#it's kinda mid but like. i took a while so i'm gonna fuckin' post it-

[iamsecretlyabagel]

okay so this has immediately gotten more attention than I expected, I figure I'll just tell my story on this post since it'd be easier than making a fresh one so buckle up folks this is gonna be one long ass post.

Lets start with a bit of background, around mid September I got full force back into MCR, like screaming along daily and crying during I don't love you back into them. So you can imagine how deep into the center of the earth my jaw dropped when I read the news on twitter about the return show. I got my tickets by an incredible force of luck, sitting outside my college english class on my phone begging the public wifi not to fail me. I actually prayed to a friend of mine who passed earlier this year to cancer, she was super punk and I know she would've been stoked that they were back so I figured she'd totally be the one to help me out. I get two tickets because I'm 17 and there's no way in hell my mom would let me go alone, but at this point I had no idea who to even ask because I'd recently been having a falling out with a few of my friends and the ones I was closer with weren't into MCR. My best friend is an aspiring musician and super into TOP and when I tell her she's super excited, she might not know their stuff but is 18 (a great asset for checking into hotels and such) and fully willing to build an obsession over the next 2 months, which she totally did! I gave her my old ipod nano with almost MCR's entire discography and downloaded the rest on for her, we had a few "study sessions where we watched lotms, all the music videos, the black parade is dead!, etc. so by December 19th we were ready to roll.

We're from Almost Portland Oregon but on the Washington side of the river, so we flew down to LA, he's a pic from PDX. (excuse us looking crusty af, I'm the one on the right)

As soon as we got to our hotel like a block from the shrine we'd encountered 2 other groups of people who were Very Clearly going to the show, talked to one and they were from NJ which blew our minds cuz that's sooo far away! We got to our room and were gonna go to a restaurant nearby to get food but I suggested that we should go check out the line first, my mom didn't want us camping out so we were gonna leave pretty early, probably while it was still dark out so I figured finding it by daylight would be easier and would help us in the morning. We pass the shrine and owo what's this? a fuckin crack in the door through which I can see the fucking stage? and on the stage there's people? cannot tell who they are though and the song is unidentifiable so after a minute we move along and find the line. There's 3 main people who kinda took charge, their names were Sara, V, and Dylan, V and Dylan are engaged and Sara looked like gerard and I totally wasn't into her at all. Anyways we confirm this is the right spot and they offer us a number in line, promising that anyond under 80 is practically guaranteed barrier, so we were like 👀 because we totally shouldn't but it looked pretty safe and c'mon BARRIER... So we ended up being numbers 76 and 77. Grab our stuff from our room that we think we'll need (coat, pillows, portable charger, etc.) and on our way back to the line the entire building is vibrating with the glorious sounds of the sound check, one more peek and we run to tell everyone.

Maybe a half hour later shrine security has us move into a barricaded line area, before security and we totally got a sneak peek at the merch cart. We ended up making decent friends with Sara, V, and Dylan, as well as a few others like Essie, who had the chillest vibes of anyone I'd ever met, Mabel and her boyfriend who both came all the way from Brazil and who took the "say hi to Brazil" video if frank, and Veronica who was a Little Bit Too Into my fangs the next day and ngl freaked me out a bit. The whole gang minus Sara and Veronica went and got veggie burgers at a place on the USC campus, I thought it was really cool that they were all vegan/vegetarian! Even living right by Portland I don't know that many other veg people, and these guys were from the east coast!

We came back, played cards for a while and then me and my friend were debating borrowing the blankets from our hotel because we were freezing, when who shows up but Gerard Fucking Way like 3 feet behind us holding a stack of blankets. Honest to God I lagged. My brain, stopped working. We joked later about how I just froze and my face went blank but that is exactly what happened for like a solid minute. My friend and all the people sround me got blankets and I was kinda worried I'd get skipped over but I think Gerard noticed and gave me the last one he was holding? My memories are fuzzy so don't quote me on it being the last one of the stack but I was definitely worried he didn't see my five foot tall ass. Then I notice Frank is also here, for those of you who do not know me, I'm a mediocre guitarist and have been blasting barriers so much the past month or so to the point where I even got my mom into that album. He's like 2 feet away from me and I blurt out the dumbest shit, "you're a God to me" and he does not look at me or respond which is fair, idk what I'd say to that either. I realize how bad that came out and try to add "as a guitarist!" but alas he had already walked away. Mikey and Ray didn't get close to my part of the line, it kinda swooped around like a 1 where the start was the tip of the point then I was at the bottom of the 1. We did lowkey joke about how low cut Mikey's shirt was, honestly suprised we did not see a nipple, and while I will never understand why as a 39 year old father on a cold night he chose a shirt that low cut, I greatly respect his creative authority and courage to wear that beast of an outfit. We did hear Ray speaking and oh man I know from interviews that it's higher than you'd think for a guitar wizard, but I really was not prepared he was like a little flute it was beautiful. Also loved his curls, they looked amazing, as someone who currently has a perm his hair is what I wish mine did 24/7. Here's a pic I took of us instead of them by accident, the pic of them turned out way too dark to make anything out but the pic of us pretty accurately portrays how we felt.

and also us with our blankets, which I am holding upside down like a dumbass. We tried until 2:30 AM to sleep in line but all we could do was shiver and so we asked Sara what a non asshole-ish amount of time to leave would be and she said "a few hours" so we set an alarm for 4:30 and headed back to the hotel. This plan fell through when we slept until 6:30 by accident! feeling like massive assholes we ran back to the line where no one actually seemed to care much but we still wallowed in guilt for a while.

