3: Panic! At the Disco.

This is part one of a small series. I have to start here to explain how I got to the next couple of posts.

In 2006, my taste in music was fairly limited - most of what I was listening to was the same stuff I was listening to in 2003. I didn't listen to any music that was on the radio. Popular music? What was that?

A couple of my friends were listening to this band, Panic! At the Disco. I didn't know what their music sounded like, but their name made me automatically assume they were ridiculous and not worth my time. (They actually were kind of ridiculous, I found out later, but not in the ways you would expect.)

Rachel, one of my best friends who liked the band, told me about their stage show. The lead singer was very suggestive with the lead guitarist. There was even a scene where they acted like they were going to kiss, but faked out on the audience. This, naturally, got the fangirls screaming. It also had me intrigued. Potentially gay boys are an easy way to get me into any fandom.

If you're wondering where my head is, it's difficult to explain. I'm one of many, many girls who find the idea of homosexual relationships between men exciting. I don't really know what, specifically, about it catches my attention, but this is besides the point. I had to investigate.

So I started watching live videos of the band. I started listening to their music.

And then I found the fanfiction.

I'd never really been a member of a fan community that obsessed over real people. It was all very new to me. At first I felt a little bit ashamed - people would ask me, "you're slashing REAL people?!" and I felt bad but I continued to do it anyway. The guilty feelings went away slowly as I read more and more and even wrote some of my own.

I became obsessed past the slash; I got interested in who these guys really were, why they wrote the music they did, what made them tick. I watched and read interviews, saved pictures, listened, listened, listened, obsessed. It was a strange fandom to be a part of, and it was full of interesting people who had a lot of the same interests and feelings as me. I made some new friends and re-kindled relationships with old friends.

I posted fanfiction and fanart of the band on my deviantART account (ShiversTheNinja.deviantart.com, if you're wondering) and made some new friends there as well. One particular friend and hit it off fast and couldn't seem to stop talking. Next thing you knew, we were constantly chatting on AIM and I used AIM to text her while she wasn't home.

This is where it starts to get a little bit difficult to talk about, but I'll continue anyway. I'm straying a bit from the original subject of this post, but Panic! was really what brought us together and kept us together.

Her name was Hannah, and she was the first person I ever fell in love with. She lived on the opposite side of the country, in Connecticut. My feelings for her gave me the ability (and a couple of times, forced me) to come out as bisexual to several people who had not previously known this about me. Eventually, I was able to tell her my feelings and she replied with enthusiasm that she felt the same way. We started making plans for her to come visit me so we could see Panic (they had dropped the exclamation point at the time) in concert together in Portland that June.

Also heavily involved in this whole thing was my good friend Elise. She completed a triangle between the three of us; we all liked the same things, we had good conversations, we were all friends. She also gave me the confidence to ask Hannah out.

So for months and months, there were chats, inside jokes. Things developed outside of the Panic fandom that were personal to us, but still connected. I was happier than I'd ever been before. Things seemed to be going so well.

Then she came to visit, and things got weird. She stayed for a whole month. We had some fun, but neither of us was agressive enough to make a move (I still hadn't had my first kiss) and nothing ever happened except for occasional hugs. I didn't even say "I love you" in person to her until we were at the airport and she was actually leaving. All I got was a muffled response.

Why? Because over the course of that month, she realized that she was still in love with her ex-girlfriend. After leaving, she avoided the internet (and me) for three weeks before finally sending me a message to tell me that it wasn't going to work out.

So, my first love, and my first heartbreak. That was probably the hardest summer I've ever had. But it brought me into the subject of my next post... which will, well, be covered in my next post.

My interest in Panic faded as activity from the band slowed and the fandom became quiet. I still paid some attention to what was going on, but I stopped reading fanfiction.

Earlier this year, I heard the news that the band split. Ryan Ross and Jon Walker were leaving the band to form their own new band. It wasn't that much of a surprise - they hadn't been talking to the other two, visibly at least, for months. So they left, and Brendon Urie and Spencer Smith were left alone to continue Panic! (they re-instituted the exclamation mark) and take on the tour with blink-182.

I was upset. I cried. It was difficult. But the new music gave me hope. I liked it better than any of their previous material. It wasn't as original as their first album, nor was it as unoriginal as their second album. It was somewhere in between, and it was perfect for me.

The third album still hasn't come out yet - they're working on new songs for it. They've released one single and a clip of a demo of another song. I will wait, patiently for the new album. And even though the obsession is gone, I'll still be very excited when it comes out. When I enter a fandom, I'm in it for good, even if the fixation isn't there. I will always care.