bandslash primer for SGA-ers

Please note: If you're looking for timelines or information that is not skewed by fannish biased, you might want to look elsewhere. Panic! heavy bandslash primer, since I mainly write Panic! fic, with a healthy heaping helping of side characters for your reading enjoyment.

Panic! At the Disco

Panic! At the Disco (I think it's just Panic at the Disco now, but I'm too lazy to go through and change all I've already written so let's pretend for the moment, 'kay?) is a band comprised of Ryan Ross (lyricist, lead guitarist), Spencer Smith (drummer), Brendon Urie (lead singer, guitarist, pianist, musical magician), and Jon Walker (bassist, most awesome boy to ever stroll the earth).

Ryan Ross is fucking ridiculous. Ryan Ross has been best friends with Spencer Smith since the end of time, and a lot of the songs on their first (and currently only) album were birthed out of his sullen, spurned heart. Ryan liked to paint his face and dress up as a) a circus carnie, b) a riverboat gambler, c) a girl dandy? Peacock? Oliver Twist? 18th century pickpocket? He speaks in a monotone and is often confused with a robot (robotrobotrobot!)

Ryan Ross is now happy in love with a girl (I know) and has turned into a cowboy. I don't know. We like his smiles, though. He is still utterly ridiculous.

Once upon a time, Spencer Smith was a girl. In theory. He had hips and this baby face and wispy hair and this smile, oh my god. He wore sparkly pastel shirts and skinny jeans. We love baby!Spence.

Spencer Smith is now a man, with a beard and broad shoulders and fucking awesome thighs. Jury is still out on the facial hair, but he's decked out in black more often than not these days. He's the man of the group! He's tall and has actual substance!

Spencer was, is, and probably always will be obsessed with Brendon Uriestylish shoes. He's got this total bitch-face! He's business-savvy! I like to imagine he's kind of a control freak, but whatever.

Brendon Urie is a total ham, a dork of mammoth proportions, an ex-Mormon, a boy who knows he's sexy, and he continuously makes bad haircut and/or ridiculous tattoo decisions.

He loves Disney! He's lovable, but kind of a dick! He's like a puppy! Do not feed him sugar! There was that bandom anon meme a week or so ago about unpopular fannish opinions, and someone wrote about being sick of Brendon's portrayal as a semi-retarded pre-teen girl - DUDE, YOU HAVE SUMMED UP MY LOVE OF BRENDON. I'm totally not ashamed to admit that.

Jon Walker - how so awesome? Jon is the unassuming boy-next-door with the very slightest of slight lisps! He's just plain adorable, and is also short. Shorter than you'd think. He totally rocks long hair, shorn hair, short hair, beard, scruff, clean cut (Jon is approximately twelve here, and yet he still manages to look older than all the other Panic! boys combined) - no style does not suit him. He wears flip-flops year round! He takes PHOTOS. He has a cat that plays fetch!

There was another bass player before Jon Walker who was considerably less awesome. Jon used to tech for The Academy Is..., which toured with Panic!, which is how he met Ryan, Spencer, and Brendon, and Ryan, Spencer, and Brendon had, and continue to have, no immunity against the force of Jon Walker's awesome.

While my love of Brendon/Spencer is pure, you can totally rock any number of pairs within Panic! They are all handsy as heck - hugging (hugging is best!), handholding, hanging all over backs, arms, laps, whatever.

AND NOW ENJOY THE MANY INCARNATIONS OF PANIC! AT THE DISCO THROUGH THE YEARS (*hums Kenny Roger's Through The Years*:

Let's skip ahead to the porno cabin, the mysterious place where they went to write and have sex with each other. They grew beards and agreed to be in a Gym Class Heroes video dressed as furries:

Almost real time Panic! Jon says hi! Something is wrong with Spencer! Ryan is telling Brendon secrets! LOOK AT RYAN'S VEST AND SCARF AND HAT. HE WILL NEVER NOT BE RIDICULOUS:

Now that you've met Panic, let's introduce some more bands that I like to play with:

Fall Out Boy

Patrick Stump is the lead singer and resident musical genius! He's made of special awesome! He's TINY. He's pocket-sized for your pleasure! He's sweetly pudgy, and he's ALL ROCK GOD. Reddish hair, mutton chops, glasses, LIPS (Travis!), voice of a siren, THIGHS. He is occasionally a little ball of rage! He's been known to punch Pete! He's never seen without a hat, because he's self-conscious of his precious balding head.

