes, and it really speaks to me right now. We know Pete is bipolar, and I think we can confidently say that the period of time when this song was written was a low period for him. So this line is giving us another comparison, the “Alpha dog” and the very, very depressed person.

Welcome to the new déjà vu

Deja vu, the feeling that this has happened before. Band life can get very repetitive - we’ve all heard bands who don’t know what city they’re in on a given day because everything starts to blur together. Filter through a 2007-08 / tryst theory framework though, and you get the feeling that we’ve had this conversation before, this argument before, we’ve done this particular thing before...

I can almost see the wizard through the curtains

Nice Wizard of Oz reference, right? I think that’s fairly obvious. It’s a pretty common conversational reference now, “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain”. We use it to refer to something losing its “magic” once you know how things work. The magical floating head of the Wizard of Oz loses its ability to cause fear and awe when you know that it’s a special effect operated by the guy behind the curtain.

As someone who has worked a lot of backstage/front of house over the years, I can confirm that stage events of all kinds do lose a little bit of their magic when you know how things work, at least for me. I have to work to not be distracted by things malfunctioning or a bad sound mix. I can definitely see Pete feeling like some of the “magic” of live performances, recording, being a famous rock star, has begun to wear off because now he’s behind the curtain, seeing all the boring, dirty details.

Let’s throw our tryst theory filter on this line now: haven’t we all at least seen a situation where a person’s “magic” wears off after you get to know them or spend a lot of time with them? Like, they’re really awesome but then you have to live with them and find out about all their annoying habits. You might still love them, but you have to acknowledge that they aren’t the vision of perfection you once thought they were.

But he says “almost see”, which to me implies things aren’t completely awful yet, but they’re more awful than they used to be.

Alpha dog and oh oh omegalomaniac

We must have the best coats

If you’ve seen pictures of 2007-08 FOB, you know that’s not true.

Tell the best jokes We must make it hard to look so easy doing something so hard

This line is complicated. We’ve probably all said this about someone talented - like Patrick, for example - but Pete’s thrown another wrinkle on top of the “you make that look so easy”. It resonates with me, as someone who seems to make their own life more difficult sometimes. But this says “we” and (grammar nerd appearance) the last two “people” mentioned are the “Alpha dog” and “Omegalomaniac” - so those two are doing something that’s making it harder to do something that should come naturally, that they should be making look easy.

You must see my wink

When do you wink? When you’re flirting maybe, or when you’re letting someone in on a secret/joke. In the context of this verse, I think it’s the latter.

They squint when they look at me I'm a star

There’s a layer of “I’m a rock star” here, to go with the surface level of “rock star life is not all I hoped it would be”. But it’s almost sarcastic -- “ooo, look at me, I’m a rock star”.  “You must see my wink / They squint when they look at me” is sung in a decidedly more aggressive tone than the other parts of the verse, so I think that’s a signal that this is the “best joke”.

But there’s another layer, a kickback to the “solar flare” reference earlier. The sun is a star, and we do squint to look at it because it’s too bright. This is not something Patrick would say about himself in any kind of seriousness, so the only way Pete’s going to get him to say this is to let him think it’s a joke - even though he is too bright for Pete to look at directly.

You're not the first or the last

But you're possibly the prettiest

Okay, this is the lyric that made me decide we needed to cover this song in class. At a glance, you can tie this back to the “alpha and omega” reference - you may not be the end-all-be-all but you’re pretty - but then you can also read it very literally.

I think it’s particularly interesting now that we can compare it to “tell me I’m the only one even if it’s not true”. Like, here, at this point in time, pre-hiatus, when things are not good, this honesty is maybe too much. It feels to me like something you say to someone when you want to hurt their feelings. “You’re not the first and you won’t be the last - you might be the prettiest, but that’s all”. It’s not necessarily true, but when you’re trying to wound the person you’re arguing with, truth is sometimes not your concern. Fast forward a decade or so, and instead it’s “tell me I’m the only one, I don’t care if you’re lying, just let me believe that”.

Which one would say that? I think there are arguments to be made for both, but if I had to pick, I think Patrick fights dirty and a statement like this would have crushed this Pete. It also flows best with the “tell me I’m the only one”, so there’s that as well.

