kadisiyuswyrd

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The obligatory pride month video! I'm quite happy with it. Watch at least the first minute, it's the best part because my friend did a great voice over for it :)

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First off, thank you @angstics for the reblog. Glad to get some eyeballs and brains! I'm definitely gonna DM some people on thoughts about specific songs and topics that have been rattling in my brane later. For now, Some updates, for those interested.

I've reached two big breakthroughs that hopefully are gonna make finishing this script much easier.

Breakthrough the First (What's the Point?):

I hit a wall at some point in the script because I couldn't answer some fundamental questions about how we define queerness and straightness. These are such a big, daunting questions, but they're sort of fundamental to the premise of the video (I am trying to quantify queerness here). I think I have some working definitions:

Queerness is superficially about "deviant" attraction (kink is queer) and gender fuckery (nonconformity, going against gender norms). The queer experience is defined by fighting for your humanity, about being prosecuted, and about discovering this abnormal part of yourself (this is why vampires are such a good queer metaphor—transformation, violent attraction; all themes MCR is familiar with).

Straightness is superficially about upholding "normal" attraction and gender roles. Being straight, especially for men, is about power—using it, seeking it, possessing it. Even for women straight relationships offer a degree of power, or protection.

I think these definitions....function. They're better than the rubric I was using before which was based on explicitness (i.e. the more explicitly homoerotic / queer the song, the higher the ranking). This doesn't work with MCR's lyricism. The only direct thing about MCR's lyrics is the EMOTIONS ("I'm not okay / I am not afraid to keep on living / I miss you more than I did yesterday" / the screaming).

Also, these definitions helped me reach the other breakthrough...

Breakthrough the Second (the Important One):

The video doesn't work. And by knowing that, I can make it work.

As a joke, this video basically writes itself, but as earnest examination of MCR's connection to the queer community, trying to quantify that in a listicle is...difficult, maybe impossible, and disingenuous.

Like, I've been thinking about "Cubicles" a lot. I ranked it in C tier. Initially, I was like, "oh a song about this lovesick, kinda loser guy who catches feelings easily. A dude thirsting over women is pretty straight." BUT, the song avoids gendered pronouns, entirely. It's perfectly ambiguous. I was doing some heteronormative bullshit because this could so easily be read as a tale of unrequited queer love. Hiding your queerness in the workplace, crushing after an unavailable straight person...this is so queer.

And, gosh, doesn't this just apply to everything, every MCR song. Their songs are about fighting for your right to be, about being the outcast, about violent, dangerous love, self-induced violence, prosecution...("They don't believe in us, but I believe we're the enemy!") All of it is queer to the max.

SO! With that being said, I've finally figured out the structure. This video is gonna be a deconstruction. I'm gonna have my cake and eat it too: the first half can be very silly—like, for Skylines and Turnstiles I just wrote "there's nothing gay about 9/11. F-tier" which I find hilarious. The second half is gonna be the real sincerity, the real acknowledgment of the fact that MCR has consistently—through their shows, their music, their interviews, their posts—left room for queer people.

It's gay turtles all the way down.

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Short little song I wrote for an upcoming video. The lyrics make it pretty clear what the video is gonna about...

Below is a faster version of the song that I scrapped. I wanted something a bit more intimate.

For anyone interested, the chords are...

F#Maj | F#Maj7 |

EMaj | EMaj7 | E6 EMaj |

D#min | Bmin / A | D#min Bmin

AMaj7* | Bmin | C#min | F#Maj

*aka C#min / A

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My Reaction to the Ending of Chapter 3:

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Yeah, so... my male Rouge design kinda blew up over on Twitter. Here's all of the artworks I made of him over the past few days.

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Ah, I missed this! An upcoming Rio Romeo album. We’re eating good in 2025 (at least if you ignore all the ways in which we are most definitely not eating good).

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los angeles california 1940

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Zira outfits

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listening to mcr the way g-d intended

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Hands

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MCR GAYLIST MASTERPOST

Hello, gays. I'm in the process of making a video & I'd like some input.

(I blame @cordspaghetti for keeping Alpharetta Gerard in my mind)

As the title implies, the video will rank every MCR song based on how gay it is in chronological order (more or less). Hopefully, it'll be released the first day of the new Black Parade tour (July 11, 2025). No promises, though.

