#and she apologized for being a dick about boys wearing makeup and the singstar stuff

[bugswarm]

So when I was a kid, in like, 2006-2007, there was a game series called SingStar. It was a singing version of guitar hero basically. Anyways, my friend loved singing games and had gotten 2 of them. SingStar Rocks and SingStar Pop. I also really enjoyed them, so we played them all the time. But on the one game, SingStar Pop, there was an My Chemical Romance song, Helena. I was absolutely fascinated by the music video and loved the song and everything about it. (I was a really depressed kid and anything dark, morbid, etc was a fascination for me) So I of course, would beg to play that song all the time with her. But she didn’t like it. She thought it was weird and explicitly said “Boys aren’t supposed to wear makeup”. (Which, she also loved doing Fall Out Boy’s Dance, Dance and thats got Pete Wentz in eye liner, plus like, all the other reasons thats a fucked up statement but we were 10-11 so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) and made a rule that if we did that song, then we had to do one of the songs she liked that I hated. And I hated those more than my love of the weird funeral rock song that she would complain about every time we played it even if we were playing it in exchange for one I hated. So we almost never played Helena unless we did a random shuffle and it happened to pick it (which I celebrated every time but also regretted being happy about because I did it so infrequently that I couldn’t do well on the actual singing part of the game >.<).

For years, that was all I knew about mcr. They were “those boys who wore makeup that [childhood friend] said Im not supposed to like”. Then I got into high school and met this girl and we kissed after a party once, and I desperately needed her in my life more. And she said she was writing a fanfiction about a band and if I helped beta read it, then we would have something to talk about/more time to hang out. But I didn’t know the band at all. Turns out it was mcr. She wrote me a quick primer on each band member and the general traits I should know about them. I do not at all remember what she said beyond like, “Mikey plays Bass and is the brother of Gerard, who sings. Frank plays Guitar, Ray plays Guitar, and Bob used to play drums but doesn’t anymore” (this was post Bob leaving the band but before we all knew the extent of how bad he is). But anyways, I helped edit the fic and it took months and during the writing and editing process we ended up dating. Then 4 years later, we broke up, about 1 year after mcr broke up.

My ex is and isn’t important to this story because on the one hand, this is a story about how MCR has influenced my life over the years. But on the other hand, if it weren’t for My Chemical Romance, my ex and I would have never gotten together, or stayed together as long as we did. Our official first date was at an MCR concert. And those 4 years with them have some of the biggest impacts on my life to this day out of any other era of my life. A lot of who I am today can be directly attributed to things I experienced and learned through dating them. Hell I joined tumblr because of them, know about AO3 because of them, and learned…. So much about just. How actual real adult life works because of them.

But beyond my ex and I breaking up, MCR was still gone. They had broken up too. And I fell out of the fandom. Sure I still listened to the music and occasionally would talk about the band with other fans who I met, but it was bittersweet and painful.

Then in October 2019, I was at a halloween party hosted by my college. I was going through a bad relationship. And then news dropped that MCR had reunited. I could not pay attention to anything else. That was the most exciting thing that had happened in years. A month later, I was single. I had remembered that there were things more important in life and that I didn’t have to put up with the guy I was dating if I didn’t want to. So I didn’t. And my life got instantly better.

Then the pandemic hit. And shows were rescheduled. And the world put on hold. And then the blm protests happened. And my world got dark again. I dated another person who wasn’t good for me. (Nor I them). I restructured my life around what I thought I could settle for. And went on like that for over a year.

MCR did their European leg of their tour but I didn’t pay much attention. I never paid attention to tours I couldn’t attend since any other time in my life, the best we got was after the show we might get some nice photos or a grainy far away video, and it was rarely worth it. Plus with covid still happening, I kept expecting shows to be cancelled or rescheduled.

And then MCR got to the US leg of the tour. And at first, I planned to ignore it just the same as the European leg. And then a few days later, my news app showed me an article about one of their shows. Which I thought was odd because what could they have done that was so impressive that the news would write about it, and despite not having MCR news in my usual like, algorithmically decided interests, have it show up in my news feed. So I clicked it.

