#to get an album with copy of a copy of a copy

[cipheramnesia]

I would also like to write a deconstructed mech pilot story about a trans woman in a distant demihuman future, who gone far past the end of hoping to live, but she refuses to die because she has the last known copy of Electric Ladyland on vinyl in the entire world. She's given up all hope and dreams and barely knows what's real anymore but survives purely for the sake of one Jimi Hendrix album.

And so gradually she gets one part after another replaced, ship of Theseus style, to be stronger and faster and better equipped to do this thing. She keeps doing more and more of this and her body gets bigger and less human and more artificial, she's adding armor and synthetic brains and multiple organs to the point where she's torn down so much of what she used to be that she can't even remember herself. There's only this titan of a body, thousands of feet high, walking aimlessly around the earth, and whatever is left of her is so small it rattles around the hollow shell.

Then down in the middle where a pilot goes are these vinyl discs, and the mechanisms of her body play them forever on repeat inside her heart on a turntable made out of muscle and bone. They just go on forever while fungus and plants and animals form a whole tiny ecosystem on her armored body, for so long the music on infinite loop by happenstance develops a mind, a kind of sapience that long centuries later allows the ghost of a sad girl in a haunted house to join the only precious thing she's ever known, and at last surrender body and soul to the pilot she worked her lifetime to create.

[earlycuntsets]

"DEATH COMES RIPPING" - SPOOKY ISSUE

'THE BLACK PARADE, THE TRIUMPHANT NEW ALBUM BY MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE MAY HAVE A TRAGIC STORYLINE, BUT IT'S NOTHING COMPARED WITH WHAT THE BANDMATES ENDURED TO BRING THE DISC TO LIGHT

PHOTOS BY JON WIEDERHORN PHOTOS BY JUSTIN BORUCKI

STANDING ON A BALCONY nine floors above the teeming streets of New York, Gerard Way overlooks the city in which My Chemical Romance began assembling their ambitious new album, The Black Parade. The newly peroxide- blond frontman takes a deep drag from a cigarette and exhales with a sigh. He knows he shouldn't smoke, but it's his only remaining vice.

"If I hadn't been sober, I think The Black Parade surely would have killed me," says Gerard, who climbed on the wagon in 2004. "We were going insane the whole time, and I had to cling to my sobriety to stay even a little lucid. The album became like this beast that was consuming us."

Following up a release as successful as 2004's Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, which sold 1.4 million copies in the U.S. alone, is never an easy task. And the various scares the band experienced as they worked on the new record-drummer Bob Bryar had a near-fatal staph infection, Gerard seriously injured his foot, and some restless spirits at the studio where they recorded kept them all on edge-did not help matters. And neither

did MCR's decision to make The Black Parade (Reprise) a concept disc. Together, Gerard and his bandmates-Bryar, guitarists Frank lero and Ray Toro, and bassist Mikey Way (Gerard's younger brother)-decided to craft a record about a dying young man who is visited by a cast of strange characters that help him examine his short life.

But diving into the conceptual deep end proved well worth the hassle. The Black Parade is not only MCR's most realized offering; it's also one of the most eclectic, enjoyable rock records of the year. One listen to tracks

like "House of Wolves," "The Sharpest Lives," and "Dead!" makes it clear that My Chemical Romance can still rip a good metallic punk tune. But the bandmates are now equally influenced by epic albums like Pink Floyd's The Wall, David Bowie's The Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, and Queen's A Night at the Opera.

"A lot of bands from the scene we came from try to strip down their music to 'keep it real," Gerard notes. "But the real you is what you've always had inside you and what you strive to be. So when we started compiling the material we had written, we were like, You know what? This has to be a huge, theatrical record."

MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE started working on ideas for The Black Parade in the back of the bus while on 2005's Warped Tour, after which they flew to New York and rented a rehearsal space for two months. And that's when things started to get weird.

