#killjoys meta

[aq2003]

twelfth night main plot: haha bisexual love triangle that is gay in both directions! haha mistaken identity and gender fuckery haha

malvolio side plot:

[ur-fav-is-a-killjoy]

(repost) YOU are a Killjoy!!

Requested by: Anonymous

[5ummit]

The Left-Handed Winter Soldier Myth

A theory has been circulating for years that the Winter Soldier is left-handed (or at least heavily favors his left hand and uses it at every opportunity) while Bucky is exclusively right-handed. I’ve tried to ignore it in the past, but it’s come back with a vengeance in the wake of the Thunderbolts trailer and I can no longer sit idly by and let this misinformation continue to spread unchallenged. Not when it's now being used as “evidence” that the Bucky we see in Thunderbolts is not actually Bucky but the Winter Soldier.

Luckily, this myth is easy to disprove.

Turns out there’s tons of examples of the Winter Soldier favoring his right hand (these are just a few I could grab that clearly showed his hands and weren't too blurry). I actually noticed while gathering these screenshots that the soldier rarely fires a gun and basically never uses a knife with his left hand, even when it might make more sense for him to do so as the metal arm is theoretically stronger and faster. Unsurprisingly, Bucky being right-handed means the Winter Soldier is too.

But just to be thorough, here are few counterexamples of Bucky using his metal arm when he’s definitely not the Winter Soldier. One of which even includes him killing people with a gun, something I've seen some Bucky fans also claim he never did in TFATWS and try to use as further proof that he’s the Winter Soldier in Thunderbolts, because their Buckybear is a sweet innocent baby who doesn't carry weapons and wouldn’t harm a fly.

I know I'm constantly beating this drum to the point that it's probably getting annoying, but it’s really easy to manipulate "data" to “prove” whatever you want. Just because something seems like it could be credible at first glance doesn’t mean it is. Please double-check other people's claims before you use them to inform your own opinions.

[umbralsong]

I'm rewatching this mainly to study the components adapted by D&D regarding the Meereen plot with the slavers.

Dany was necessarily aged up, they adapted the Dothraki to be somehow more orientalist and racist than the books (no word for "thank you?" gtfo), and completely neglected Dany's own relationship with being enslaved. Even the most crucial aspects of her early abuse are hand-waved, even when there is a literal in-text comparison to Dany and Khal Drogo's enslaved people wearing golden collars.

GRRM famously wondered what made Aragorn a "good" king, and wondered about his tax policy. Here, he adapts it by having Dany's freed advisor, Missandei of Nath, tactically hit the slavers where it hurts - taxes. People can sell themselves into services, but former enslavers can't sell those they used to own, and husbands cannot sell wives. However morally dubious, these policies have a chilling effect on the trade. There are many unhappy components to Dany's compromise with slavers, but it is my opinion that GRRM is demonstrating the limits of compromise with people who don't believe in the humanity of others.

My research means there is a lot I can go into (like the inherent racism of the whole plot), but I feel the most crucial is the fact D&D, Confederate sympathizers that they are, distilled Hizdar's character to Brown Face to pretend that Dany is a white settler colonizer Just As Bad as the slavers for taking away their sacred fighting right of watching poor people butcher each other and laughing as helpless people are eaten by lions :(((

[scalproie]

people will see curly being violently dehumanized and will go "oh no! let me do the same in the exact opposite way!"

[kirkwall-age]

this is a stupid me personal thing. but Fereldan names have always driven me a little bit insane because they are a hodgepodge of different Britonnic languages with no rhyme or reason. the devs will take one name, and use all versions of it: Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Irish, Cornish, and then some Germanic variants to boot.

which etymologically is very frustrating and sloppy world building to me. incredibly niche pet peeve, i know. but languages are my specialty and such careless use does invite questions

e.g. Mhairi, Moira, Maura, Miriam are all different language representations of the same name. how did that come about? or Wynne and Fiona being a Welsh and Irish representation of the same root, and they are in a room having a conversation, and I'm here wondering when did the language split?

one could ostensibly make a case that before Calenhad united Ferelden, all the Alamarri tribes had one single root language family but it devolved in these related but different languages

but. regardless. as I was looking up all the names and trying to map out where they fall in the actual Earth languages

i made a discovery i should have really made a long time ago

which is: i know from general history examples -- and also other fiction (*cough* Dishonored *cough*) that Teague is an Irish masculine name

based on that knowledge, I never questioned Teagan

but Teagan (also spelled as Tegan) = while most certainly related to the name above = actually follows the same logic as such names as Megan / Meagan. or Regan / Reagan. current unfortunate association with a president who ruined everything notwithstanding, Regan is King Lear's daughter. and Regan is the child protagonist of The Exorcist, a girl tormented by the demon. these are feminine names. TEAGAN is a traditionally feminine name

