#how was i completely braindead today and then too dizzy to read text. and then somehow type this shit on my phone with my eyes half-closed.

[raytorosaurus]

I have seen maybe half a season of TUA and didn’t read the comics so let me tell you seeing those panels where Vanya is yelling “We belong on that stage” (and in reference to herself and her taller blonde bass-playing brother) drawn in profile with literally Gerard’s haircut and outfit was a big shock to the system. I never even considered that he’d inserted elements of himself and his bandmates into TUA except for a bunch of weird edits people made comparing how much Aiden Gallagher looks like Frank but now I feel like I really need to read it.

im really looking forward to rereading all of the comics after this semester's over because i haven't done that since volume 3's run ended and i'll definitely make more coherent posts about it then but like. it's really really interesting to compare to all of gerard's other art because he is just...so distinctively him, even across different mediums and genres. tua and mcr and hesitant alien and kjna and his visual art etc etc etc like his artistic fingerprint is stamped so boldly and unapologetically all over them and that's something i really love about him. like his art, love it or hate it, is sooooo genuine always. even when he's purposely imitating other artists, he's very consciously doing it in his own voice, putting his own spin on it.

when i say tua and mcr are completely separate projects i mean it - i don't think one should only ever be discussed in relation to/in the context of the other - and, above all, tua is certainly not like...autobiographical, or a direct representation of real people/events. it's led by gerard but it has a different creative team than mcr does and that really shows as well - i definitely wanna talk ant this when i have more time but part of the reason im not sold on conweap as an album is because it's too umbrella academy - it's really evident that gerard was working on both of them at the same time, and letting one influence the other too directly. mcr's a band, not a Gerard Project, and umbrella academy is largely a duo (w gabriel bá), so they can't just be transplanted onto each other yk.

anyway I'm rambling but all this to say - tua isn't meant to be "about" mcr any more than bullets is "about" 9/11. but gerard's life was changed and shaped by his experiences in the music scene throughout his life, by dropping everything and living as a penniless artist, by becoming suddenly (in)famous, and that really shines through in tua. he says he drew inspiration from touring band life to write a dysfunctional family, and the dehumanising effects of fame and attention, and of being categorised and scrutinised on a private or public level, are huge themes - as is addiction, mental health, complicated grief.

like...i actually got into mcr through the tua comics lmaooo. i read volume 1 because of wonderful @blackmoldmp3 talking about it and immediately said oh. i need more from this dude's brain right now. and i was soooo not disappointed haha. i really am obsessed with quite a lot of the things gerard is also obsessed with as an artist. the particular themes and imagery and scenarios he's fixated on are really very consistent throughout everything he does - only the way they're discussed or portrayed does change over time. i don't rly subscribe to the idea of gleaning specifics abt artists' personal lives from their works because, beside all else, it just does them a huge disservice (that's my number one gripe with the popular talking pounts around hes alien and frank's solo work in particular; however "confessional" you wanna read art as, it's still art that was created with skill and intent.)

anyway that's way off topic dkfnfj. what i do love about this kind of thing is looking at distinct creations in the context of the rest of an artist's body of work. like...yeah, gerard's said there's a lot of mikey in klaus. has dressed similarly to vanya and the kraken and the seance at times etc etc. has compared himself to the rumor, because she's the one he relates to most. puts a lot of his familiar ideology surrounding music and performance into vanya. puts angry teenage vanya in a shitty punk band with her disillusioned teenage brother on bass, and puts a classical music prodigy in a punk band as an excellent guitarist, writing songs about killing the president etc etc. i could go on! because these things are just scattered everywhere through the comic, just like all of gerard thematic and aesthetic and ideologic fingerprints.

so what's reallyyy interesting to me is looking at umbrella academy as something gerard wrote on the road with mcr across multiple years. volume one was released while the tbp world tour was ongoing, and volume two only a few months after. the progression of parade -> tua -> conweap -> danger days is SOOOO fascinating to me, especially because one of the things that really works about danger days imo is the way it kind of shakes off some of the tua-style gritty cynicism and returns to mcr's defiant, extravagant theatricality. if you go through tua with a fine-tooth comb you'll definitely find the most direct comparisons to conweap, in terms of mcr. the way dd approaches the themes it has in common with tua is just.....so different, and so so mcr. and then you can see the at times self-referential development on those things in hesitant alien - AND THEN VOLUME 3 COMES AROUND AND LIKE. AUUUGGGGHHHHH the change and growth there is SO apparent. btw i don't mean "growth" "progression" etc in this post to mean "improving" - i just mean change and development in a neutral sense, bc it's so interesting to see it laid out there in an artist's body of work. but like. man it makes me crazeeee actually the way gerard picked tua back up....almost certainly around the same time mcr started discussing a potential reunion. and the way that foundations revisits and reconceptualises mcr's existing catalogue is paralleled in the way vol 3 of tua is, like...........like there's so much life lived there, between those things. gerard's even said he's changed his plan for the ending (if we ever see it 🥲) because he has more compassion for his own characters now and doesn't want to see them broken down for good. he says he's gotten better at listening to other people - for starters, he's a lot more conscious of his own subconscious racism/whiteness that came through at times in the original run and has expressed regret for that (namely, the entire main cast being white, with a couple of side characters being uncomfortably stereotyped).

but just like. augh. im not gonna lie man i have no idea what i've just typed im sorry it's probably so rambly bc I'm so dizzy rn and definitely am not gonna proofread it or whatever skdjfj but. I LOVE ART! I LOVE ARTISTS! I LOVE DIVING DEEP INTO AN ARTIST'S BODY OF WORK AND WATCHING THEM REINVENT THEMSELF AND/OR DOUBLE DOWN ON THEMSELF (SOMETIMES FOR BETTER, SOMETIMES FOR WORSE). obvs this fandom genuinely does have a big issue with invasive/un-self-aware parasocial behaviour but there's a difference between that and like. getting obsessed with a particular artist. that's so normal and in fact necessary to life imo. i think every artist literally has to have ppl like that i can't imagine any other way to live it's just a specific type of human connection at a distance baby. don't get me wrong tho i also wanna chew on his thigh. anyway.

my god. how did i get here what even was your question. tua. yes it's crazy. it's not for everyone for sure but it has enough of the shit that makes me crazzzzyyyyy that it got me into mcr which made me crazierrrr so. yes i can recommend. especially if ur like me and lovvvve stories that are a little bit fractured by design. that dance around big parts of the story, where there's as much significance in an absence or in a tiny background detail than there is in any dialogue or action scene. most of the criticism i see of tua is about the pacing but like. to my tastes it's a really great use of the comic medium yk? lmk if you want content warnings or something there are plenty skdjfj.