My first MyChemversary
So today's kind of a momentous occasion, as far as I'm concerned. No, it's not my ljversary, my bandomversary, or any of half a dozen landmark anniversaries in my life. I don't keep track of any of those.
The fifth of September marks my MyChemversary.
I don't know when to count my bandomversary. I mean, back in early '06 when I first saw the video for I Write Sins, I was mentally slashing (What? Brendon/tophat is still my OTP), but then I moved from listening to Panic to listening to classic rock, whatever. And then Jess started trying to get me into bandom with her last summer. May. By June I was watching Panic's DVD and was a Ryan girl. But all that was just a prelude.
I read the fic, and listened to a little of the music. I read a lot of multiband fic and looked at picspams but maintained I wasn't going to be a real bandomer. …shut up.
So I'd read about MyChem a little, but they were nothing to me. I'd tried to watch a clip or two of them on youtube when everyone was all excited about Real Stagegay at ProRev. I- I swore them off entirely, to my present horror. It's part of why I hate live music recordings - youtube videos are such shite they can make MyChem look ugly and sound even worse. The sound had me wincing so bad I couldn't even think of listening ever again.
I was so naïve. Also, it was when people touted MyChem as not being babies. And I was thinking they were old and… "Frank in heat" is not my favorite. He looked like a dick.
Anyhow. My descent into bandom was undeniable by this time - I'd either written fic or at least started to, and I'd just celebrated my birthday with this look:
But it was on September fifth that Jess linked me to this, saying something about prep school and uniforms with ties:
It's more her weakness than mine, but I do have a weakness for a well-dressed man. And I was listless, bored. So I watched. I may even have watched twice; I don't remember that clearly.
Because at the time, it was nothing. It wasn't until that weekend when I was at a planorama for work that I got the song stuck in my head and realized I needed to listen again.
Being in bandom, I'd already…acquired the albums of the main bands. But I never listened. I burned the MyChem discography to cd as soon as I got home from the planorama and began playing just that song, over and over. But if I was distracted, I'd end up catching bits of the songs before and after. A week later, I listened to all of Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. I stuck with that for a week, but then I went to St. Louis on a thrift store hunt and ended up listening to the full discography.
I really loved a lot of the songs. I could tell you what few I didn't (and still don't), but this was… This was my new-music hating self. I never listened to anything. I pumped Creedence Clearwater Revival on the drive to work to stay awake at 4:am, but that was about it.
I discussed the music with Jess; she was a Fall Out Boy girl, but it was pretty immediately clear I was a MyChem girl. And she said she didn't like the song Cancer. I didn't know which song that was - I listened mainly in the car and didn't know track names. So I put it on to establish my own opinion and realized it was definitely one of the songs I like.
I started playing it a lot, sometimes on loop. This was… Well, the reason I went to St. Louis to shop was to find black vests I could wear to my grandma's funeral. She wasn't dead yet, but she was dying. Of pancreatic cancer.
She died the day The Umbrella Academy's first issue came out. I hit the comic shop, but they didn't have it; Carbondale, IL isn't known for such resources. And so I was on the phone with Cosmo, asking him to pick me up a copy out here. I said "I'll be in town soon for my grandma's funeral - in fact, if I go in a hurry, it's because mom's calling me to say grandma died." I knew she would die that day, and sure enough, maybe five minutes later I had to hang up because mom was calling for that very reason.
I used MyChem to get myself through it. I listened to them more, and when I flew out, I had a stack of pictures printed out and all their lyrics, just because I thought it would help me get through the flight without breaking down.
This is the picture that kept me smiling:
By this time, I was already a Mikey girl, but since this was before his great return, there were only about three pictures on the internet in which he's smiling. (And it probably wasn't helped that this was back before I realized he was still hot without the glasses…)
This was my desktop background, because it was the best Mikey smiling picture I had:
Now, right off the bat in picspams, I was aware Mikey was the be-all end-all of hotness in MyChem. But it took a while to accept that, because the first memory I have of seeing his name is a picspam where this picture is captioned something about "skeevy little Mikeyway". I had no idea what that meant - Gabe connotations gave me doubts, after all. I still have no idea if the term was meant as an endearment or not:
Of course, when I saw this picture, I was endlessly amused:
And a week later, I was asking Jess what I should be for Halloween. The answer seemed obvious to her:
Jess and I started writing lyrics. We live in different states, so our band is not very functional at this point, but we love it. And I actually then moved back to Colorado; my family needed me.