Pete Wentz is the bass player, front man and lyricist. Pete is Pete. I'm sure you've met him before. Pete is cryptic and gloomy, an insomniac, manic, LOVES PATRICK LIKE BURNING, has a bulldog named Hemmingway, snarls a lot, has an equal opportunity outlook on making out, etc.

Joe Trohman is the lead guitarist. Joe has amazingly pretty eyes that are not heralded enough in fic. Joe loves smoking pot! He loves dogs! There was a time when he had short hair, while now he's got a fairly large jew-fro and scruffy beard! Who doesn't heart Joe like crazy?

Andy Hurley is the drummer! Andy's a vegan! Andy hates The Man! Andy looks exactly the same as he always has! ANDY!

My Chemical Romance

Gerard Way is the lead singer and glorious front man. Gerard is possibly even more girlish than baby!Spence. The face! The EYES THE SIZE OF SPONGE MONKEY EYES (for comparison and general hilarity, see actual sponge monkeys)! The smile! The tiny, tiny hamster teeth! He's the prettiest bell of every ball. Also, he's got motherfucking stage presence, wears the same pants over and over again, showers, like, what, once a month? And is insanely in love with Frank Iero, to the point where he married a girl who looks just like him. This is so truemerely speculation, of course.

Frank Iero is the tiny, whirling dervish of My Chemical Romance. He also plays the guitar. Frank is possibly smaller than Patrick. He's like a manic flea or something, and is lethal on stage. He likes to rub up on Gerard (and vice versa), stand on Bob's drums, writhe all over the stage, hump things, lick things, etc. He's got a little boy giggle! He totally was sick all the time growing up! He was born on Halloween! He's got lots and lots and lots of tattoos!

Mikeyway is Gerard's brother! He plays the bass! At one point he was bunkbutt-buddies with Pete Wentz, but they broke up and now he's married to Alicia and dresses their cat up in the most ridiculous outfits you've ever seen. He's knock-kneed or pigeon-toed or whatever the hell you call it (me too! Mikeyway, let's hook up!) Also: I have no idea, but oh, Mikeyway, are those tears in your eyes?

BOB MOTHER- FUCKING BRYAR! Hi! Hi, Bob, hi! Bob is My Chem's drummer! Bob is amazing! Bob doesn't take any guff! He's not someone you'd want to run into in a dark alley. Don't wake him up, don't take his picture, get that video camera out of his face or he'll fuck you up! Bob is hardcore! He almost died a lot, because he sucks up his pain and FORGES ONWARD. Dudes, you don't want to mess with Bob. Unless it involves sweaty monkey sex or something.

Ray Toro is the lead guitarist of My Chem and is most noted for his rockin' riffs and HUGE MASS OF HAIR. There could be squirrels living in there, I don't know. Also: rock god thighs.

Brian Schechter is My Chem's manager. I think his job's akin to herding cats. He is smallish, tattooed and adorable. Hi, Brian!

The Academy Is..., Gym Class Heroes, Cobra Starship, The Hush Sound, All-American Rejects, Brand New, Straylight Run, The Sounds

The Butcher, Andy Mrotek, is the sexy drummer for The Academy Is... He often wears short-shorts (maybe only in my head?awesomeness confirmed!) and I like to imagine him doing lots of interpretive dancing. I started writing him into stories merely because he is called The Butcher, which will never not be very, very cool. I bet you wish I could regale you with tales of how this name came about, but I'm just not interested. Let's look at him again and sigh.

Adam T. Siska plays bass for The Academy Is... He's very young! He's been known to respond to Sisky or Sisky Business, nicknames he apparently gave himself! He used to have very scary hair!

Then There's Mike Carden and Michael Guy Chislett, TAI guitarists. I occasionally have trouble telling them apart, since they have practically the same haircut (I think Carden's the one on the left), but Michael is Australian! Interesting!

