#so I had to deal w all that

[ineed-to-sleep]

So I've had this wip sitting in my folders for months now and decided to ressurect it to satiate the urge to draw these two again

[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.

[stuckinapril]

When I’m a fucking doctor you best believe I will single handedly reformulate the way ERs in the states conduct themselves. I will literally obliterate the current system and build a new one

[seveneyesoup]

ngl i’m still worried. like i Do have complete faith in ncuti gatwa but what i Don’t have is much faith at all in rtd’s writing about race

[impossible-rat-babies]

vierapril day 24--fear

"it wasn't until alisaie fell in the ghimlyt dark--when they were carrying her body back to the forward camp, and further still to the rising stones--when the fear truly set in. when the loneliness rose up to fill the gaps where the scions used to be, and the crushing weight of it settled in.

[variksel]

takes a drag of my coolguy cigarette I dont know man the fact that all of the s1 dads' original dad haha funnyman tropes were at first only jokes to make fun of middleaged middleclass middlebalding cishet white american men with but the second their fathers and the traumas of the daddies' pasts stepped into the plot they tied themselves into the initial premise and dad tropes so fucking perfectly i mean TAKINGANOTHERBIGINHALE darryl the christian who married his highschool sweetheart and started living the picket-fence "kid-and-a-house" american dream relatively young while idolizing his own dad has a father who died before darryl had properly talked with him and found out more of his faults and nuance henry the pacifist pretentious vegan dad has a father who thinks hes better than everybody else and wants his son to repress his anger and anxiety because he feels he is morally above emotions glenn the distant but cool rocker dad who tours the country without his son on christmas eve has a dad who glenn wasnt even sure if he had died back on earth because it had been so long since he had heard of him ron the emotionally detached stepfather who doesnt seem to care to remember his stepsons name or a single fact about his personality has a father who used everything in rons life to hurt him including his love for his dog AND his love for his father when he asked him to go fishing with him knowing despite all hes done ron would still somehow desperately want to make his father proud fuck me running anthony burch doesnt get enough credit

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

honestly wally is stronger than atlas. if i had to constantly calibrate to the nature of my reality w/ full consciousness i would simply lose my fucking mind

[tibli]

people really act like johndirk murdered their entire family or smth

[pinacoladamatata]

I'm still so mad about the Wyll rewrite actually

[sexisdisgusting]

me getting back to messages weeks later then disappearing again because i get a lot of messages and asks on here and its hard and overwhelming at times to balance it all with my real life:

[astranauticus]

in light of the new episode this joke i made once is feeling a lot more relevant

[creaturefeaster]

oh god here

[mwagneto]

the fact that almost every character in ofmd is specifically a gay man is seriously so fucking special like usually a show will have 1 character from a minority group and then that character has to be every single thing - a person the straight/homophobic audience can accept and even like, someone that deals with their issues the way they "should" be dealt with, someone who's not too much of anything but simultaneously everything because every expected trait has to be displayed at some point or another.... versus this show with its massive cast of characters who are all able to embody specific (and extremely varying) ways to be a gay man where all of their journeys and personalities and approaches to their sexualities are so unique to them but so true to people that exist in real life........ i wish i could express this better coz it's such an incredible thing to see it genuinely makes my chest hurt with how much it means to me

[pcktknife]

in like first grade during my first ever spelling bee I got the word 'culture' and fucked it up and I think I was the first person to get out

[lesbiradshaw]

just started thinking about bradley as a teenager struggling with his emotions both pre and post his mother’s death/fall out with maverick but not wanting to reach out for help because a history of mental health problems can get you disqualified from enlisting in the service. happy saturday guys.

[luck-of-the-drawings]

TRAINING ARC: START!! BOTHER YOUR GUARDIAN AND EXHIBIT ISSUES. NOW SOLVE THOSE ISSUES BY BOTHERING GUARDIANS. I HAVE FULL FAITH IN OUR HEROS!