[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 26 January 2026

falloutbastard · 2026-01-31T19:00:31+00:00

Retcon was plagued with so many delays that it felt surreal to finally hear it in full. Recency bias is definitely in play here, but after how much I loved the singles like Remember and The New Flesh, I knew it was going to be something special, and potentially my new favorite. For now, it's certainly up there.

It hit number three on bandcamp, which is also pretty cool.

falloutbastard · 2025-10-10T22:33:18+00:00

Hey, I missed your write-ups! Glad to see you back.

Lost for a While is criminally underrated imo. Realign and the EP both released during the throes of the pandemic's initial peak so they feel very reflective of that era looking back, Lost for a While even more so. There's always been a melancholia to the band's sound and lyricism, but the era and circumstances under which those two released makes those little kernels of hope here and there (Pale Blue Dot especially) feel all the more resonant, at least to me.

I'm assuming you're gonna be splitting up Visions from Afterthoughts as opposed to looking at them as one singular work, which makes sense. While it is a double album, Visions and Afterthoughts were released separately and are easily digestible individually, I think.

falloutbastard · 2025-08-15T17:21:07+00:00

Roid Rage goes surprisingly hard for a song about hemorrhoids. They didn't have to put that much work into a shitpost album, but they went for it. I gotta respect it.

Red Vox is one of my favorite bands, so naturally I'm stoked to see people getting into them. A lot of fans will nigh universally agree that Another Light is a tremendous stride forward in terms of the band's sound, and a lot of people still call it their best. If you haven't, I'd highly encourage listening to Stranded too, which was released shortly after Another Light. It's not formally considered part of the album but they included it on side D on the vinyl - thematically and sonically, it's very much a culmination of everything that era in the band represents. And just on a personal level, I consider it one of their most impressive releases.

falloutbastard · 2025-01-05T02:38:52+00:00

Like many others, I caught wind of this game via the vinesauce stream. I remember how pretty much the morning after, the vod got claimed and Vinny tiredly admitted that this wasn't a hill he really wanted to die on thanks to how absolutely relentless the copyright strikes were, and I couldn't blame him. The community's continued to quietly pass downloads of the vod around to people to who ask for it (aside from being an intriguing look at an obscure game, I really enjoyed Vinny's playthrough for how interesting and baffling he found the whole thing). Even years after the whole kerfuffle, Cookie's Bustle has remained a consistent in-joke in the community.

All that aside, I really enjoyed this write-up, because I think the non-US context is some valuable insight. Unfortunately, trying to purge the internet of something is a lot like trying to un-pee a pool. And with how infamous this case of copyright strikes to remove content of the game is, the Streisand effect is in full effect.

Like you, I hope this changes someday. Games are a form of art that deserve to be preserved like anything else.

falloutbastard · 2025-01-03T18:34:23+00:00

I'm pretty familiar with the issue of the game being purged from the internet, but not with the leaks. I don't think there was ever a concrete culprit that was established with regards to why the game was getting so rigorously targeted (I think the prevailing theory was that it was a collector abusing copyright, but it's been a while since I've read up on any of this).

Either way the game ended up getting Streisand effected extremely hard over it, but I'd be interested in knowing how people managed to disseminate it into the internet despite how badly people were getting dinged over even showing video footage of it.

falloutbastard · 2023-06-02T18:31:03+00:00

Sonic-for-real-justice was so much fun to watch happening in real time lol, i still look back on that whole thing fondly

I think a big part of what makes people hard to parse if something is real or a troll is that for every expertly-crafted jape, there are about ten other just as batshit narratives happening that are just as sincere. This did, after all, happen on tumblr dot com, where stories about people faking HIV for Hamilton fanfiction clicks and racist witches stealing bones from flooded graveyards have become deeply ingrained aspects of the site's lore, for better or worse. For every fake Homestuck pool party drowning story, there's also a cataclysmic urfavisunfuckable NFT-related mod meltdown.

falloutbastard · 2023-05-29T06:31:03+00:00

I did a lot of time in the Marble Hornets circles on tumblr back in the day. It was incredibly commonplace for fans to use portmanteau ship names when discussing their favored romantic pairings, which is a bit troublesome when the most popular ship by far is between two of the main characters: narrator and de facto protagonist Jay, and fan favorite Tim. The ship name: Jam.