As an aside, let's talk here about Tom Conrad (or Tomrad) for a minute, former guitarist for TAI. Tom is hot, even though in pics the beard makes him look sort of like a werewolf. Tom is good friends with Jon Walker! Tom had a supposed falling out with the other boys in TAI, then joined Panic! on tour as a friendly photographer (he's got his own photography site!), and now he's working on another band, Empires. I don't normally write Tom, but he's an integral part of bandom.

William Beckett is the lead singer of The Academy Is... He recently stealth-married an actual girl, and PROCREATED. There is a tiny, pretty Beckett baby out there somewhere in the world. (ETA: sources say this is not actually true? I warned you from the beginning that I never actually researched anything.)

Bill is thinner than you. Bill is prettier than you.

Bill is taller than you, is possibly always drunk, and I like to think he talks like a gentleman with a huge vocabulary and a delicious wit! He wants you to feel comfortable! He wants to sprawl in your lap and get pets!

William is good friends with everyone - he's magnanimous with his affections! - but he especially loves Travis McCoy, of Gym Class Heroes fame, and Gabe Saporta, the creepiest man to ever walk so sexily upon the earth (careful, his eyes might eat your brain).

Gabe Saporta is the lead singer/mastermind behind Cobra Starship. I'm pretty sure he takes a lot of hallucinogenic drugs. He's totally in love with himself and the entire eighties decade of fashion, is possibly eight feet tall, and sings songs about his basement.

Cobra Starship is also comprised of Ryland and Alex, Nate, and VickyT (Victoria Asher). VickyT is a KEYTARIST. More often than not I write about her spectacular breasts.

Another girl in bandom is Greta Salpeter of The Hush Sound. She's purty and looks very, very sweet. All of the Hushies are kind of adorable. There should be more Chris fic. Someone get on that.

Occasionally, I like to jazz up fics with some All-American Rejects: (shown in order) Nick Wheeler, Chris Gaylor, Tyson Ritter, and Mike Kennerty. I have a not so secret crush on Mike. I have no idea why! His smile! He's so adorable. WHATEVER, HI MIKE, MARRY ME?!

Jesse Lacey is the lead singer of Brand New. I like to imagine he's an asshole, and, for no real reason at all, Bill Beckett's arch enemy - I'm pretty sure they've at least met at some point. Jesse Lacey's been BFFs with John Nolan, singer for Straylight Run, since highschool or something. They had a massive falling out over a girl, and now they're friends again. I don't know, I don't pay much attention to them.

Also: Maja Ivarsson. Singer for The Sounds, of which I know absolutely nothing about, but they look awesome (and sound good, too). Maja is BENDY AND FOREIGN.

The End. Or is it?

Um. So. I think I've touched on most of the ways these guys are related already, but.

A lot of these guys are all on the same label - or on Pete's label, which is a subsidiary of the label that owns him - (except for most notably MCR, and there's probably others, but I'm really too lazy to care) and I'm pretty sure they've all toured together at some point or another in various combinations, so they're, like, buds for life and they hug each other and eat chocolate out of each other's belly buttons and kiss cheeks and squeeze asses and stuff.

As I mentioned before, Jon Walker was a guitar tech for The Academy Is... before the Panic! boys spirited him away. Mikeyway and Pete spent an entire summer in each other's pockets and called themselves the Sweet Little Dudes! Patrick once lived in an apartment with Bob motherfucking Bryar! Panic! was in the Gym Class Heroes' Clothes Off! video! Maja, Travis, William and Gabe came together as a Cobra Starship super group to perform Bring It (Snakes On A Plane)! Patrick was in Gym Class Heroes' Cupid's Chokehold video, as well as Cobra Starship's Send My Love To The Dance Floor (plus, he likes to produce and stuff), and he's sung on multiple tracks for multiple bands because he has the most awesomest voice ever and everybody knows it! But the individual relationships don't matter as much as the fact that:

It's a GIANT AMALGAM OF BOYS, plus a few girls, and also Ashlee Simpson.

I like to think Ashlee Simpson is a super cool gay enabler, but you know. Whatever.