"I was living in Queens, and I had to commute on the subway every day," Gerard says. "I was suddenly very scared and paranoid. I felt more like an outsider than I ever had, and I had no confidence, which is bad when you're trying to work on a record. And I had no anonymity because there were a lot of teenagers on the train." In reaction to the young fans he encountered on the underground,

Gerard wrote "Teenagers," a T. Rex-style romp with the chorus line, "Teenagers scare the living shit out of me." "The song came directly from commuting when school let out and being so terrified of them," the singer says. "I was like, Wait a minute. These are the same people that listen to our band. Why am I scared? And I realized it was because they're scared, too. Teenagers are made to feel like they can only solve their problems with violence. They lash out at each other in a really volatile way." After several months experiencing the joys of mass transit, MCR had completed only a handful of songs and felt like a change of scenery (and climate) might do them some good. "I couldn't keep working in New York," says Gerard. "We wanted isolation."

id: Gerard leads the way to what will likely be the band's second platinum record

So the group relocated to Paramour Mansion, outside of L.A. Nestled high in the hills, the deluxe estate overlooks the trendy Silver Lake area and boasts spacious rooms, a gorgeous pool, lush gardens, a state-of-the-art recording facility-and a few special guests.

"The place is definitely haunted," Gerard says. "Doors would slam, and the faucets would turn on. You'd get a bath drawn for you of freezing-cold water in your room, and you wouldn't know why." As unnerving as its mischievous spirits could be, the Paramour was also inspiring, and contributed to the haunting vibe of songs like "The End" and "This Is How I Disappear." More important, it led Gerard to come up with the bleak, surreal concept for the record. "I would have these night terrors, where it would feel like someone was choking me, and my heart would stop and I would stop breathing," he says. "I would wake up in the middle of the night and write these notes to myself, and one of them read, 'We are all just a black parade.' So I started thinking about how this band is kind of a black parade, like a funeral-procession rock thing. And I used that idea to piece together this story about the idea that when you die, death comes for you however you want." Gerard molded his concept into a narrative about a character he dubbed the Patient, whose strongest memory from childhood is of his father taking him to the city to see a parade. Two songs into the album, he dies, and the black parade comes for him.

"During the rest of the story, he meets this entity of death and all these characters, like Mama, who represents anyone who's ever lost their son in a war," Gerard explains. "It's almost like these Canterbury Tales, where he goes along on this journey, and at the end he decides whether he wants to live or die." With the concept in place, My Chem made the songs as sweeping and theatrical as Gerard's lyrics. They accomplished this, in part, by combing through their own eclectic record collections and pulling choice elements that would set them even further apart from other melodic punk bands.

The first two minutes of "Welcome to the Black Parade" stemmed from Gerard's love for Broadway musicals, the horns in "Dead!" came from Mikey's interest in Blur and Britpop, and the jaunty feel of "Mama" was informed by Tom Waits and Nick Cave. But the most poignant moment on the record, "Cancer," was (unlike its morbid moniker) something of a pleasant surprise. "I was very upset about something in my personal life, and that's when that song came out," Gerard says. "It was really spontaneous, and it was recorded pretty much live with Rob [Cavallo, the record's producer] on the piano and me in the vocal booth. Then we added layers of drums, which gave it a certain urgency. It's the song I'm most proud of because it was the most pure emotion we've ever captured, and it gets such an immediate response. You can't shake what the song is about."

As the CD approached completion, some members of the band began to show signs of nervous exhaustion. The group was scheduled to fly to England to play the Reading Festival, and as the date grew near, Toro, who has a fear of flying, got noticeably agitated. Then, after the band tracked "Welcome to the Black Parade," which was originally called "The Five of Us Are Dying," the guitarist lost it.

"I thought I had this premonition," Toro explains. "I was flipping through the TV channels, and on the news. there would be something about a plane crash, and every time I woke up in the morning, the clock would say 9:11. I was playing Tomb Raider the night before the flight, and on the level I ended up at, there was this whole flashback to a plane crash. So right before the flight I was like, 'That's it. I'm not flying."