And I started making friends in bandom. I met sinuous_curve and chebonne because we bonded over the weemo poll in which Mikeyway was eliminated much too soon from the running for hottest weemo. We became the (gay) French pirates, after Mikey himself:
chebonne was a rampant wolf-shirter, and she started getting me into it when we talked about this picture and how we need a chef AU (Which, hey, dudes, we still need!):
I went back to my pancake art ways, and, well, Ways:
So, what have I learned from bandom?
I've learned to appreciate tambourines,
wolfshirts,
horizontal stripes,
toasters,
and unicorns…
From Unicorn Pure
I've learned to love music, new music, fun music, music with a meaning. I mean, I go to concerts now, I've spent basically all of this year helping a friend start and run a webzine…
I have hyperacusis. It's essentially a sensitivity to sound that is life-restricting and almost painful. It's intermittent and in my case it's sometimes triggered by stress. Becoming someone who can go see these bands and love it is so important to me, and I don't even have the words for it.
Not to mention the friends I have made. Linn, Aly, Chris, Michelle, Echo, Kayla… and so on, of course. But I don't know if I could have made it through the summer as well as I did without Chris. And Linn is another one of my best friends. I keep trying to plot ways to meet Michelle, and that's just a couple of the people who have become a part of my life. I mean, three of my four best friends are people I most likely would never have met if I didn't get into this band.
Does My Chemical Romance save lives? I believe it. Did they save mine? No. But they did make it a better life. And that matters too.
Anyhow, I leave you once more with the upload of my favorite Mikey interview (he makes banjo sounds and blames their cuteness on genetics. I have to remind you how awesome that is).
And, of course, a brief picspam:
The fifth of September marks my MyChemversary.
I don't know when to count my bandomversary. I mean, back in early '06 when I first saw the video for I Write Sins, I was mentally slashing (What? Brendon/tophat is still my OTP), but then I moved from listening to Panic to listening to classic rock, whatever. And then Jess started trying to get me into bandom with her last summer. May. By June I was watching Panic's DVD and was a Ryan girl. But all that was just a prelude.
I read the fic, and listened to a little of the music. I read a lot of multiband fic and looked at picspams but maintained I wasn't going to be a real bandomer. …shut up.
So I'd read about MyChem a little, but they were nothing to me. I'd tried to watch a clip or two of them on youtube when everyone was all excited about Real Stagegay at ProRev. I- I swore them off entirely, to my present horror. It's part of why I hate live music recordings - youtube videos are such shite they can make MyChem look ugly and sound even worse. The sound had me wincing so bad I couldn't even think of listening ever again.
I was so naïve. Also, it was when people touted MyChem as not being babies. And I was thinking they were old and… "Frank in heat" is not my favorite. He looked like a dick.
Anyhow. My descent into bandom was undeniable by this time - I'd either written fic or at least started to, and I'd just celebrated my birthday with this look:
But it was on September fifth that Jess linked me to this, saying something about prep school and uniforms with ties:
Click to viewIt's more her weakness than mine, but I do have a weakness for a well-dressed man. And I was listless, bored. So I watched. I may even have watched twice; I don't remember that clearly.
Because at the time, it was nothing. It wasn't until that weekend when I was at a planorama for work that I got the song stuck in my head and realized I needed to listen again.
Being in bandom, I'd already…acquired the albums of the main bands. But I never listened. I burned the MyChem discography to cd as soon as I got home from the planorama and began playing just that song, over and over. But if I was distracted, I'd end up catching bits of the songs before and after. A week later, I listened to all of Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. I stuck with that for a week, but then I went to St. Louis on a thrift store hunt and ended up listening to the full discography.