another OBVIOUS example being of course the ever famous sister-duo Tegan and Sara. but. based on the queerness. I kind of assumed the opposite? that it was a butch thing and she wanted to use a masc name? or that the name is just unisex and the popularity with one gender or the other changed with time, like it did for Addison, or Cameron, or Ashley. or that the spelling made a difference

but no. straight-up. historically it's a woman's name

and listen. i'm all for unexpected unisex names. Artemis Fowl? Star Trek: Discovery's Michael and Pushing Daisies' Chuck? hellyeah. my own name is traditionally masc and I'm fem-presenting

but also i'm just saying: trans!Teagan

(they did blithely retcon and canonize that Eamon and Teagan had polyamorous parents. that their father had a wife and a male lover (Connor) whom Rowan, Eamon and Teagan also considered a father. and Eamon named his son after the man. so honestly this isn't the most wild headcanon I could put forth about them)

[restlesshush]

The use of Chuck as a tool of analysis in fandom is genuinely so frustrating, because fundamentally it encourages people not to engage with spn as a piece of media made by real life flawed human writers, which is what it is!! Like, Cas’s inadvertent structural protagonist status at various points has nothing to do with ~him vs Chuck~ or whatever, but due to specific oversights by the writers such that his actions are the ones driving the plot rather than salmondean’s. ‘Chuck’ isn’t trying to ~keep him out of the story~, that doesn’t really mean anything (and if it wasn’t for that one line in Unity, no one would necessarily even think it) – it’s that the writers, trying to keep him off screen, gave him more interesting and more impact-having things to do than they gave salmondean with their much larger amount of screen time. Like I get the Chuck explanation being enjoyable, but we already have a real life explanation, and it’s pretty fun in itself imo! Gamble very much did arguably make Cas the structural protagonist partially as a direct result of trying to kill him off, which is kind of hysterical.

Also the thing is like, Chuck as the authorgodvillain was such a late addition that pretty much nothing is designed around him being the most satisfactory explanation – and it’s incredibly nebulous what viewing earlier events in that light of his intervention is even supposed to entail. If the writers had the courage of their convictions a little more, we could have been invited to recontextualise various really out of left field events in this light, eg @autisticandroids has talked about this re godstiel and the way the leviathans came out of nowhere, and me and them have also discussed it re gadreel being set up to be the “perfect deantransgression” (as @themauvesoul has pointed out) – it would make sense for a villainous author trying to create drama (and undermine Cas) to have contrivedly brought those things about specifically to that end. It is absolutely the case that there are places where it can be fun to say “it would make sense for Chuck to have made this happen for x/y/z reasons”, and it would have been very brave and sexy for the writers to be like “oh yeah lol this thing we wrote would have made more sense of it was Chuck”, but it would be very silly to say “oh the leviathans coming out of nowhere wasn’t actually bad writing because that was Chuck” y’know? Chuck as the authorgodvillain is a concept you can play with if you like, but he’s not a tool of analysis. In the show’s protagonist-powers-deconstruction episode the writers aren’t even brave enough to attack the most egregious writing conveniences facilitating the story, so extending the Chuck lens anywhere else in a way that lets them off the hook is extremely generous, as well as just pretty meaningless.

Fundamentally , the main function that Chuck as the authorgod really serves is a way to handwave away the bad writing (or any other disliked things) in spn when 1) the bad writing is interesting and 2) do we really want to give the writers that get out of jail free card?

[dirteater69]

i watched wendigoons analysis of no country for old men earlier today and it got me thinking of themes in stories reflected through characters, and i started thinking about the themes of the killjoys fic im currently writing and how they reflect through the characters, so im gonna write some of it down now before i forget. im only on the third chapter and there will be at least ten when im finished, but this is based on what i have written and planned currently so i hope it makes sense. the main themes are pretty vague in my mind, but im thinking it will be along the lines of how real people shape themselves into characters+how real events are mythologized, how ideologies and hopes affect people, heroism and villainy, how committing and experiencing violence changes someone, what normalcy means, clinging onto or rejecting social norms in times where they have kind of lost all meaning.

in this post i will mainly write about how these themes reflect in the characters of jet star and party poison (at least how i write them) and their relationship and thoughts about each other.

party wants to be the hero and shapes themselves into that character: they are the leader of the killjoys, they are very charismatic and a good fighter, later on they become an important figure in zones society in the wake of the analog wars and lead many battles. they end up being seen as a hero by many and their actions in battles and other things about them are talked about around the zones as myths or folktales.