We watched the second wave of blankets get handed out by crew members, a group pf people who'd been there since like Tuesday missed the band and I felt so sorry for them. At least they still got the devotion blankets though! Later on we did makeup and waited for the merch cart to open at 11:00, we were 2nd and 3rd in line for that and I got the angel and sorrows t-shirts, the return poster (wish I'd gotten the other one tbh) and the pin set. A pic of our finished looks (w fangs!)

(peep my rainbow shoelace vans that are now filthy lol)

After getting through security we decide to get burritos from the food truck but it took deadass like 2 1/2 hours, msde friends with a girl from seattle though! Her name was Amy snd she was super cool, but right after we paid and were waiting for our food everyone stood up in line and started moving forward?!? there were people full as running?!? now doors don't open until 7:00 and it's only 5:00 at this point but we didn't shiver on the asphalt until 2:30 AM to not get our fucking barrier spots so we book it, I am grabbed by the belt and pulled back into the line. Before we can get even like halfway back to where we need to be security starts yelling that no one is getting let in, and everyone need to stop running. Apparently they just asked people to condense the line to make space for the new people coming in, but it created a huge panic.

We bring our burritos back to the line, triumphant after almost 3 hours, but we walk into some major tea with people trying to cut in line, and people were chanting for them to leave which was freaky but cool. I mean you wanna mess with the bull, maybe don't mess with the super devoted bull who's been here since Tuesday.

We were the first group let in, we team with V and Dylan to try and keep people from running past us, and we get in and get barrier! pretty far off to the side but barrier! here's where I start to resent the "you grab my belt so we don't get seperated" thing because I'm pulled away, we Leave The Barrier to be closer to the middle and stay with V and Dylan. Reminder, I am 5 feet tall and now placed behind some dude who is at Least a foot taller than me, so I'm a Bit Pissed at my friend, but there is nothing I can do. Here's a pic, I wasn't mad at the time but now that I've had a bit of time to fester, ooh boy why'd you move me.

Loved Thursday's set, I don't listen to them a lot but the lead singer was so energetic it was super infectious! I audio recorded the whole thing, minus a couple picture gaps, MCR's too. Me and my friend ended up switching spots halfway through Thursday so I wasn't Directly Behind the super tall dude, which did help.

Now the Real Shit, I have my own video of the intro/curtain drop but I cut it off a smidge too early so it doesn't show the full drop! I'm a little bummed but far more preoccupied with how I instantly got crushed by the crowd. Being in the pit like that was no good at all for me, I am too short and had zero experience so despite my desperate attempts to keep singing, now 5 days later my arm hurts from the muscles I pulled trying to force enough space for me to breathe. So we spend the rest of the show at the back which is fine, my friend felt really bad about making us leave barrier but I don't blsme her and I also value my ability to breathe more than being right up front.

Pic from where we ended up in the back, not too bad!

After the show we're hoping maybe they'll come out back, so we find our way eventually and discover sonething much more interesting. It's the exit to the VIP afterparty. However it is guarded by security and we have no way of getting in so we wait around in hopes that we'll see the guys leave or something and we're about to give up because everyone we were waiting with were leaving but we noticed some people and asked if they were staying. They weren't, but we noticed pretty quickly these people weren't just waiting around They Had VIP Passes. They showed us their ornaments (like the ones from Mikey's ig story) and then GAVE US A PASS. Not both, they wanted to keep one which I understand, but the guy was like "lemme tell you what, this is your pass and she lost hers in the pit, now go get em" honestly he was so cool, but we tried and the gueard was like "1. this is the exit, 2. they totally won't buy that and are gonna kick you tf out if you try that out front" so we hit a bit of a dead end. Then we remember a girl we'd been talking to around front, she had been alone, also waiting to see the guys, and generally gave major badass vibes. We ask her if she'd be willing to go mission impossible this shit snd bring back some ornaments and she's like yeah!!! And she even gave me my pass back! Her name was Harley she was the greatest!

So Yeah! That's pretty much the whole story! Thank you for coming to my ted talk!!!

would you guys want an in-depth retelling of my time at the reunion concert? I had some cool stuff happen like getting a devotion blanket and almost sneaking into the vip afterparty, but it'd be a lot to type out so I want yall to not let it flop y'know? let me know if you wanna hear about it