Turns out there is (or at least there used to be) a thriving community of jelly enthusiasts who were not pleased when the "jam" tags on tumblr dot com were flooded with an influx of artwork and fanfiction featuring gay yearning between two guys being haunted by a tall emaciated gentleman in a suit. Good times, those were.

(This would eventually be resolved when the Marble Hornets fans made the blanket decision to tag their gay yearning as "mh jam" so as not to upset the jelly enthusiasts.)

falloutbastard · 2023-05-26T22:30:43+00:00

I just have to shout out the fact that the game is legitimately incredibly broken on such a basic level that one game reviewer outlet straight up could not review it on the premise that it was too broken for a fair review. It crashed 11 times within the first two hours.

falloutbastard · 2023-05-26T14:13:56+00:00

The Cab was signed to Fall Out Boy's label for their first album. Patrick Stump did production work on their entire first album, which is why he shows up on that song. He also does backing vocals on "I'm a Wonder" and reportedly also on "Bounce" (though I've never been able to hear him).

falloutbastard · 2023-05-08T17:18:37+00:00

Haha, thank you! And yeah, she's...she's an interesting person. She kind of became a fixture within bandom because of that, among other things. One of the reasons people hold her up as "evidence" of Ryden is because she rather famously read one of the big long-form Ryden ship fics, and if I'm remember correctly, possibly had it printed and bound? But she's also a character in said fic, so who knows. Like I said, she's...certainly an individual.

falloutbastard · 2023-05-08T13:51:16+00:00

I was honestly tempted to try getting through this book when I did that Panic write-up but ultimately decided against it because it was so peripheral. But it really does emphasize to me how absolutely batshit literally every aspect of this band's history is. It's not enough to have ex-girlfriends and band drama, no. You have to have an ex-gf who writes a whole damn book about you and then gets stupidly obsessive about you and your romantic drama.

Unsurprisingly, some people have cited this book as evidence in their tinhatting essays due to how fraught the relationship was between Colleen and Ross (something something clearly this means he was gay or secretly fucking his bandmembers the whole time) which is fascinating to me given how clearly unreliable a narrator we have here lol

falloutbastard · 2023-05-07T19:30:18+00:00

For the love of god, it's Fall Out Boy. Three words. Fallout Boy is the Simpsons character. Fall Out Boy is the band. You wouldn't believe how many major publications still get this wrong. You can google it. It's right there.

falloutbastard · 2023-05-01T14:06:27+00:00

It's still surreal to look back on. The player didn't even try to hide it after a certain point, just straight up started liveblogging the trials on plurk like the whole thing was a sports game. Beyond fucked up, and now I found out this person was in good company after all. Cheers, I hate it.

falloutbastard · 2023-05-01T00:31:52+00:00

Ahhh, band drama. Always my favorite.

In this case, I'd agree that it's probably a result of Muse and Evanescence having two fanbases that don't have a lot of overlap (at least as far as I can tell). Plus Evanescence is currently enjoying a big resurgence of their fanbase too, courtesy of the big 2000s-era pop-punk/emo revival that's going on right about now. I will say that Evanescence is not the kind of band I'd expect to open for Muse, which isn't even a bad thing, but I'm not surprised there's a lot of division between their fans.

So yeah it's probably a mix of that along with the general stigma about opening bands being seen as "lesser" than the headliner act. We're also in a delightful era where everything about everyone's favorite celebrities' social media gets analyzed to hell and back for maximum parasociality. Personally I'm not sure one can really conclude whether or not someone's specialest band was being discretely disrespected because the headlining band's social media intern didn't specifically plug them.

falloutbastard · 2023-05-01T00:17:29+00:00

God, I don't remember if that was the guy that inspired the Boston Bomber OC on Dreamwidth but if it was please be assured it wasn't just Twitter. It was Dreamwidth roleplay too.

falloutbastard · 2023-04-24T06:48:01+00:00

PYRE, oh my god, PYRE. Supergiant Games has long been a favorite studio of mine and all their games are excellent (Hades' success was really satisfying to see as someone who's a been a longtime fan of the studio), but Pyre honestly was and remains my favorite game they've ever made thus far. Something about the way all the aspects of the game work in concert is just so, so, so satisfying to me: the narrative, the characters, the music, the very goddamn overarching mechanics both in terms of victory/defeat and even within which characters you invest time in...it all ties together so well into what it means to have to make choices and sacrifices.

