obligatory post that the fall out boy tour is starting tonight and i will be posting about it a LOT and will definitely be posting spoilers for quite literally everything so block the tags “fob” and “tourdust” if you dont want to see that

people bitching and moaning about fob "turning mainstream" as if that was never the entire point of fall out boy. that's In the goddamn dna of the band, it's baked into the ethos of why the band started in the first damn place. to be accessible to kids and especially to girls, who were often ridiculed and shunted out of the hardcore community. to be a gateway to bands that aren't as mainstream. to comment on the society they live in, as they live in it. people act like fall out boy "turning mainstream" was some kind of "betrayal" when from the start they were seizing on the trends of the time, putting their unique, unhinged fall out boy spin on them, and shooting them back out as a funhouse mirror. take this to your grave capitalized on the pop-punk zeitgeist that was big in the late 90s and early aughts and put their own spin on it: enmeshed catchy choruses with high-dexterity lyrical & linguistic skewerwork. infinity on high was basically a massive critique of the scene they were in - this ain't a scene it's a goddamn arm's race is a fucking thesis statement on what it is to be catapulted into fame in an industry that wants nothing more than a thousand cookie-cutter copycat acts of a successful formula, and fall out boy WAS the formula everyone desperately wanted to emulate. american beauty / american psycho blended sampling and modern hip-hop stylings with polished pop-rock and pointed those songs back at the snapshot of the 2010s we all lived in: commenting on racial injustice and the freeze-frame nature of relevancy. but even then they weren't doing it quite right - because fall out boy never does things quite right, they're never quite conventional, whether it's wentz's darkly confessional lyrics double-bagged in metaphor or stump's distinctive clear tenor or trohman's inescapable rock 'n roll edge or hurley's thunderous hardcore-punk-rock soul.

this band has always been too clever for its own critics, is the thing. but then, they always knew that. they knew they had a thriving fanbase of largely female fans so they were going to be mocked and belittled and ridiculed. they weren't quite right. they weren't quite so easy to market. pete wentz had to have all his hard edges filed off and cut down to size, skin lightened, literally whitewashed ("i feel like a photo that's been overexposed") to hell and back, even as he was marketed as the pretty boy of the band. and the other three members never even bothered with the spotlight: the soft-spoken vegan straightedge anarchist drummer and the wry, wisecracking, whip-clever guitarist who was more concerned with being the connective tissue than anything and the reticent vocalist who sang the words and wrote an awful lot of music but wasn't really the guy fronting the band. wentz's charisma carried the band, because the rest of them were really just some guys and never aspired to be anything else.

fall out boy is too pop. fall out boy is too mainstream. fall out boy isn't the real poster child of the emo movement. other bands are better. even within fall out boy's own narrative, they are repeatedly ignored, sidelined, and belittled, as though they weren't one of the only acts from the big 00s emo-pop movement to successfully not just survive the transition from the aughts to the '10s, and then later from the '10s to the '20s, but to thrive in it without banking on nostalgia. this band was supposed to be a flash in the pan. they weren't supposed to last and they weren't supposed to get big. they started off in joe's parents' attic because joe and pete were sick of how exclusionary and homophobic the hardcore scene was.

i think it's high time that people acknowledge how fall out boy has repeatedly succeeded where most of their other peers failed. cunning, clever, capable, and hyper-aware of the space they occupy in the culture surrounding them. that they are just as powerful, important, and artistic as any of the other bands in the scene that others might deify at their expense. that they deserve a hell of a lot more respect than they get from critics or hardcore punks who think they sold out. i hope one day they get that recognition. because they've earned it, time and time again, and the more i see people pushing back against that, the more certain i become of its inevitability.

mcr fans talk about fob the way that dog ppl talk about cats, and fob fans talk about mcr the way that cat ppl talk about dogs. and what i mean by that is that mcr fans have to be like “fall out boy sucks and they’re evil and have never had a good song and their singer isn’t talented and the lyrics don’t make sense” and fob fans are like “idk mcr has just never been my thing :)”

This came to me in a vision

Idea from these tags:

everyone STOP going insane. you should be going to BED

God bless @scarcrossedheartdust for commissioning this painting of Patrick as a siren 🤭💕💕💕💕 I could not be happier with it. (Please listen with this song btw they are meant to be consumed together)

this is such a good quality video

feeling normal about that new patrick video

thinking about how tttyg was kinda the calm before the storm, if you will. and how futct was them entering the storm, ioh and folie in the thick of it, and then at long last, the hiatus in the eye of the storm. and then they entered it again, this time having already braved it once before, from srar to the harsher end of mania. and smfs is them finally being free of the storm altogether. they still went through it, the storm is still around, but they're in calmer seas now, following the wind currents wherever they want

THEY CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH IT

infinity on high vs vices and virtues part 2

[part 1]

calm before the storm being a setlist staple is still one of the biggest shocks of the setlist to me outside of the medley/8 ball insanity like. they literally hadn't played this song since 2007 before this year and now it's at every show. and they slay it every single time

the thing about the fob healing tour is that it has filled me with so much vindication that now whenever i see Bad Fall Out Boy Opinions (of which so many people are so unnecessarily loud about) it’s literally just like lol okay so you missed the point so bad it makes you look stupid and we are all laughing at you. get laughed at loser we do not have time to entertain your silliness we are busy healing and partying together forever.

Do u possibly have any more information on the infamous Andy Hurley Skrillex kiss picture? Like why? Where did it come from? How do they even know each other???

It has been in the back of my mind for two months now and it's driving me insane, I can't deal with this. Every time I'm doing something my thoughts will just wander back to Andrew Hurley and Skrillex kissing. And the worst part I have zero fucking context for this goddamn picture. I think this is a modern form of torture genuinely

i am so obsessed with this it’s like you’re trapped in the labyrinth and andy and skrillex kissing is your minotaur. i am sad to report that i actually have zero context for this kiss, but i do have context for skrillex! fob toured with from first to last during warped tour, which, given andy’s straightened hair and the length of his hair in the photo, is when im gonna guess the kiss happened.

here’s a little fun interview with pete and sonny on warped:

and from first to last was also on the black clouds and underdogs lineup! here’s some more pics of sonny and the boys:

and here’s him wearing fob merch:

and for fun here’s more pics of skrillex kissin boys and gettin kissed by boys

As Above, So Below Dir. John Erick Dowdle (2014) // Heartbreak Feels So Good Fall Out Boy (2023)

i could draw something of real substance. or,