the thing is, deep down, party does not see themself as a hero. they feel that they have something at their core — whether that’s queerness, inability to conform to other social rules, committing violence — that makes them unable to embody the ideal of a hero that they have in their head. they feel that because there is something ‘wrong’ with them, they don’t deserve to get the things they want. this manifests most obviously in the story in their romance with jet, where they think that they can never, or should never, be in a relationship with him because they would taint his (perceived by them) normalcy and moral purity with their wrongness and strangeness; however, this is only part of the fact that they dont believe themself deserving of a good life at all.

they are the first of the killjoys to ever kill someone: it happens when they are all escaping battery city, and party ends up accidentally killing one of the bl/ind guards chasing them down. though this action may have saved all their lives, party still feels immense shame and horror at having done it. the night after, their first night in the zones, they have a nightmare where they are eating the body of the man they killed, and jet appears to kill them in a way reminiscent of putting down a sick animal. at their core, party believes that they are a villain and a danger to the people around them.

of course, in the middle of a horrible war, the zones needs a hero. that is what party shapes themself into: a loud, confident, violent leader of the zonerunners to take down bl/ind once and for all. there’s a sort of split in party’s identity, where on the outside, they are the hero of the zones, but on the inside, they believe themself to be a morally corrupt fraud who is going to ruin everything good and beautiful they touch. combined, this makes for an absolute monster of a martyr complex: if they die for a good cause, then the world will both be better because the thing they’re fighting for (the freedom of the zones, the destruction of bl/ind) has succeeded, and because the evil that they bring into the world simply by existing is gone.

one other thing i want to touch on with party is how they deal with social norms. before beginning life in the zones they knew they were nonbinary but didn’t really have a safe way to express it besides going by they/them around kobra and later, when they met, the other killjoys, but when they enter the zones they begin to present more femininely. in the first chapter, party and ghoul (who is transmasc, and who i have a ton of other thoughts about) have a whole conversation about gender, which might be one of my favorite parts that ive written so far, and it ends with them swapping pieces of the school uniforms they had to wear at the school in battery city, with party wearing ghouls skirt and ghoul wearing their pants. i haven’t written any more in that vein yet, but i want to explore party’s gender more in the fic. they are definitely very open to rejecting gender norms, at least when they have the opportunity, and it’s an extremely joyful experience for them to present the way they want, but it still sort of claws at them. to them, gender nonconformity doesn’t fit with that idea of heroism that they have. when they present more femininely, they almost feel like they’re betraying the people in the zones that believe in them, like they’re ruining the hero.

this is where we get to their perception of jet star. i mentioned earlier how they feel like he’s too good for them to pursue him romantically, but there is so much more to that. to party, jet is the ideal of heroism that they feel they should be; more so, he represents the ideal of american masculinity that they betray when they present femininely. they piece together true and half-true things about him to create a version of him in their mind that they can compare themself to, furthering their idea of themself as a villain. when they decorate the masks and ray guns of all the killjoys, they make jets red, white, and blue. this idolization also ties into the shame that they feel about the violence that they commit. there is of course the nightmare they have of him killing them for having killed the bl/ind guard, but there is also the fact that while they are a very active fighter in the analog wars, jet mainly works in the medical tents. they destroy things, he fixes things. (never mind the fact that the destruction they commit is against bl/ind) this idolized idea of jet eventually ends up clashing with the real him in a scene late in the fic, where they have a whole breakdown at him about how bad of a person they are, including how they’ve ‘ruined’ him by simply being his friend. he doesn’t have a clue what they’re talking about.

but what is actually going through jet stars head throughout all of this? well, while party is eager to show themself as a hero, jet tries to portray himself as the ‘everyman’, the regular person in a world of chaos and absurdity. this is how he’s been coping with the trauma he’s experienced at the hands of bl/ind: he is sent away from his family’s farm in zone 8 to a ‘reformation academy’ in battery city, and ends up staying there for several years before escaping with the other killjoys, but throughout those years he thinks of it as something fleeting and temporary; surely, he’ll get back to zone 8 soon, to return to his normal life. he’s not actually some kind of crazed desert rebel like the rest of the killjoys, he’s just a regular american farm boy who’s been thrust into a strange situation by forces beyond his control, and as soon as he gets the opportunity he’ll return to that life. even when beginning life in the inner zones, surrounded by the stranger aspects of zone culture, this is how he thinks and portrays himself to others — or, at least, tries to. it’s related to how he deals with trauma. while party thinks of the bad things that they’ve been through as yet another thing that makes them wrong and unfit, yet another thing that makes them the villain, they at least acknowledge that it’s happened. jet just tries to suppress those thoughts completely.