Despite his misgivings, Toro boarded the plane, and when My Chemical Romance returned to L.A. (all of them still very much alive, thank you very much), The Black Parade was completed without further incident. Listening back to the record, the band members were in awe of what they had achieved and eager to share it with their fans. "There was a real confidence that came to us," Gerard explains. "Having survived it, we felt like we were changed forever. I feel different as a performer now, and I think we really finally discovered who we were as a band." But just because MCR were done with the record didn't mean that it was done with them. About a month later, the band was shooting a video for "Famous Last Words" with director Samuel Bayer (Garbage, Smashing Pumpkins) on a set featuring walls of flame, when-seized by the moment-lero grabbed Gerard's throat from behind and wrestled him to the ground. The singer rolled one way; his foot went the other. "It bent completely backwards, and I heard a crack and felt this agonizing pain," Gerard recalls. "I tore all the ligaments in my foot, but I got up and continued to perform." "I didn't know what I was doing," says lero, shaking his head. "I wasn't trying to hurt him. I felt awful. I still do." Gerard's injury was serious, and he still walks with a cane, but it paled in comparison to what happened to Bryar. At the end of the shoot, the pyro was so intense, the drummer could feel his leg burning, but he stuck it out for the rest of the song. By then, he had a nasty third-degree burn. And the misfortune didn't stop there. Bryar didn't take his antibiotics regularly, and he failed to keep the wound clean. By the time the band got back from a brief tour of Japan, the burn was severely infected. Then Bryar's face swelled up and, after doing the MTV Video Music Awards preshow telecast and a special club show, stumbled into a hospital emergency room in intense pain. "I thought I'd be there for 10 minutes, but as soon as they saw me, they got all serious and gave me an IV and said they had to do a CAT scan," recalls Bryar."They did all these blood tests and kept me there for 14 hours." Doctors discovered that Bryar's leg infection had spread to his blood and caused an abscess in his face that was creeping dangerously close to his brain. If it had been left untreated for another two days, he could have died. "The whole thing was such a nightmare," Bryar says. "This doctor stuck my cheek with a needle about six inches long and the width of an IV tube. Then he went in and out of the inside of my mouth with the needle about 10 times. Fortunately, the treatment worked, and Bryar left the hospital three days later. With tragedy averted, My Chem are now focusing on touring for The Black Parade. They'll be in Europe for most of November, and when they get back at the end of year, they'll start rehearsing for a U.S. arena tour that starts in February. "We want to put on a full show with props and staging like The Wall," Gerard says. And MCR plan to keep the Patient alive long after they're done touring for the CD. "I would love to see the story turned into a play or a musical, and it could easily be a movie," enthuses Gerard. "Making this record, we cut ourselves open every day, pulled out every organ, and lay them on a table so it would be something we're completely happy with. We want The Black Parade to exist for a long time." "The whole hole thing nightmare. This doctor stuck my cheek with a needle about six inches long and the width of an IV tube." -BOB BRYAR

"I felt more like an outsider than I ever had, and I had no confidence, which is bad when you're trying work on a record."

-GERARD WAY

12/2006 revolver - mcrhollywood on flickr

[real-life-senshi]

Aino Minako's Discography

So I was chatting with a friend who I dragged into watching PGSM about how Minako's portrayed in PGSM and all the hints we get in subtler ways about her change in character throughout the timeline and story... and then this led to us chatting about Minako's music. So now here's my brain dump. lol

From the PGSM Memorial Art Book, the CD listed here from left to right are:

I'll Be Here (album)

C'est La Vie (single)

VENUS (album)

IMITATION (album)

Kiss^2 Bang^2 (single)

There could be more singles before that, but if there are we don't know what they are. We do know there are other new songs Minako produced in-universe, including Happy Time, Happy Life from the Special Act, but we do not have a copy of the CD past Act 47.

For each of the albums, we find the name of the songs are very telling, and often very connected to the wider PGSM and Minako's storyline.

Act Zero states that IMITATION is Minako's 1st album.

Translations of the song titles:

始まりの伝説 [Hajimari no Densetsu] (The Legend of the Beginning)

IMITATION

負けるな!クリスマスガール [Makeruna! Kurisumasu Gaaru] (Don’t Lose! Christmas Girl) Act Zero is hinted to take place on Christmas Eve (the Silent Night bgm), or at least definitely near Christmas.