He's a fighter past his prime He's in the gutter waving his hand “I'm just fine”

The last line of this section is in quotation marks in the liner notes, implying it’s meant to be the words of the last person mentioned (the fighter). The image this conjures for me is someone who’s been running, bent over gasping for air and waving off your concern with an obviously fake “I’m fine”.

It’s a nice analogy for someone who’s not acknowledging that there are problems, that they’re becoming the “Alpha dog” and the “Omegalomaniac” instead of Patrick and Pete, that the new deja vu is “seeing the wizard through the curtains” instead of walking off into the sunset, happily ever after.

In conclusion, everything hurts if you look close enough.

The floor is now open for questions and comments.

[a-smile-like-that]

Let me tell you a tale...

Once upon a time, @shatteredmirrors-and-lace23 and @allkindsofplatinumandpercocet and I met up in New Orleans for the last show of the MANIA tour. An amazing time was had by all...and after the show, we took an Uber to bourbon street, and Shattered and I got ourselves some red beans and rice and some daiquiris. Very STRONG daiquiris.

The night went on and we ended up at Cafe Du Monde, eating beignets and (at least in my case) getting progressively drunker. I apparently considered asking a random stranger if he was wearing a butt plug, and tried to sing “Saturday” very loudly but replace pertinent words with other words like “beignet,” “powdered sugar” and “alcohol.”

This all culminated in me sitting on one of the traffic pillars on the side of the road, singing this bastardized FOB song as we waited for our Uber to take us home. I was apparently struggling to stay upright and take a selfie at once....so this photo happened:

Then our Uber arrives!!

And then my drunk ass starts to tell him that his life would be changed if he got a sandwich from Verti Marte (which is apparently called, affectionately, by the locals, “DirtyVerti”), and also that I promised not to throw up in his car, because “that’s not the kind of person I am.” This also was accompanied by me trying to hug him from the backseat.

So, in her infinite wisdom, Platinum realized a distraction was necessary. So she loudly asks me as she pulls me away from my attempt to accost our Uber driver,

“So, what are your thoughts on @shark-myths Tryst Theory?”

Which had it’s intended effect, as I promptly forgot all about the Uber driver’s need for a hug, and proclaimed loudly:

“ITS TRUE!!! And you know it’s true because it’s a POWERPOINT! ON THE INTERNET!!! That means it MUST be true!!!”

And then for the rest of the drive, I alternated between proclaiming why Den Mothers like @sn1tchesandtalkers are so important telling the world about Lube, and that Tryst Theory was ABSOLUTELY real. And true. Because you know...it’s a PowerPoint on the internet.

All I remember afterwards was Platinum and Shattered each pulling off one of my boots each, while I sang “Box blondes have less fun” over and over and over again.

So remember kids. Don’t hug your Uber driver. Get a sammich from DirtyVerti. Use lube for God’s sake.

And if you know the truth, put it on a PowerPoint on the internet!

(This may be wholly untrue in places...I was drunk. I leave it to Shattered and Platinum to correct me. and DRINK RESPONSIBLY, KIDS!)

[shark-myths]

Sending My Love From the Other Side

Things we should discuss:

Pete’s sexy metal Viking princess unitard, he’s waiting to be rescued by a barbarian, I can only presume he is a bride-prize for the hero who can save him

The Folie-ness of it all, the ship at sea but not doomed, not this time; instead it is a vessel of hope

The mythology-of-the-band frame narrative

How the title references back to Sending Postcards from a Plane Crash

Stardust stardust stardust and Pete’s fear of space objects

What do Field of Dreams and The Princess Bride have in common?

For those expressing concern about Joe’s absence both on Sunday and in this video—he writes in his recent book, None of This Rocks, about emergency back problems during the latter end of this pandemic, compromising his ability to walk for a brief post-surgical time, exacerbated by overworking. He writes about learning boundaries, learning to rest, and asking his band for accommodations for his health. It seems likeliest that he’s recovering from a back-related issue, rather than conscientiously abstaining from participating in this record as he describes doing with MANIA.

General ranting about lyrics:

DISCLAIMER: It’s not me, okay, it’s the text, it’s Pete being incapable of writing anything that doesn’t sound like it’s about forbidden queer love, I could not make this shit up, I truly could not

“Model house meltdown”

Reminds me of walking through the house in your shoes, I’m supposed to love you; reminds me of I’m just playing house, no idea what I’m doing now. It’s a very dark Tim Burton-y sentiment from an outwardly happy man living a domestic fairy tale.