however, his entire idea of returning to a normal life in zone 8 falls apart once he sees what’s happened to it. when he travels to zone 8 for the first time in years, it’s entirely under the control of bl/ind, unrecognizable from the wholesome farm society he remembers. his plans for a normal life — and, furthermore, his thoughts of himself as a normal person — begin to fall apart when he sees the place representative of his old life destroyed. party is with him in that scene, and though he has to break through all his layers of emotional repression for it and it makes him almost feel physically sick, he manages to explain some of his issues to them. one of the things they say in response is something that will be very relevant to both their character arcs: “normal isn’t a thing anymore”.

jet is soon embroiled in the chaos of the analog wars along with the other killjoys, but he still clings to some ideas of normalcy. whereas party is an avid fighter, jet stays out of battles until it is absolutely necessary for him to join, instead helping out in the medical tents and administering first aid on the battlefield. though he isn’t explicit about it, he does kind of look down on the zonerunners most active in the fighting, especially the ones that don’t show any shame or remorse about the violence they commit and sometimes even delight in it (cough cough, a certain bomb-building thrill-chasing black-haired city-born adrenaline junkie with no regard for social niceties, mayhaps?).

of course, the main exception for this is party poison, because love makes you ever the hypocrite — and it is love that he feels for them, though he doesn’t realize it, and certainly wouldn’t admit it for the majority of the story. party falls for his front of the normal, well-adjusted american farm boy, and he falls for their charismatic hero persona in turn. while he does help people in his role as a medic, and sees it as far more preferable to shooting peoples brains out with a blaster, bl/ind goons or not, he finds his unwillingness to fight kind of cowardly. this ties into many other things he believes about himself, like shame about not having fought back against bl/ind when they were taking over zone 8 and he still lived there, as well as the idea that he can’t truly be useful to his community. the latter relates heavily to his issues with normalcy and his own identity: he’s spent so much effort on trying to make himself as palatable as possible that he’s almost cheated himself out of an identity, trying to appear normal to the point where he feels like he doesn’t have any real good traits or talents left. party is the opposite of all of this for him. they are loud and unapologetic about who they are (or, who they want people to think they are), they don’t have any qualms about doing what they have to in order to save the world, they are the ideal of a true zonerunner and hero.

circling back to jet, the thing about him is that he is not as normal as he tries to make himself seem. throughout the story, he slowly gets more comfortable showing small, strange parts of himself to the people around him. he seems to have taken party’s words to heart, at least partially: normal isn’t a thing anymore. it’s only small things, he still deals with some heavy repression of trauma and trouble facing a lot of his own feeling and desires, but its a start. he has his own quirks and absurdities, his own traits that make him a unique and fucked up person. i don’t have every part of those developments planned out, but i know that at least some of it will be in relation to gender, like growing his hair out and presenting more femininely in other ways. he would have a lot more inhibitions to let go off before really being able to face his thoughts about his own gender than party would, just due to the environment and pressures he’s been raised with. (a full exploration of jet’s gender would not really fit in this fic just with the story outline I have planned, but i might write a continuation that goes more into detail. my hc for jet’s gender in the music video era is a he/she transfem, though this fic takes place many years before that and jet still thinks of herself as a cis guy for most of it.) the point being, jet is not actually the one of the killjoys who is the most normal; he is just the one who’s the best at pretending to be.

when jet and party actually acknowledge their feelings for each other, they both have to break down a lot of emotional barriers to do so, and it’s a large part of them beginning to reject the characters they’ve resigned themselves to. party has to realize that they are not an inherently horrible person and that they do deserve to live a good life, that jet is not an untouchable object that they’ll ruin by being close to. jet has to accept that he’s allowed to love someone he’s been taught he’s not allowed to love, that just because he’s in a relationship unlike the ones he’s ‘supposed’ to want doesn’t make it any less real. it heavily involves them letting each other off the pedestals they’ve put each other on, and loving the real person underneath the persona. that is actually an interesting thing that is true for both of them: while they fixate on the fronts that the other puts up, it’s the real person underneath that they fall in love with. jet idolizes the heroic leader that party tries to be, but falls in love with their kindness and vulnerabilities. party envies jets projected normality and righteousness, they fall in love with the strange quirks that make him who he is.

their emotional journeys won’t have full resolutions in this fic, but if i finish it i will probably write a continuation in which the analog wars have ended and there is more focus on the characters emotional development. it would show more of that theme of them letting go of the roles they’ve placed themselves in: party realizing that they don’t need to act a specific way or have a certain personality to be a hero, they just need to help people; jet letting go of his attachment to normalcy. they don’t need to be perfect heroes, they don’t need to follow specific norms or rules. they just need to be who they are, and that’s some fucked up kids stuck in a fucked up situation just trying to make the best of it.

