MCR Broke Up

[kiki_eng]

I woke up to that news that Saturday morning (over a week ago now) and all of these sad garment-rending type posts on my reading list and network. (This is my sad garment-rending type post.)

My Chemical Romance was my favourite active bandom band. They're an important part of bandom for me, and an important part of my fannish history. Bandom's not my first RPF fandom but it's my first serious RPF fandom; I'm a lot more attached to it and the people that it focuses on than I have been with previous RPF fandoms, which is something that I've been processing as I move through bandom.

sinesofinsanity and I do this thing occasionally where we hang out in a kitchen and cook and/or drink tea and talk fandom. We don't tend to share fandoms or read the same fic in fandoms we do share; we're pretty different fannishly. For the past however long I've been talking to her about bandom, which has translated into a lot of talking about MCR (They went LARPing in the desert with Grant Morrison for a couple music videos.* Gerard writes comic books.** One of their music videos is a fanvid; they found a couple of a fanperson's vids, liked her stuff, and paid her to make their music video.***) and about RPF. There's been a lot of processing of where the lines are for me and what being a fan of someone more for their media persona than their work means for me. My becoming a fan of MCR and working to process my relationship with RPF have been really intertwined things for me.

*Killjoys 'verse: Na Na Na, SING
**wiki: The Umbrella Academy
***vidder's lj entry: The Kids From Yesterday

MCR is important to me. I have a lot of feelings about MCR. MCR is "art is the weapon". MCR is "trying to change the world". MCR is "gonna find the way on my own". MCR is "be yourself and don't take anybody's fucking shit".

When I was in high school I was pretty far left on the political spectrum. I am pretty far left on the political spectrum, and there's this narrative about how leftists grow up and stop being leftists. There's this note somewhere that I wrote to Friend A that goes something like, I don't ever want to do that. I don't ever want to accept the status fucking quo. I don't ever want to accept this racist, misogynistic, homophobic bullshit. I don't ever want to stop caring about that shit. I don't ever want to stop fighting. I am terrified of that; I think that the day I stop fighting, stop caring, is the day that something incredibly important dies.

MCR's a fighting band; MCR is a band fighting that fight; they're not perfect, but they're fighting. That's a lot of what MCR has meant to me, and I'm sad that they broke up; I wanted them to grow old and write a children's album together. I didn't want the band to end, but it's okay that they did; things end. Life goes forward and there are new adventures.

(Thank you and best wishes, MCR.)

I have been basically writing around I find MCR inspirational. I liked their message; it's something that I need in my life and something that I occasionally turn around in my head like a favourite old book. It's still there, after they've broken up, and the fandom is still here, too.

The fandom, for those reading this who are unaware, is awesome. Those themes that make me love MCR are all wrapped up in the fandom - geekery and art and meaning and recovery and... it's glorious.

My favourite podfic right now is an MCR/FOB one, actually:

Sing Ourselves to Sleep by Dira Sudis (Podfic) by inkjunket
Rating: PG-13 | 22:36 | Gerard/Patrick
Being exhausted is nothing like being drunk, but some nights Gerard gets too tired to remember that.

It's about Gerard, who's canonically a recovered addict, being sober on Warped Tour and him and Patrick getting to know each other. It starts with this conversation that they have at night sitting on some asphalt by themselves and the entire podfic feels kind of like that, like a conversation you have late at night in the summer, and it's amazing.

I actually haven't read that fic of Dira Sudis' yet. I just haven't had the urge to; I think maybe I like inkjunket's voice wrapping around those words so much that I want them to stay just like that for a while longer. Dira Sudis does have another fic like that that I have read, though:

In the TV Light by dsudis
Rating: NC-17 | 8,901 words | Gerard/Bob
It wasn't a big deal, just an hour or two in the middle of the night.

It feels similar to me because it contains a lot of the same elements that I love in Sing Ourselves to Sleep - geekiness and recovery and late night hangouts. Bob and Gerard watch TV together after Bob joins the band and it's not a big deal, except for the way that it's time that Bob and Gerard spend together and they sort of carve that time out for themselves and they're sharing things that they love and enjoying each other and accommodating each other.

I love this fandom a lot. It is full of gorgeous things:

owl by LanaViva

I love this picture of Frank with an owl a lot. I love its colours and I love its cross-hatching and lines and things that I do not entirely have the words for. I think it's beautiful.

The Dazzling Lances of Our Love by Bexless
Rating: NC-17 | 1,619 words | Frank/Gerard
“What?” said Gerard, staring down at him. He shook his head. “Frank, you’re crying.”“I know that,” Frank said irritably, unwrapping his arms from around Gerard’s neck so he could wipe roughly at his face. “Jesus Christ.”

Okay. So this is the fic where Frank cries during sex because he has a lot of feelings and it's great, really. It's like a conversation about sex and feelings (There is a conversation about sex and feelings.) and it's a little funny and there are tiny little sad pieces in it and it's very real.