“We were a hammer to the Statue of David, we were a painting you could never frame, and you were the sunshine of my lifetime.”

THE PAST-TENSENESS HERE

Right from the start, this sets us up for something universally perceived as perfect and beloved being destroyed. This could be a reputation, a cultural relic, a profound piece of history, a narrative, a love. We were a hammer that destroyed it, that perceived thing… 

We were a painting too profane to be displayed in a museum, hidden and damned? Or we were larger than life, uncontent to be contained by a frame, always in motion, chimeric and twining, together apart, together apart, a tesselated image you can only see if you zoom out and unfocus your eyes.

You have all read my opinions about twenty years of Patrick = sunshine metaphors, which seem to be getting pretty FUCKING literal here at the end of days.

“Nowhere left for us to go but heaven, summer falling through our fingers again”

Among other things, this seems to be a VERY explicit reference to Heaven’s Gate.

I am feeling the hope of MANIA (you know my manic poly dream reading of that beautiful, purple beacon of hope) replaced by what the pandemic / apocalypse did to us all. So much for stardust, indeed.

Summer symbolizing touring, festival circuits, linking to the recent FOB instagram post that showed video from the Hella Mega Tour with the caption “take us back here.” The liminality and fleeting-ness of those spaces, those selves, that unmoored time of doing nothing, being everything. The way they want to be home when they’re on the road and the way they want to be on the road when they’re at home. Summer slipping through our fingers again, like the sand in the bottom half of the hourglass, gone past, gone past.

“What would you trade the pain for? I’m not sure”

Isn’t that a fucking question, my friends!!! The pain of longing, unsatisfied, love, unrequited or unconsummated, forbidden and forsaken? The pain of not-having, or of having-had? The pain it was to be together? Welcome to my glossary of suffering

And what would you trade it for? Is this a question of, what is it worth and I can’t imagine giving it up? Or is it a past-tense question—a way of saying, I traded that exquisite pain to get what I have now, and I’m not sure what it was for, I’m not sure if it was worth it.

“Every lover’s got a little dagger in their hand”

Tbh someone smarter than me will have more to say about this, I am sure. Tarot and betrayal and the way love has thorns and anything worth having always hurts, everyone you trust with love will hurt you and let you down at least a little bit, imperfections and prices paid. But it’s also a very classic, very catchy and poetically deep sounding chorus of the type FOB loves to use and do not always hold a deep reading. 

“I saw you in a bright clear field, hurricane heat in my head.”

More field-of-dreams invocation and playfulness! If there is not a stadium show at that field, I am going to light something on fire, it is the only pilgrimage I care about from this day forward.

“Inscribed like stone and faded by the rain: Give up what you love before it does you in”

LITERALLY what can I even SAY about this and the past tense and the DECISION, the question popped by MANIA that was answered only by global cataclysm and forced separation, the way they began work on this album in early 2021 (per Joe’s book). I can only hear this in conversation with the tracks on that record.

“The kind of pain you feel to get good in the end”

I was all prepared to do some read about morality and queerness and what you give up for the people you love, until @carbonbased000 said, “I love the pain line and I want to give it a kinky read so badly but we both know it’s about tennis”, and you know what. She’s right.

To summarize: there’s a lot to say, there’s a lot to feel, I love this song immensely and I hope you do too. I hope to explode more thoughts soon and uhhh maybe write another fairy tale. TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK, EVERYONE!

[shark-myths]

POWERPOINT PART TWO IS HERE!

[shark-myths]

the ppt is so!! like yes yes to all of that. I hadn't considered the implications of a star is born and now I am...like dear god, does he think he can get away with this? (/j. that's not really the point anymore, is it?)

did you see his latest insta post, with his NYLON interview pics, where the caption is "you want it all but you can't have it, it's in your face but you can't grab it"? because i feel PERSONALLY taunted by pete wentz. he's like, just telling us he's in love with patrick but they aren't going to be together, he's putting ME as a CONSPIRACIST in the exact same position of thwarted frustration he himself is in. IT'S FINE I'M FINE.

p.s. for everyone having a star is born feelings, this fic by @earlgreytea68 was extremely satisfying. am i going to write a star is born au? stay tuned!