of course, even with those emotional issues resolved, they still struggle. I mentioned at the beginning the theme of real events being turned into myths, and that would certainly be relevant to the killjoys, especially to party. during the analog wars, the image of party poison as a hero and leader of the zones spread quick and they were mythologized into an almost godlike figure. (this is true for the other killjoys as well, but not to such an extent.) this image comes to haunt them even when the wars have ended: wherever they go, they are expected to live up to this idea of themself that they have long since let go of and never even really fit in the first place. the mythologizing is to the point where certain people who preach about the figures of party poison and the killjoys don’t even know what they actually look like.

there is also the fact that while the analog wars have technically ended, there are still attacks occasionally made by bl/ind, and the killjoys have to defend themselves with violence whether they like it or not. the ‘end’ of the analog wars also brings along some other questions about the themes: how do the killjoys deal with the absurdity of their lives when they can no longer blame it on existing in an active war zone? how do they rebuild their lives after all that non-stop violence? again, this is if i finish the fic im currently writing.

im not sure how to end this post but it’s been fun to write and i hope other people might enjoy reading it. i might write a similar one about how the same themes reflect in fun ghoul and kobra kid, but i dont know.

[moonchild-in-blue]

@staff I have a concept for you: Custom Badges. Like, if we could pay for a badge but it's actually our own submission? Like the Reddit Custom flairs? Because I'd LOVE to get a badge for my blorbo fandoms (like the Goncharov badge).

You don't even need to credit me for the idea, just make it happen yeah? Thanks babes 😘

[crimsonscloud]

related to the uniform analysis post, simultaneously lol-ing and angry that fucking carl (minor character from seasons one and two) shows up again in season five as a factory worker, yet we couldn't get just one reference to jelco. with the whole fake memories plotline that would have been so interesting esp if amnesia!jelco turned out to be a decent guy / willing to work with dutch to figure out what's going on, and then he regains his real memories and chooses to keep helping her despite remembering what he did to old town in the past.

it would have been a nice reversal of their earlier hostility back in season two where they tried to get the other killed (or at the very least were completely fine with it happening), where now you have them trusting each other to have the other's back. sure they still snark at each other and occasionally annoy the shit out of each other, but what person has dutch met that doesn't do both of those things repeatedly lmao. they've moved past the trying to kill each other part (mostly).

[thatswhatsushesaid]

also, all jokes and joke-posting aside, i am genuinely so furious on his behalf in this situation in all versions of the canon, but I think cql makes it the MOST clear how absolutely hung out to dry he is, both at this banquet and during the mountain hunt beforehand. bear in mind that all of this follows extremely closely on the heels of his utter humiliation in front of lxc, lwj, wwx, and jyl during the mountain hunt when madam jin blames him for the failure of the jin sect's performance during the hunt, where once again the framing demonstrates that, other than lxc (who cannot intervene because of his position), he has no allies to offer him material support.

and then during the banquet, prior to the above shit-show, the camera clearly shows us the faces of so many characters who either have a blood relationship to jgy, or are in some way tied to him through oaths. and no one steps forward to stop jzn from being the textbook definition of the cunt that he is:

i'm not actually grouping jiang cheng in with nmj, jzx and jgs by including him and nhs in this screenshot--he's actually the only person who is not in a position to intervene who looks like he desperately wants to, but cannot, and for that he gets a forehead kiss. (thank u jiang wanyin, you are wonderful jiang wanyin.) but jin zixuan!! and nie mingjue!! especially nie mingjue, considering this is an insult to the one other person in the canon, other than nie huaisang, he consistently treats with respect and affection. my guy, why are you choosing now, of all times, to hold your tongue and not intervene?

arguably, i think the character with the least to gain or lose through stepping in to diffuse the situation is actually jin zixuan. and he doesn't.

/shoves him into a mud puddle

so we already know how excruciating this moment is to witness in cql episode 26

but have we taken the time to appreciate how much worse it gets for jgy as soon as wwx shows up

jgy: wei-gongzi, why have you arrived so late? please have a seat--

wwx: don't bother, i need to ask jin zixun something

jgy, internally: [emergency broadcast signal intensifies]

and there's jgy standing between them, the jianghu's most unwilling participant in this shit sandwich of a situation.

just. look at his face.

could this day get any worse? is that even possible??

free him

[earlycuntsets]

english translation:

pg 1. "VISIONS

MUSIC FROM PASSION

www.visions.de

Gerard Way

and the fight against one's own image"

pg 2.

"Double attempt

my chemical rumanre

It is the story of an album that never became one and a band that is fighting against its external image: My Chemical Romance reinvent themselves as a pop art band, as futuristic Mad Maxes with funky laser guns in a universe of quotes, cross-references and broken meta levels. The end result is Danger Days: The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys - a record that would not exist in this form if My Chemical Romance had not failed at the first attempt.