It was Nashville and suddenly a picture of Gerard Way wearing a cheerleader dress was directly in front of me. So I checked tumblr for the first time in a few months. Blogs that I had followed for fandoms over the years that had never been MCR blogs were posting about it. Old MCR blogs that had long been abandoned years ago but I never bothered to unfollow, suddenly were running and posting again. And I checked the tags to see what the general masses on tumblr were saying too. And every single post I saw, was an absolute outpouring of positivity and kindness and happiness. I didn’t see a single negative post. I didn’t even see any borderline inappropriate horny-on-main posts like I expected. I followed a few blogs and figured that was it. That I might check tumblr a bit more often and reblog some cool new-era-of-MCR posts. I figured nothing more shocking or emotionally investing could happen after the cheerleader dress. That was already crazy getting to see even that much.

But then they were playing Portland and a lot of the blogs I had followed were really hyped up and talking about livestreaming the show. And I wasn’t busy that night so I figured Id turn it on as background noise. And ended up watching every minute of it. The next day, I had a full break down. I couldn’t fathom settling with my life when something so incredibly amazing was out there.

That weekend, the local pop punk night DJ for the bar I go to occasionally was putting on an MCR themed/specific pop punk night, to commemorate the anniversary of the first time they played my city. I decided to make the cheerleader dress and wear it there and double it as a halloween costume. I made it in 3 days in time for the bar night.

Getting to the bar, I was nervous. The dress was short. And I’m afab but nonbinary, and I know most people look at me and say “that’s a girl” without thinking about it further. In a dress, that’s even more likely. In a short dress, I couldn’t imagine anything else happening. When I got to the bar, I was so nervous I was shaking. I immediately ordered 2 shots and a drink, hoping that being drunk would take away the anxiety. As I was waiting on my drinks, someone approached me to compliment the dress and ask me questions about how I sewed it. He wanted to buy a sewing machine for his girlfriend for Christmas and needed to know what kind to buy her. It was a nice chat.

Then, after, I went into the crowd proper. I had so many people compliment my dress, it was crazy. I had expected only a few people to even recognize it. It was a random outfit they wore once on stage, less than 2 weeks prior. Most of these people weren’t even hardcore MCR fans, just pop punk in general. But every single hardcore MCR fan I saw complimented the dress. And also? absolutely none of them assumed I was a girl. Not one. Most asked for pronouns. None were weirded out when I answered they/them. None looked at me like I was crazy or said anything negative. Some said they were too. It was the most shocking experience I have ever had in terms of my gender identity.

Out of the 4 people Ive dated in my life, 3 had been or later came out as (binary) trans people. All three of the ones who are trans, had made me feel like my gender wasn’t valid. (The cis ex I never ended up coming out to.) and those had been people who claimed to love me. People I saw every day. And yet here were a bunch of drunk MCR fans seeing someone who was very obviously female, and femme, and wearing a very short dress. And not one assumed or made me feel wrong or bad about my gender or presentation.

More time passed after that night and more shows came and went. LA nights 1-4 came and were insane every time.

And then last night. LA night 5. Of course I had to livestream it. I sobbed for most of the show. And being in a discord that was also livestreaming this show, and on tumblr seeing what people were posting, meant I got to see this extreme outpouring of love from all of the fans. And also see the outpouring of love from MCR themselves to their fans and to each other.

And for the first time since… Well pretty much ever really for me, the world doesn’t seem dark. There is so much hope and love in this world and I just. I don’t have the words to describe how incredibly much it means to me. Ive been on the verge of happy tears all day.

When I was first in the fandom back during the danger days era, there was always the cliche of saying “MCR saved my life”. And I understand it now. Do I think they saved my life? No. I did that. I went through hell to make it where I am now and no one can take that away from me. The same way the members of the band had to tear down the band and go through their own brands of hell to get to where they all are and get to play these shows for us at all. We had to do that on our own. The band didn’t do that for us.

But at the same time? Seeing that show last night? My Chemical Romance absolutely made my life worth saving. And I really really hope it makes theirs too.