At this point in the writing process (just finished Bullets this morning) I think Everyone Hates the Eagles is their gayest song. Prison, Mama, & To the End are up there, though ("he's not around he's always looking at men," I mean...c'mon).

I'm not too good at lyrical analysis, though, nor is my knowledge of MCR as robust as I'd like, so I'm interested to hear different queer readings of their songs.

As unserious as this video concept is, I actually want to approach it from a really earnest lens. Tier lists are already so subjective; gayness is such an arbitrary, amorphous label. I want to play around with the inherent stupidity of this.

There are some fundamental questions that I still haven't really answered but would love to explore:

What does it mean for something to be queer / gay (weird)?

What does it mean for something to be straight (normal)?

I really have no conception of what normality is anymore. I find strange things normal, normal things strange; when I act normally I feel strange, but am called strange when I think I'm acting normally...

3. How does rock music manage to attract both extremely gay and extremely straight fanbases (e.g. Nirvana, Queen, Misfits)?

Nirvana's fanbase always surprises me because the band was so left-leaning and anti-machismo, but because they sounded rough and masculine they attract these really weird, pretentious assholes. The way that rock music oscillates between hypermasculine presentation (leather jackets, jeans, shirtless, hairy) and queer theatricality (David Bowie, early Queen) is really interesting to me in general. It's a genre that's been sexist and feminist, homophobic and relentlessly queer in the same decade.

4. Is there value in deliberately ambiguous queer representation?

This question makes me think of iLLi. She emerged from ambiguity and I think that's part of her appeal. Fanfiction is grasping at straws to make something beautiful and whole. Isn't the ambiguity sometimes preferrable—to allow unique fan interpretation?

Not all of these questions need to be answered in the video, but I want them on my mind while writing. Part of me wants to make a normal tier list video, another part wants to kind of deconstruct it...but. this video is shaping up to be a behemoth as is, so maybe I should avoid scope creep and keep my ambitiousness in check.

We'll see how it goes. I'd love to hear from y'all.

(Also, big shoutout to @angstics who is, by my estimation, the seminal queer MCR scholar. I've been referring to a lot of their writing during the research process.)

Below is a list of the sources I'll be referring to during the script writing process. This is a living document, so expect this list to expand in the coming weeks. Cheers.

—Kay

Research w/Notes:

This article is a fun look at the early days of the band. It features a fun story about a sickly Gerard getting punched by record exec to give him energy to record his vocals. It worked.

Blistein, Jon. (2021). How a Sucker Punch Fueled the Rise of My Chemical Romance. Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/my-chemical-romance-rise-book-excerpt-sellout-dan-ozzi-1247331/   

One of Gerard's answers during his famous 2014 Reddit AMA. Mainly focused on his answer to question 5 about Drowning Lessons and its status as MCR's "cursed song."

Way, Gerard. (2014). Reddit AMA https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2i1840/comment/ckxylaq/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button 

A really thorough video about queer (sub)text in You Know What They Do to Guys Like Us in Prison. A helpful resource. souryogurtgirl. (2024). My Chemical Romance's Gay Anthem? YouTube. https://youtu.be/jDP5_Kl36ms

A TRACK BY TRACK BREAKDOWN OF TBP. Hell yeah.

Great MCR essays. The essay SEX & VIOLENCE is the most interesting to me, at least in relation to this video. Love & suffering is such a deeply queer idea. The "queering of violence" is so central to MCR's lyricism. Love how the essay points out the importance of Gerard's delivery, that's something I want to highlight in my own analysis.

"Honey This Podcast Isn't Big Enough for The Both of Us" is not only a great resource for MCR fan discourse, it is just really entertaining podcasting. Maren & EJ are playful, yet insightful. Their episode on the demo lovers has been helpful to try to parse the storytelling of Bullets and Revenge.

Slowly diving a bit more into queer theory for this project. It's daunting, but interesting! I feel like queer time—the idea (to my understanding) that queer people's life trajectories are distinctly different and possibly even incompatible with the traditional straight narrative of getting married, having a kid, entering the job market, etc.—may prove a helpful concept, especially in relation to TBP.

Writer Kathryn Bond Stockton literally describes queer children as "ghosts" because many of them cannot yet verbalize their queerness and are they given a roadmap for what adult queer life will look like. I mean...that's very Black Parade coded.