TEXT: JAN SCHWARZKAMP

PHOTOS: SEBASTIAN ARTZ"

pg 3. " A new My Chem song with rough edges was Black Dragon Fighting Society, a hardcore hit in the Misfits style that suited the band perfectly. That's right: "was" and "stood". Because that too is now buried in the archives. "Some people will probably hate me for saying something like that, but: The song is more punk than punk. Nobody expected us of all people to record a song like that. The song was deliberately not meant to be longer than a minute and a half, because only the best songs are that short, if you think of Minor Threat alone." At this point, Gerard has no idea that he is about to make a new start and that Black Dragon Fighting Society will not survive. But there is something that will point the way for the future. A comic. "I'm currently working on a project called The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys, which will be completely different to anything you've ever seen from me before. It will be my first adult comic, extremely violent. Imagine it as a sci-fi lo-fi punk odyssey, full of references to the Ramones and with a lot of laser-creaking." The stuff you can knit an album out of, as we will see.

SECOND ATTEMPT

End of September 2010, ten months later. A trailer for the new My Chem album has been circulating online for three days. Danger Days: The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys is what it is called. The trailer shows the four protagonists: Gerard, Mikey and the two guitarists Frank Iero and Ray Toro. No sign of black parade uniforms, but My Chemical Romance now look like four Tank Girls, reinforced by a sissy rollerboy. There is also action à la Mad Max vs. Power Rangers, a bit of 70s road movie flair in the style of Vanishing Point and the crude, grainy look of grindhouse cinema. The band's reinvention is complete. The light-shy moth has turned into a bright butterfly that fires laser beams.

My Chemical Romance - minus Frank, who is looking after his newborn twins - have been answering journalists' questions since the early hours of the morning. The most luxurious place to do this is the legendary Sunset Marquis rock star hangout in West Hollywood. Let's start where we left off the recording device ten months ago: with the comic, which has now become an album. "Yes, the comic is about exactly the same topics that are also found on the album," confirms Gerard. "The nice thing about the album is that there is no overarching story, it has no concept whatsoever." Gerard, now with red hair and a healthier complexion, is sitting on a couch again, this time without a cigarette. Ray and Mikey support him. Or not. Because if anyone has anything to say here, it's only Gerard.

No concept, then. But soon a comic and finally the corresponding album. On the record we meet the DJ called Dr. Death Defying

From black and long to blonde and short to black and the parade moved on. The new costumes are colorful, the record is not as grim as the last ones. "The new record is the most important thing. The last video we had I had this color palette of red.[makeup]"

FACE

With make-up and goth outfits, Gerard looked for a while like the illegitimate son of Robert Smith and Tim Burton, with his hair tied back. In that respect, My Chemical Romance only had themselves to blame for being perceived by some as a dark puppet show. At least you have to give them credit for being early on in this. "We did what we did, regardless of what others thought of it. When the whole thing became popular, we stopped it because we were simply done with the style. After all, our aim with The Black Parade was not to put on a cabaret show, but rather an expansive, theatrical death rock show."

HANDS

Gerard doesn't play an instrument, even though he's a guitarist. He takes care of the lyrics and conceptual ideas. Armed with a notebook, sketchpad and laptop, he works on his comics mainly on tour. "That works best. I sit in front of my computer and write scripts. I get the most done on the road because I have a lot of free time. And then there are the nights. So what do I do after a show? I write until two in the morning."

FEET

At concerts, Gerard walks a few hundred meters. No instrument ties him to one place. He is one of my absolute favorite front men," says brother Mikey. He is General Patton, that is his role. He is also so intelligent and eloquent. Having a brother in the band makes a lot of things easier. We would hang out together even if we didn't play in a band together."

HAIR

long. And now: red. The gloom has gone, the black look is sunny, the music - brighter. "The lyrics of the new songs on The Black Parade are so dark that I wrote them. The opposite." One change that the band turned to was that of teenagers. They were already fed up with black and white."

COMPLEXION

You can't tell from the photo, but the California sun is rubbing off on Way's new home. Gerard looks like he's just come back from a beach holiday. "I'm quite happy about that. There's no reason for me to stay pale," he says. Brother Mikey adds: "29 years of pale skin is enough."

T-SHIRT

"It has no political meaning. The American flag is used all the time anyway." In the interview, Way is wearing Chucks with the Stars Spangled Banner. We'll probably have to ask ourselves that question more often in the near future. The record is clearly not political, and neither is the look. We're just using it - a flag is like a tribal, you mark your territory with it. Our corporate identity, the symbol with the spider, is also such a powerful, universally applicable symbol."