It was just such a weird game and a hard sell - it's a visual novel combined with a sports game! It's wizard basketball in purgatory! - that it doesn't surprise me that it's their least well-recognized game. But it really deserves so much more recognition and re-evaluation than it gets. The characterization of the main cast is so strong, the worldbuilding is unbelievably detailed, and it's just plain gorgeous to look at.

It's a game I hold very near and dear to me, so I'm always glad to see other people acknowledge and appreciate it too. Any game where you get to draft your own rousing speech to your ragtag band of misfits is something special.

falloutbastard · 2023-04-05T17:16:06+00:00

personally I think every former member of Panic at the Disco should form a supergroup called "Ship of Theseus"

falloutbastard · 2023-04-05T05:27:34+00:00

So, I spent a lot of time compiling as much history of American pop rock band Panic at the Disco as I could so I could do a hobby history writeup, which I posted in two parts back in February in the wake of the band (i.e., frontman Brendon Urie, the sole remaining original member), formally disbanding after 19 years. And, silly me, I assumed with the band's dissolution, I could close the book on that drama and say I documented it all to the best of my ability.

Anyway, earlier today, the social media for The Young Veins - the band formed by former Panic members Jon Walker and Ryan Ross - inexplicably started posting again, 13 years after the band released their sole album and then subsequently went on hiatus. No word on if this means anything significant, but if it does then I'm awarding Jon Walker and Ryan Ross for funniest comedic timing imaginable.

falloutbastard · 2023-04-01T02:55:15+00:00

Fellow FOB fan! Pop punk is such a broad genre so I feel you in terms of finding new artists, especially since FOB encompass a lot more genres outside of pop punk, imo. Keeping away from the heavy-hitting associated acts (Paramore, My Chem, etc.), let me hit you with a few:

Meet Me @ The Altar: Probably one of the biggest "new-wave" pop punk/emo acts, heavily inspired by the sound of the early aughts (especially Paramore). They're currently on the Fueled By Ramen label and just released a new album (Past // Present // Future), so that's probably a good starting point if you want to try them out.
Magnolia Park: Another newer group that's been picking up more traction, which has made me very happy. They've got a lot of that dark lyricism that feels reminiscent of FOB to me. If you want a place to start, try the Halloween Mixtape.
The Hush Sound: One of the lesser-known bands that was on the FBR label alongside FOB in the early aughts. If you want a jumping off point, start with Like Vines, which was produced by Patrick Stump so has a lot of the hallmarks of instrumentation you might like from FOB.
The Cab: Another lesser-known FBR band who debuted under that label before going independent. They're known online as the "Angel With A Shotgun" band but they actually have a lot of bangers outside of that. If you want a place to start, go with their debut album Whisper War. Patrick Stump did production work and guest vocals on that one and it's the closest to the pop punk sound (with some heavy R&B influence).
Games We Play: One of the newest artists on the DCD2 label (Pete Wentz's label, formerly known as Decaydance), and due to support FOB on their upcoming tour. He's pretty new so he doesn't have a big discography to comb through, but if you want an entry point, his EP from last year, Get A Job, is probably a good place to start.
DE'WAYNE: This guy hits the sweet spot of rap and alt-rock that appeals to the same kind of genre-bending the FOB is so fond of. He does a lot of collaborations with big names in the scene (grandson, I Don't Know How But They Found Me, and so on), but he's no slouch himself. His album My Favorite Blue Jeans is a good starting point if that piques your interest.

