I Write Sins Not Tragedies

Beautiful thing about music (and art in general) is one's freedom of interpretation.

This song to me just wreaks sarcasm. I think the groom overhears the conversation (since he's nervously pacing) and obviously gets upset, "....you people...goddamn door?!". Which I interpret as "keep your thoughts to yourself". Truth is, whether we admit it or not, we tend to regard what others think of us. You tell yourself you could not care less about what someone else thinks, but if someone suggested something bad about something you valued, you would definitely (subconsciously) consider it. Is there any validity in their suggestion? Hearing someone suggest you're soon-to-be-wife is a whore is pretty daunting if you ask me.

He tries to make himself feel better, tells himself to be calm and not to overreact, that everything will work out: "....sense of poise and rationality", but you can tell it's eating at him inside. His frustration ultimately leads to the cancellation of the wedding, and again he tries to make himself feel better: "I'll look at it this way... technically our marriage is saved", because if he would've married a whore (suspected) they would've had a horrible marriage. So he's trying to look on the bright side of things, "this calls for a toast so pour the champagne." But is he genuinely happy with the situation? Even if he did prevent a miserable marriage? It just wreaks of sarcasm and dismay.

I think this song says a lot about the powerful influence of others (society), especially when it regards something one takes to heart.

I think its about the groom overhearing the bridesmaid gossip to the waiter that the bride is a whore. "I'd chime in with a "Haven't you people ever heard of closing a goddamn door?!"" - I think this means that he already knows about the bride's promiscuous past but that she has changed and these people should "close the door on the past" and not bring it up. The next part of the song is mocking the people that are gossiping with their "poison rationality", because they can't accept that people can change. He shows the irony of their point of view: "Oh! Well in fact, well I'll look at it this way, I mean technically our marriage is saved Well this calls for a toast, so pour the champagne, pour the champagne"

• Using their "poison rationality" he should judge his bride by only her past actions and assume that she will be unfaithful to him. Thus he would "save" the marriage by calling it off and not even giving her a chance. This is analogous to "saving" someone's life by shooting them in the brain and heart with a magnum .44 repeatedly.

My take on this- Brendon and the groom are the same guy. Brendon is his conscience or even in a way his sub-conscience, that little voice in your head telling himself, well in the video showing himself what is clear to see the whole time. The groom seems caught off guard, in denial, but Brendon seems almost one step ahead of the bride, and has known for awhile her game, it just took him overhearing a comment between the bridesmaid and the waiter while he was nervously pacing at the church, probably with what he knows deep down, that the marriage is a mistake because of what he suspects, to finally snap out of it and face what is really in front of him. Bride walks away in video meaning she destroyed this in his mind and he is left confused and shocked by the whole thing but Brendon drags him out to see what he has known, his fiancee with another man. In the end you see Brendon and the groom bow and the groom is suddenly in the top hat, clearly indicating that they are one person.

Why does it have to be a metaphor for anything? The story is simple.

The character telling the story is the groom, he's pacing nervously and overhears the conversation. He chimes in with the line and then rethinks his reaction and treats it with poise and rationality. He blows the comment off as nothing but jealousy and that's it. Get on with the wedding, pour the champagne.

I believe that the meaning of this song is that the groom was walking past some people having a conversation about the grooms bride, basically he was telling them to close the door on the past. Not leave it open. The champagne reference to me is "forgetting about it"

I think the song is about people talking behind your back, and you know it. The Bride Maid is suppose to be the Bride's friend, usually a close friend but here she is saying she's a whore and tell that to a random waiter. I really don't think it has anything to do with marriage really, that could be a metaphor -I think it's about people you thought you could trust lie and talk behind your back and you just have to deal with it, drink it down ["pour the champagne"] and just get over it. It's about how he reacts which is telling them "Haven't you people ever heard of closing a goddamn door?" while he knows you should act like you never heard it, react with a mature look on the situation. But then again, only the boys of PANIC! know the true meaning.

So I may be taking the title of this song too literally, since I am a writer myself, but this is what I grew to think of what the song is about.

As a writer, I constantly imagine myself in different situations and think about how I or the character who I am trying to write would react in that type of a situation.

So this is about a guy who suddenly gets an idea in his mind that his wife is cheating on him. So he gets paranoid and starts to imagine if the rumors became true, hence why at the beginning he says, "Oh well, imagine, as I am pacing the pews of a church corridor and I can't help but to hear an exchanging of words."

He imagined the conversation and you see how he feels about the situation as he screams at them to mind their own business and thinks about confronting his wife. But he quickly shakes off these feelings, knowing he has no evidence and saying that he needs to face the situation with composure. If his theory does hold up to be true, he won't let it affect him that much. It would be a story of sin, not a tragedy.

The rest of the song is him going through the wedding trying to convince himself that if his rumors were true, she wouldn't be marrying him right? ("Well I'll look at it this way I mean technically our marriage is saved.") And him trying not to cause a scene.

The rest is up to the imagination whether or not she is truly cheating on him...but he is prepared if she is.

He writes sins, not tragedies.

I chime in with my own interpretation of the song's meaning. I think the answer to what happens in the second verse lies in the meaning of the title.

The title comes from a book by Douglas Coupland. This is the quote:

“I am thinking of the people in my universe and distilling for each of these people the one flaw in their character that will be their downfall—the flaw that will be their undoing. What I write are not sins; I write tragedies.”

What he's saying is that the flaws he gives his characters aren't inherently bad or even evil. He isn't judging them for having those flaws. The sad thing is that they do still end up causing the characters a bad ending. Perhaps he means that the flaws are mainly bad for the characters themselves, not to anyone else.

In Panic's title they turned the phrase around: I write sins, not tragedies. So the meaning of the original quote gets inverted.

I would take that to mean the writer does judge the character's flaw and thinks it's a bad thing. But it doesn't cause the character's downfall.

I think that means the wedding went on as planned. The groom may judge the bride, but he goes on with everything anyway, thereby saving the wedding (the marriage). He prevents a tragedy.

The writer in the title could also be someone other than the groom. Someone who judges the bride for her flaw of promiscuity and sees that it doesn't cause her a downfall. Perhaps it means that the bride doesn't care about the tragedies she causes, because she "writes" only sins. Maybe this writer is the bride's lover who doesn't get to marry her.

I don't know, but I'm pretty sure the wedding went on as planned based on the quote and the title.

I never said he was actually getting married, his character in the song is.

um, just so you all know, ryan writes the lyrics anyways...not brendon