PANTS & JACKET

The look changed: Gerard and the band won't be appearing on stage in simple denim outfits any time soon. "We wore marching band uniforms for three or four years," says Mikey. When we came back from the Black Parade tour, we had to redefine our lives and deconstruct ourselves. We wanted to drop everything and see what was left. Killjoys is the result of that - as if we were rebelling against The Black Parade, taking a stand against our own last album. A trailer shows the band as colorful end-time punks with laser pistols and Pontiac Trans Ams. Fans are already sending us photos, inventing color concepts for their Killjoy gangs and making their own weapons." "Sure, there have been things like that before," says Gerard, but what band offers that today? It's like a new Star Wars movie coming out. Nobody knows exactly who this Darth Maul is yet, but people are already dressing up like him. "Last time, our fans designed their own uniforms. This Killjoys thing is a bit more personal because it leaves more room for interpretation. The kids aren't dressing up like us anymore, they're creating their own characters."

pg 4. "Dr. Death. He delivers the intro, reads a traffic report and hosts the spectacle. There is a trailer for the record and now also a music video for the single Na Na Na, which is about our heroes and their new alter egos Party Poison (Gerard), Kid Cobra (Mikey), Fun Ghoul (Frank) and Jet Star (Ray). That's not a concept? "Well, yes, it is. But what it is supposed to be above all is a big pop art experiment. As it progresses, the fans and we will add more and more to the story. For the comic itself, my co-author and I already have precise ideas about what will happen. But we could also still question everything. If we shoot scenes in the desert, for example, they will dictate what the comic will look like." Aha. Let's wait and see instead of going into too much detail. Otherwise we'll get tangled up like in the confusing universe of Coheed And Cambria.

When we met last year, there were seven songs to listen to, none of which made it onto the album, or at most in a heavily modified form. What happened?

"When we met, we were mixing. Ray was at home with family things. Frank and I were trying to make the album sound the way we wanted it to. But it didn't work. Since I'm only the lyricist, I couldn't explain in musical terms what sounded wrong to me. Anyway, we had to approach it from scratch and talk to our producer Rob Cavallo about how we could do it. I had a song called Na Na Na that I had written in the desert. While we were still working on the old recordings, I said: let's record this song. We went into the studio and within one night the thing was done. That's when we realized that we had to rebuild the entire album from scratch, including the songs that we had already finished."

Last time you said that the new album would be a reaction to how you are perceived as a band. What is the situation now?

"It can't be about what anyone thinks of what you do. It's about doing it for yourself. That would be the worst thing: making music for the people who

not like you just so they like you. Should I be a bit tougher? Or more punk somehow? Will you like me then? Nah, not with me. That was also my biggest beef with the last recordings. They were good, but not outstanding. And if I had any complaints about them, it was the feeling that I had accommodated other people's views too much. We wanted to assert ourselves as a rock band. We only managed that with Killjoys."

The days of The Black Parade, the big gestures and all the pomp, definitely seem to be over. Looking back, did you lay it on too thick?

"Yes and no. It was an extremely ambitious album. I wouldn't say it was too hard-working, because we didn't try too hard. But we put a lot of work into it. We had to use a certain arrogance for the album. A lot of people thought at the time that we were a flash in the pan. We had released a hit album and were now going to go under with the emo hype. So we exaggerated everything, a defiant reaction. Even though it wasn't fun at times, we were constantly laughing because we felt kind of stupid doing it. With Killjoys we may not have laughed as much - but we had more fun."

THE WATCHMEN

The last sign of life from the band before Killjoys was the Bob Dylan cover Desolation Row on the soundtrack to the graphic novel adaptation The Watchmen. The video for the song was directed by Zach Snyder. "For free," Gerard marvels to this day. "Zach was so in love with his own film that he was still re-shooting scenes even though he had already finished it. This included the video for our song, which was obviously very important to him. He wanted to know what I thought about it. I told him that our cover version should sound like the Jim Carroll song People Who Died - like a big, loud 'Fuck you!', the film is one too." Snyder chose My Chem because he knew that Gerard is a comic book author and that his The Umbrella Academy, like The Watchmen, won an Eisner Award.

GRANT MORRISON

Morrison plays the bald villain in the Killjoys trailer. He's a comic book writer like me and my personal hero. We've been friends since The Black Parade. Greg is one of the most respected artists in the comics world, alongside Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman. He wrote his own character from the trailer and designed the costume himself.

COMICS FOR YOU

The second part of The Umbrella Academy, called Dallas, has just been published in German translation by Cross Cult Verlag and has already won Gerard and illustrator Gabriel Bá the Eisner Award. We are giving away three copies of the hardback piece of bloody pop culture. Write an email with the subject "Dallas" to verlosung@visions.de. The deadline for entries is November 19th.

11/2010 visions magazine

[ur-fav-is-a-killjoy]

HAPPY PRIDE!!!!! Every queer person ever from real life is a Killjoy!!