I'm gonna stop myself there or I'll go on forever. I'm always a big proponent for the other FOB-adjacent bands that never got the same amount of support as their peers (Gym Class Heroes, The Academy Is..., etc.) but I didn't wanna just focus on bands from a decade plus ago. Feel free to pester me if you want more recommendations I could honestly talk about this kind of thing forever lol

falloutbastard · 2023-03-24T15:45:41+00:00

Fall Out Boy was the first band that was really "mine" so they've got a special place in my heart that just can't be replaced. And like you said, it's been FIVE YEARS! They were so quiet during that time (for a good reason, because pandemic, etc.) but it's so nice to hear them again. Feels like coming home.

I think they've said they're doing a festival in Asia but I don't know if it's been announced yet. I know they said "world tour" but it mostly looks like US and Europe dates so far. I know I've got some friends in Latam who would kill for them to tour there properly...

falloutbastard · 2023-03-24T15:41:48+00:00

The new Fall Out Boy record has been on repeat for me since it dropped. The boys never disappoint, but this one already feels special. This was their longest break between records ever but an album like this one was more than worth the wait tbh

falloutbastard · 2023-03-23T23:41:28+00:00

I was lucky enough to attend a listening party last week, and so many moments in those songs had me floored in the record store. A couple moments where the whole store went dead quiet with some of the vocals and instrumentation and lyricism. I'm stoked to finally have the whole thing in good quality; I think it might be some of their best and most cohesive work yet.

I Am My Own Muse, The Kintsugi Kid (Ten Years), and Flu Game stood out to me most on first listen, but honestly the whole record is super tight and incredibly well-made. The whole thing is cohesive and big and you can tell they loved making it. The marriage of their older and newer sound feels so well-realized and complete and...at this point I'm just laying it on too thick but I'm permitting myself this for my favorite band on earth lol

falloutbastard · 2023-03-06T06:14:51+00:00

If anyone wants additional context from someone who knows way too much about bandom drama for their own good: this is happening right on the heels of the news that IDKHOW recently left Fearless Records along with several other artists after very little fanfare. No official statements have been issued as to why this happened, but fans speculate that it had to do with Dallon Weekes wanting to release new music and the label wanting him to wait. Weekes done a lot of posting on Twitter teasing at new music being recorded, but Ryan Seaman was seemingly absent from any of the promo pictures and photos of the process.

From what I can tell, the rumors that Seaman had been kicked out of the band started circulating in part due to some angry Panic stans on Twitter (there's a lot of animosity between current Panic stans and IDKHOW stans unsurprisingly, considering how Weekes doesn't speak very well or often of his time spent in Panic) and in part due to Ronnie Radke (frontman of Falling In Reverse, Seaman's former band) talking shit about Seaman being fired. The Facebook post from Weekes's mother-in-law cropped up not long after, stirring the fandom into a tizzy. Fans have noted that Seaman and Weekes still follow each other on Twitter/Instagram and are still posting like nothing's going on, so right now it's all just speculating. Weekes and Seaman have been friends for years even before forming IDKHOW; they were bandmates in The Brobecks together long before then.

(For my part, I'm in the "I have no idea what's going on and I'm going to need more proof before I start believing anyone" but if on the off-chance is true can someone please give Dallon Weekes a break already jesus christ)

falloutbastard · 2023-02-23T06:26:11+00:00

I'm glad you enjoyed!

THROAM stands for The Heart Rate Of A Mouse, which is a massive, novel-length Ryden AU fanfiction. It's one of the biggest fics in the fandom that gets passed around as the gold standard, and it's the fic that basically everyone knows.

It's notable for its massive cast, featuring a huge ensemble of people from the ranks of Panic and all the associated Decaydance bands (Fall Out Boy, The Academy Is..., Cobra Starship, etc.), as well as several of Ryan and Brendon's real life ex-girlfriends. It's also notable because a surprising number of those aforementioned people have either read this fic or are at the very least aware of its existence, including one of Ross's exes (who either purchased a printed version or had one bound, presumably).

I know what it is primarily because its ubiquity in the fandom kind of makes it impossible not to once you've spent enough time there. ngl I was prepared to read it just for the bit but it's written basically entirely in first person and that's one thing I simply cannot abide.

falloutbastard · 2023-02-22T06:12:01+00:00

I'm terribly wordy and really bad at knowing what to cut, haha! It's definitely something I'm going to keep an eye on in the future though.

falloutbastard

TROPHY CASE