#i didnt double check the lyrics so they may be a little off 😭

[angstics]

can u tell us more abt how u interpret mychem music i really like it your mind is awesome

this made me aww out loud. really sweet. well i watched all quiet on the western front 2022 yesterday, a german ww1 movie about the last yr of war. and it made me think about how closely the crimes against soldiers mirror those against other working class. you’ll kill yourself in situations you dont want to be in in service of a rich motherfucker who wants to use you for their own gain. you cant get out. you’ll die in this place. now that makes me think about how my chem rags on war so vehemently. of course theyre criticizing literal war, especially a band born out of something used to start another. but i cant help reading all war songs as allegories (they even said that the ghost of you video is about relationships more than war criticism).

gun. allegorizes a soldier’s life for a touring musician’s — never gonna have a son (too caught up with your job to have a family), “if we’re old enough to die for your mistakes then lets go” (the RIDICULOUSLY PACKED black parade tour that frank says was so bad he was in self-medicated haze by the end — all set up by their managers), “they’re teaching me to kill who’s teaching me to love” (my chem has described performance as killing the audience. gerard lost his old life, girlfriend, home during black parade. all he knows how to do is performance… who’s teaching him to live his life?) i dont like gun. much but it delivers the same themes of every other cw song in a new way that emphasizes the exploitation they experienced. there’s this quote from the movie i mentioned “what do i know? im just a pair of boots with a rifle.” i think that’s exactly the point of gun. pair of tight pants with a mic.

mama genuinely i didnt even know was about war until a few weeks after listening to it. i thought it was about a gay man facing his mother’s violent homophobia. “we all go to hell” (ive thought this same thing when my mom damns others), “when we go dont blame us” (this ties in with the prev line AND with the reading that bp is about a gay man with AIDS), “baby girl etc” (there’s the common trans reading and there’s also the INVERT reading, where in early modern homosexual research gay men were thought to be women in men’s bodies), “for what youve done theyll find a place to adjust your mind” (conversion), “there’s shit that ive done with this fuck of a gun” (OK this is the line that had me convinced mama was about a gay person. fuck = sex = physical sex = dick = phallic = gun. OK!!! this is about gay sex). as a note on the song as a whole, i ADORE its tone. it isnt fully self-hating, not fully self-accepting. it’s a complicated mix of these black parade themes that is super super fun and super in tune with the complicated life of a queer person. a comic tragedy!

if you have something specific you want to / want me to talk about, let me know! the best interpretations build on each other. thank you for this opportunity to ramble 💗