[shark-myths]

1/2 Hi hello I have a...Headcanon? Fic prompt? Grand unifying Mania to smfs tryst theory theory? Anyway it's this: There was some sort of 'fuck it lets just try again' decision around mania era and it was good! It was working out! And then there was covid and lockdowns and everyone had to make some really tough choices re: who we say irl and when and how often and that led to some real 'well maybe were fooling ourselves when we thought we could have it all this can't really work we did miss our-

2/2 -shot' ergo the smfs lyrical lean of 'I love you so much but this maybe really isn't our time'/ mixed in with all the other very project-written-during-covid ~vibes~ (which I love). But anyway there's a lot of time that can and did (if they started in 2021?) pass between writing lyrics and releasing music and working on the album after all that isolating introspection led right back to 'fuck it lets just be together life is short' hence The Way They're Acting now. *shrugs* idk

*

Love this, love you, thanks for the conspiracy ask!

we know from this kerrang interview and a few other casual mentions, like in patrick's album commentary from the release parties (still haven't listened to that myself but @leyley09 is an excellent on-the-scene reporter) that some of the writing for SMFS actually started before the pandemic, with Patrick dreaming up the music for What a Time to Be Alive right after the release of MANIA and Pete writing the lyrics that paired with it before the pandemic. so if the writing process went dormant in lockdown, we know many of the threads were connected before covid hit the US. (i'm also remembering the cute zoom sing-a-long pete & patrick did at the beginning of the pandemic where they were clearly in the same room but on separate video feeds so that we, viewing, could feel like we were all alone together)

I stand by my thought that MANIA's ask symbolizes open doors that are open-ended--the queer poly happily ever after is floated, and maybe it's answered and maybe it's not but i don't think any of those doors were closed, even by lockdown. i take the backwards-looking in SMFS as a way of acknowledging what's gone past and is no longer possible: having their whole lives being entwined together, maybe even raising a family together instead of with the lovely women they've chosen and built something beautiful with, not letting the fear of being found out determine the unhealthy shape their relationship took for the first 15-odd years of its course. i find this deeply relatable as a mid-30s bisexual, honestly, whose life could have looked really different in some really joyful ways if the culture had been more hospitable and open to queerness when i was growing up, but who also doesn't regret or want to change what i have now.

SMFS doesn't feel like a frantic too-lateness to me, it doesn't feel young; it feels plain and true, like, well, it is too late for some things, but that might not have worked out anyway, and as it stands we're everything to each other--patrick can't write songs without pete and pete feels like he's a painter who can't paint without fall out boy (the kerrang interview is giving me life, truly)--and it isn't so bad, having a soulmate, whether that manifestation is currently romantic or not. it's too late to change what's gone past but it's not too late for the entire future.

i've just never seen them so comfortable together and so matter-of-fact! like their closeness hasn't looked this easy since pete was making patrick squirm on vh1 by describing them as husbands nearly 20 years ago. i love the way no one's rushing to disguise or define or defend anything, they're just sitting there plainly like, this dude is everything to me, and it frankly is so beautiful and refreshing after the no-homo panic that characterized the early aughts.

i love your headcanon and it gave me all these lovely chewy thoughts! god i can't wait to see the fic that comes out of this. thank you darling!

[shark-myths]

I just want you to love me like that, yeah/Would you bury me next to Johnny Cash (Fob Dylan)

VS

Kiss my cheek, baby, please/Would you read my eulogy? (Heaven, Iowa)

… thoughts?

god d you just have to twist the knife (again, twist the knife again like we did last summer), don't you? you just COME AT ME LIKE THIS

honestly though we should look at all the last rites / death related requests pete has made lyrically over the years, because it's such a theme in their discography now, and i bet sometimes pete writes it that way and sometimes they're unrelated lines and it's just patrick arranging it that way, and--it's such an extreme level to blow love up to, where it's happening in foxholes and chapels in hospitals, isn't it? like on your deathbed, you can finally admit something, you can finally ask for the tenderness and overt love-yes-love you have been wanting the whole time, only you had to pretend you didn't want it, because of celebrity or masculinity or the rules you made up in your head about how you're not good enough, only copper-plated, and you'd tarnish gold.

all of which I FEEL FINE ABOUT