Buy Handmade by jjtaylor
Rating: NC-17 |18,754 words | Frank/Gerard
He knows something else is going to happen; his life isn't always going to be this. He just doesn't know what has to happen for that change to come, for him to wake up and become an artist with an Etsy page and a home studio, and to never have to see a cubicle again.

Buy Handmade is one of my favorite stories, and it's such an MCR story. It's an AU where Frank works in an office and wants something more, something real. It's about art and love and meaning, and this is the story that I'm always going to rec, basically (not actually, but I've got it sitting in another rec set right now, and, yeah) because it is utterly lovely and full of feelings.

Taken My Place by harborshore
Rating: PG-13 | 6,067 words | Ray/Mikey
Summary: Mikey's new roommate is hot, but his house is really fucking weird.

Someday I'm going to do a rec set about houses and homes and this is probably going to be in it. There's magical realism in this universe, and Ray and then Mikey move into this long-empty cranky old Victorian house wherein the cutlery converses amongst itself and everything has opinions.

A Sound of Far-Off Music by lordessrenegade
Rating: G | 6,878 words | Frank/Gerard
In the days before the flu came to New Jersey, a small boy lived there with his younger brother and parents in a house that was little and comfortable, warm and pleasantly untidy, and full of all the things a young boy needed to fuel his imagination.

This Secret Garden AU is perfect and just generally delightful. They're kids in this and it's about friendship and there's neither a miraculous recovery nor a tragic end - the ending's great. There's this wonderful embracing of the dark and strange in this and it's this perfect MCR story.

It was written for the yobrothatssick challenge, which is a thing that still makes me pretty gleeful and I have so many bookmarks from that, because, yeah, a challenge based around Frank being sick (something that he's apparently prone to) resulted in all of these really awesome hurt/comfort-type fics. You should definitely check that out if you missed it for whatever reason and that sounds relevant to your interests - and maybe even if it doesn't. I totally did not know that it was relevant to my interests beforehand.

Crunchy and Taste Good With Ketchup by carleton97
Rating: NC-17 | 8,371 words | Bob/Gerard
Summary: Bob is a dragon. Gerard is his treasure.

I am pretty sure I have loved dragons forever. The person-is-a-dragon trope is one that I'm pretty weak to, and Bob makes an awesome dragon. The story's cracky fluff, basically, with a bit of snark thrown in, and it's really enjoyable.

[Podfic of] Frank the Failiest Vampire by isweedan
Rating: NC-17 | 07:49 | Frank/Gerard
mistresscurvy's summary: Frank's a vampire, and he's finally ready to let the world know.

I love this podfic. It is hilarious and wonderful. I unknowingly introduced sinesofinsanity to podfic with it, because it made me so gleeful that I wanted to share it. I love the notfic it's a podfic of, too, and the bit of reality that inspired it. It makes me really happy that dressing up as Dracula for a concert when it's not quite Hallowe'en is something that Frank has done. (True story: there was one October where I went into my part time job in costume for the entire month.) I love how into Hallowe'en and costuming this band is and how there are little shots of that in the fandom.

j-rock frank OH HO OH YEAH~ by theopteryx with shoemaster and fitofpique
Rating: NC-17 | ~5,000 words (also: art) | Frank/Gerard | ableist language: "lame"

I love the bring your old fandom to your new fandom thing that people do, and I love the notfic thing that's so prevalent in bandom - it's like undiluted fannish glee. It's so joyful. This notfic includes shame and pining and clothing kink. theopteryx has also appended a couple of pieces of art to it that I strongly recommend you checking out if either J-rock Frank or adorable noodle house kisses are of interest to you. I also recommend them in general, because I recommend theopteryx's art in general; it tends to be really engaging.

VanDays by xojemmaxo

I love the light in this picture of Frank and Mikey making out in a van. I love all of the softened edges stuff that's happening in this and Mikey's face. (His glasses! That angle!) It's such a sweet piece of art.

I'm going to stop listing fanworks now, because, seriously, I wrote this entry within a couple hours of the news, and then I proceeded to open up basically every single MCR fanwork that I had ever bookmarked and recs started happening and it's over a week later now and I have decided to accept that I am not list-reccing all the things that I love and that I'm probably not going to successfully get my words around the why and how of what MCR and MCR fandom mean to me.

I love them both a lot, and I've been seeing more posts trickling through my reading list and network and for some reason I decided that checking out the MCR tag on tumblr last night was a good idea (whhyyyyyyyyy). That last thing was incredibly derailing and induced a lot of feelings. I have a tendency to sit on things for a while and think them over, but the terrible tumblr adventure reminded me of the kind of immediacy of grief, and this post is kind of a love letter, and that's something that I want to toss out onto the internet, onto people's feeds right now; these are insufficient and clumsy words I want out. (♥ fandom)