[monscrow]

intro post, i guess!!!

askbox open only on weekends; got too overwhelmed by spam, my apologies.

last updated 07/jan/2025

⚠️flash warning for blinkies at the bottom⚠️

free gaza, free palestine, stop genocide. you don't agree? block me.

i go by both mons and crow.

my pronouns are they/them, he/him and any neos/xenos that you think would fit either comedically or off of vibes.

lvl 16, so, a minor !! beware

aromantic, acespec, something like that; qprs are sick asf and all hail relationship anarchy.

art sideblog is @monscrowarts

super amazing pretty boyfriend !!!<3 🍎

audhdcd (asd + adhd + ocd 😻😋) and hEDS. i use tonetags, feel free to ask for clarification!!!

bday is oct 7. 🎉🎉🎉

i'm mexican 🇲🇽!! i speak both spanish and english.

timezone is cst/utc-6.

i say slurs i can reclaim (mainly the f and t queer ones) and swear a lot, though if that makes you uncomfortable please either block me or lmk so i can try to tone it down when around you.

i love interacting!! feel free to tag me in stuff, send some asks (be it on anon or not), or message me! moots can ask for my discord even if we've never actually talked before. though i suck at keeping consistent, nothing personal i promise</3 /gen

i tend to spam-reblog so do with that information what you will.

some tags you might see me use here and there:

#mons rambles ← just my thoughts, ideas, opinions, and whatever i feel like throwing into the tumblr void.

#ask a crow / #anon asks ← askbox replies.

#save / #art save / #fav / #hellsite faves ← these are more for myself, but yeah they're pretty self-descriptive. just in case you get curious or anything.

#🍎 ← beloved.

hyperfixations/interests/things i'm passionate about !!! i guess, kinda

→ mcr (+ most of the members' solo projects)

→ killjoys (california + national anthem, but mainly calif and fanon)

→ demolition lovers lore (i have literally written like at least three different essays about it for school help me i'm so serious)

→ emo/alt/diy culture

→ will wood

→ bandom in general

→ graphic design, arts and crafts, illustration (that's right y'all graphic design IS my passion 😔)

→ fnaf

→ cosplay/costume-making

→ d&d

→ crows (no way, crow, really???)

→ australian shepherds

→ the umbrella academy (s4 isn't canon in my heart + currently reading the comics !!! )

→ gravity falls

→ neurodivergencies/psychology/disabilities (this one's pretty meta ngl)

→ lgbtqia+ identities (emphasis on the aroace-spec ones + relationship anarchy)

→ politics/activism

→ linguistics + conlangs

→ fantasy in general (high fantasy, magic, vampires, tieflings, you name it)

→ boardgames

→ the count of monte cristo (2024) (also i just bought the book so i'll be reading that too !!)

→ parkour civilization

→ WEBFISHING !!! I LOVE LOVE LOVE LET'S PLAY WEBFISHING OMG FEEL FREE TO DM ME IF U HAVE IT AND WANNA PLAY TOGETHER :333

→ uhhhh there's more but i don't remember rn, i'll keep adding as i see fit (probably... maybe..... perhaps....... quizás........ puede ser..........)

dni

trump supporters, terfs, transphobes, anti lgbtqia+/queerphobics, exclusionists, ableists, racists, prolifers/antichoicers, proshippers/anti-antis, irl gore, pro-israel/zionists, pro-ai generated "content", pro-nft, non-critical media consumers, classists, ed blogs, sh blogs.

also, i'm aware that dnis tend to not be effective and i probably will still get shitty ppl in my inbox so i can and will block. though i'm p chill as long as you're chill. this blog is run by a very neurodivergent, mentally ill, mexican, transmasc, aroace faggot, and any kind of bigoted hatred will not be tolerated.

blinkies made with blinkies cafe !!!

pssst btw, before you go, if you read my intro post i'd heavily encourage you to like it, so i can know!!! :] (/nf though!)

[milligramspoison]

(response in tags)

I’ve just realized something…

Gerard’s outfit tonight (and back in Auckland) looks very similar to the outfit the Director wore from Danger Days.

Now I’m not saying Gerard is cosplaying her, but it could be possible as well.

Also, if you’re familiar with the Danger Days lore…Australia did disappear 👀

[junethehellenicpagan]

Riverdale is a GREAT show, its CAMP, its, FUN, its so gay, its colorful, its meta, its heartwarming, its stupid, so stupid but that’s what makes it so good. It makes no sense and yet its genius, I will die on that hill, riverdale is great when you stop being a film bro hispter killjoy.

Things can be fun. Not everything has to be serious and profound. It’s okay to have some glitter, a few songs and a weird ass plot.