Haven't read this read this yet, keeping it here to get back to it! I really want to understand the link between queerness and theater, there's gotta be some historical context that explains that a bit more clearly for me.

https://newprairiepress.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4185&context=aerc

[kadisiyuswyrd]

#2 - PROMARE Review

Tumblr really fought me to get this video up. And on the first day of Pride Month no less, tsk, tsk.

Intro Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnRZ4pztrFs&pp=ygUHcHJvbWFyZQ%3D%3D

Article: https://medium.com/anigay/the-shape-of-queer-liberation-on-the-geometry-of-promare-cf8b1b47ced4

Music: Kakusei by Superfly

Transcript below the cut.

Directed by the man who brought us Kill la Kill, Panty & Stocking, and Gurren Lagann, Promare crams the insanity of those series in an brisk 112 minute long package that is expectedly messy, stylish, chaotic, vapid, politically charged, grand, and delightfully gay. 

Beginning as an uninspired story about systemic oppression led by himbo protagonist Galo Thymos, after forty minutes of stylish action and wholesome character moments the film introduces its Eren Yeager-ass twist villain (who is so evil he has a weapon called "Genocide Cultivation Beam"), a literal deus ex machina, multidimensional lore, and a potentially world-ending cataclysm. The biggest flaw of the film is that it has interesting ideas but the runtime doesn't allow for much depth or nuance; as a result, it feels rushed and uninspired, carried by its stellar character designs, flashy—if sometimes overstuffed—animation, and it's abundance of queer overtones. Galo and Lio are perhaps the greatest deception of a hunk and a twink in animation—if you disagree, please let me know in the comments so I can look at more hot men. 

Simple, cheesy, underbaked, and geometric, Promare is good ol' fashioned dumb fun that warms my gay little heart. 

I charge this film with 5 counts of arson and 2 counts of sodomy.

(Also Rebecca Black—no, not that one—made a great article analyzing the films' really smart use of geometry that I think you should read, okay bye!)

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mer are you... are you okay

im studying engineering

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my deltarune theory

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#1 - FURFAG Review

Featured Art:

Intro Video by: TOTAN (@ yoinomachi on X) - https://x.com/i/status/1884995778546192435 Sci-Fi Furry Art by: Nule (@ nulethegoat on X) - https://x.com/nulethegoat/status/1877778396769337400

Pooltoy Art by: Nule 18+ (@ bleatingseason on X) - https://x.com/bleatingseason/status/1917259135495647610

Pent Up Pup Art by: (@ puppybytez on X)

Transcript below the cut:

Released this year on Valentine's Day, FURFAG is the sophomore EP of the 18+ furry musician and self-described "pupstar" Pent Up Pup. The first track greets you with lush vocal harmonies, infectious songwriting, and an incredibly polished sound that endures throughout the 6 track EP. Furry art is many things—creative, allegorical, silly, provocative—but it is rarely accessible in the way that FURFAG is. Compared to the sounds of other furry musicians Ashley Ninelives or Patricia Taxxon, the EP is tame…at least, sonically; lyrically it is hypersexual and deeply rooted in furry culture with casual references to puppy play, Anthrocon, pooltoys (spelt without the space between them),and generally being kinky, horny, and playful. It's not subtle, it's not restrained, and I absolutely love it.

While the album as a whole could be described as electropop, I think it's at its best when it integrates punk rock elements into its sound. The second track, PASS THAT POOLTOY, does not do that, leaning fully into an uninspired pop sound that excels mainly at giving PUP's stellar vocals room to breathe. KNOT SONG is more my speed, marking a shift in the EP towards faster, more danceable beats that integrate crunchy, 8-bit elements. PITS is my favorite track, having some of the filthiest lyrics, most playful vocals, and crowd pleasing choruses off the EP. CHANGED returns to a more minimal, electronic sound, only to crescendo in a delightful, blaring outro. The final track is the perfect distillation of the EP’s themes and sound, ending on an expectedly horny, energetic, and unexpectedly heartwarming note.  

Fucking funny and fucking hot, FURFAG is a well-written, and wonderfully produced collection of songs that I highly reccomend. Even in its dullest moments, the raunchy lyrics, tight production, and playful energy will keep you engaged throughout. 

I rate this album 69 Good Boys out of 10. Give this album a nice rub.