I really loved a lot of the songs. I could tell you what few I didn't (and still don't), but this was… This was my new-music hating self. I never listened to anything. I pumped Creedence Clearwater Revival on the drive to work to stay awake at 4:am, but that was about it.
I discussed the music with Jess; she was a Fall Out Boy girl, but it was pretty immediately clear I was a MyChem girl. And she said she didn't like the song Cancer. I didn't know which song that was - I listened mainly in the car and didn't know track names. So I put it on to establish my own opinion and realized it was definitely one of the songs I like.
I started playing it a lot, sometimes on loop. This was… Well, the reason I went to St. Louis to shop was to find black vests I could wear to my grandma's funeral. She wasn't dead yet, but she was dying. Of pancreatic cancer.
She died the day The Umbrella Academy's first issue came out. I hit the comic shop, but they didn't have it; Carbondale, IL isn't known for such resources. And so I was on the phone with Cosmo, asking him to pick me up a copy out here. I said "I'll be in town soon for my grandma's funeral - in fact, if I go in a hurry, it's because mom's calling me to say grandma died." I knew she would die that day, and sure enough, maybe five minutes later I had to hang up because mom was calling for that very reason.
I used MyChem to get myself through it. I listened to them more, and when I flew out, I had a stack of pictures printed out and all their lyrics, just because I thought it would help me get through the flight without breaking down.
This is the picture that kept me smiling:
By this time, I was already a Mikey girl, but since this was before his great return, there were only about three pictures on the internet in which he's smiling. (And it probably wasn't helped that this was back before I realized he was still hot without the glasses…)
This was my desktop background, because it was the best Mikey smiling picture I had:
Now, right off the bat in picspams, I was aware Mikey was the be-all end-all of hotness in MyChem. But it took a while to accept that, because the first memory I have of seeing his name is a picspam where this picture is captioned something about "skeevy little Mikeyway". I had no idea what that meant - Gabe connotations gave me doubts, after all. I still have no idea if the term was meant as an endearment or not:
Of course, when I saw this picture, I was endlessly amused:
And a week later, I was asking Jess what I should be for Halloween. The answer seemed obvious to her:
Jess and I started writing lyrics. We live in different states, so our band is not very functional at this point, but we love it. And I actually then moved back to Colorado; my family needed me.
And I started making friends in bandom. I met sinuous_curve and chebonne because we bonded over the weemo poll in which Mikeyway was eliminated much too soon from the running for hottest weemo. We became the (gay) French pirates, after Mikey himself:
chebonne was a rampant wolf-shirter, and she started getting me into it when we talked about this picture and how we need a chef AU (Which, hey, dudes, we still need!):
I went back to my pancake art ways, and, well, Ways:
So, what have I learned from bandom?
I've learned to appreciate tambourines,
wolfshirts,
horizontal stripes,
toasters,
and unicorns…
From Unicorn Pure
I've learned to love music, new music, fun music, music with a meaning. I mean, I go to concerts now, I've spent basically all of this year helping a friend start and run a webzine…
I have hyperacusis. It's essentially a sensitivity to sound that is life-restricting and almost painful. It's intermittent and in my case it's sometimes triggered by stress. Becoming someone who can go see these bands and love it is so important to me, and I don't even have the words for it.
Not to mention the friends I have made. Linn, Aly, Chris, Michelle, Echo, Kayla… and so on, of course. But I don't know if I could have made it through the summer as well as I did without Chris. And Linn is another one of my best friends. I keep trying to plot ways to meet Michelle, and that's just a couple of the people who have become a part of my life. I mean, three of my four best friends are people I most likely would never have met if I didn't get into this band.
Does My Chemical Romance save lives? I believe it. Did they save mine? No. But they did make it a better life. And that matters too.
Anyhow, I leave you once more with the upload of my favorite Mikey interview (he makes banjo sounds and blames their cuteness on genetics. I have to remind you how awesome that is).
And, of course, a brief picspam: