#fob deep lore analysis

[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!

[meat-wentz]

you are an mcr blogger stop posting about fob and leave it to the real fans

okay so i wanna actually talk about this because it’s something i’ve seen a lot recently and kinda came to a head last night with fob trending.

ya gotta understand that there was an obvious influx of bandom with the return of mcr. like myself, although i’ve had dedicated fan accounts on other platforms, made this account so i could actually *engage* with the tour in a way i couldn’t engage with it on other platforms. you gotta understand i’ve been on tumblr for 14 years (in a week it will be my main’s 14th birthday!) but i also haven’t been actively involved in tumblr fan spaces in a really really long time, like a decade probably. so this account came with some adjusting, especially considering how different of a space tumblr is (more suited for long posting, analysis, ongoing jokes and more stable friendships/relationships to mutuals). so yeah i came here for tour but stayed because it’s really one of the best online spaces for community i could recommend (not surprising, i’m still friends on facebook with a bunch of my mutuals from 2010).

but also something to consider is, for a lot of people, this is their first dive into bandom in any meaningful way. not only are they making connections in a generally positive environment, they’re also engaging with material in a way that you can’t really get on any other platform (analysis! parallels! deep dives! inside jokes that last more than three days when meme cycles run dry after 24 hours in other places! the ability to say fuck without punishment! a more open space for queerness to thrive! and most of the time, a general welcome to horny content) so there’s also an adjustment time for everyone else too, which is why we keep having to have the same conversation about bandom racism every few weeks, and now too why fob is coming up in reference to petekey, because mcr/fob crossover fans are noticing how the mcr fandom consistently reduces fob’s line of work down to a punchline (especially considering many of which do not engage with fob at all).

personally, now that tour is over, i started posting about fob because they are an equally important band to me and because they mean so so so much to my heart and wow! i finally have a space to talk about it with people who are interested in hearing my thoughts about it (or not, if i’m not for you, i’m not for you), AND i wanna hear about and engage with all the cool people on here about their thoughts too! and i think a lot of fans now have the brain space/dash space to actually talk about fob, or engage for the first time with fob, which is so awesome!!! the way i’ve always approached tumblr is as a personalized archive, so that’s why i’ve been posting things that may have been posted before, doing intro lore and jokes and dives, because i like having a place i know i can reference in the future.

i know this is an arduous process for people who are dedicated fob bloggers and have been for years, to see a lot of people blogging about fob solely in reference to a ship for months on end and then they get recognition on the trending page for the same damn thing but this time saying “stop doing that” i know it’s hard to see your favorite band only recognized not by their artistry or their members or their music or any of the cool things about them, but by their relationship to another band. i feel like right now it’s a transitional phase for a lot of people into bandom blogging just in general, i know a lot of blogs who have never been bandom blogs but now are dedicated bandom bloggers just in the past year! so there’s adjustments to be made, stuff to learn, annoying conversations to have, but don’t doubt for one second, i hold fob in my heart and always have and i am so so so grateful to have a space and community to express that love with. i’m sorry to all the fob bloggers out there that are seeing this awkward kinda messy transition, i know it’s annoying af and will continue to be but know there are bloggers out here who are genuinely in it for their love of fob and lots of new fans out there who will look to you to guide them into their new favorite band!!! for now there’s going to be a lot of rehashing of ground already beaten to death so apologies on behalf of the post-mcr wreckage.

to you, personally, anon, idk what you consider a real fan but i don’t have to prove my credentials to you, so sorry if that’s what you were looking for. like i mean this with all good intention, but if you don’t like seeing me around, you’re totally cool to block me! you deserve to experience your favorite band the way you want to and at the end of the day i’m just some guy, don’t let me be the person that makes you upset to come on tumblr and engage in a way that feels meaningful and positive for you.

[shark-myths]

POWERPOINT PART TWO IS HERE!

[shark-myths]

Hello! I was feeling the urge to tinhat about peterick and I pretty much consider you the one place to go to for that. I'm thinking about a lot right now, thanks to the amazing wealth of lyrics that Pete has gifted us (there has not been such a consistent reference to "summer" since ABAP and I'm losing my mind over it a little bit), but the main thing I'm thinking about is that "I just need someone to hold me even though you don't even know me" can only be about Patrick. Why? I'm glad you asked! I can back it up. For one, this harks all the way back to Hold Me Tight or Don't which is, for obvious reasons, peterick coded. Not only that, the "hold me" motif is used again in Hold Me Like A Grudge, which makes that song even more strongly linked to peterick, even disregarding the insanity of "twenty summers" (which I am not disregarding, by the way). So that's the "hold me" bit of that original line covered. There's also the latter bit, the "you don't even know me," which, yeah, doesn't seem very peterick-y, not in the way we like to think of them, but I will point out "part time soulmate, full time problem" and "you don't know me anymore" are also lines in this album that point to being Patrick-related (for the latter, because I don't believe the former needs much justification, something about the house Pete grew up in and its relation to Chicago and thus its relation to Patrick) (I would say I was reaching here, but I've gathered that's basically how Pete's brain works, so let's call it a reasonable assumption?).

Additionally, and more in appreciation of Pete's writing than any specific shippy thing, I'm a big fan of "if you put your heart in it then we'll do more than just get by together" because it sounds a lot like that last phrase could be "get together," and there's a lot on this album about missed opportunities/parallel universes/etc.

One more thing (I'm just rambling now, sorry) but the scar/star crossed lovers line is really just a bit of genius. It's almost a wink towards the listener, not just at the twist of the phrase but also because there's been so many instances of the star motif and space in general in the lyrics that I feel like it has to be a nod towards the instances when cosmic objects have been referenced (such as in The Last of the Real Ones).

Okay that's probably enough for one ask lol. I look forward to part two of your presentation!

YES 👏🏽 YES 👏🏽 YES

I have nothing coherent to add because you are nailing it and this record has me in shreds

tinh@ me always ((is that too dumb? yes)), it’s what I live for, keep it coming!!!

[shark-myths]

my thoughts are incoherent screams at this moment. wheels turning, output coming soon