LOVE vs DREAM

うれしくて… [Ureshikute…] (I'm So Happy... / Be Happy...) There's a double meaning that without knowing more detail it'd be hard to determine the best way to translate the song title.

ナイショ! [Naisho!] (SECRET!)

ハートはORANGE [Haato wa ORANGE] (Heart is ORANGE)

白い出会い [Shiroi Deai] (White Rendezvous) As both Endymion and Serenity have white outfits in PGSM, I imagine this is alluding to past life.

MAKE UP! POWER!!

Songs 1, 7, 8 and 9 have very clear past life or Sailor Venus lore connection. While 3 and 5 seem to allude more towards Minako's story of battling her illness. Songs 2, 4 and 6 have more of a vague name that could allude to the duality of Minako's position as a teenager and idol, her secret about her illness, or her memory of Sailor Venus.

Regardless, the song titles suggest that even before meeting Artemis, Minako seems to have dreams or impressions of her past life. Possibly between these impressions/memories and her illness, Minako copes and processes her thoughts and emotions by making music. This has become my headcanon and how I write Minako in my fanfiction.

VENUS - released in Act 1 is Minako's 2nd album.

Translations of the song titles:

C'est la Vie~私のなかの恋する部分 [Se ra Bi ~ Watashi no Naka no Koi Suru Bubun] (That’s Life ~ The Part Inside Me That's In Love) The pronunciation of "C'est la Vie" is synonymous with the Japanese pronunciation of "Sailor V". Mischievous, punny Minako strikes again.

Star girl

For your dream

ETERNITY

Come again

月のキセキ [Tsuki no Kiseki] (Miracle of the Moon)

Be Free!

A Q U A  This song's name was likely done to allude to Ami it's shown in Act 2, Sailor Mercury's debut episode.

Happening ☆

戦う女神⋅おんな [Tatakau Megami ⋅ Onna] (Goddess of Battles ⋅ Woman) This could have been translated to Goddess of War as well. Googling the 4 first characters yields results that include Japanese articles on Athena. In-universe, since Ami has been referenced in AQUA, this title could be alluding to Sailor Mars, but it's more likely to be alluding to the collective Sailor Senshi team.

Lucky Joker Possibly alluding to Usagi? Or maybe Motoki? lol

ア⋅イ⋅ノ♡セレナーデ [Ai no Serenado] (Serande of Love)

The song name of VENUS is a bit more mixed bag of meanings, including song 8 alluding to Ami. But the allusion to the past life and Minako's identity as Sailor Venus is significantly more prominent. There doesn't seem to be any mention or allusion to Minako's illness.

This makes sense, since in Act 2 we viewers wouldn't have a clue about that part of Minako's storyline yet. In-universe, this suggests Minako embracing more and more her past life duties and being on the path of deprioritizing her personal situation and health condition.

I'll Be Fine is Minako's 3rd album, released sometime after Act 47.

Reminder in Act 47, Artemis and the Senshi were given a pre-release of the album, as Minako wanted to surprise Artemis and Usagi with gifts.

Romance

I’m Here

C'est la Vie~私のなかの恋する部分 [Se ra Bi ~ Watashi no Naka no Koi Suru Bubun] (That’s Life ~ The Part Inside Me That's In Love)

肩越しに金星 [Katagoshi ni Kinsei] (Venus Over My Shoulder)

Kiss!2 Bang!2

さよなら～sweet days [Sayonara~ Sweet Days] (Farewell~ Sweet Days)

This album has nearly all the insert songs we hear between Act 1 - Final Act that Minako sang. The only exception is I'm Here.

Songs 1, 3, 4 and 5 have names that allude to the idea of love, which is Sailor Venus's power. Songs 2 and 6 specifically have names that match the theme of the song lyrics, revealing Minako's candid personal thoughts and feelings surrounding her illness.

The fact that Minako passed away in Act 47 before the album was officially released to the public... my friend @greenyoshi72 said Minako wrote her own requiem... 😭

[sluttyten]

Fact: Haechan was totally my bias tonight, I couldn’t take my eyes off of him like oh my god the way he moves is just mesmerizing and hearing him singing live has me fully like 😍

And Jaemin!!!! I swear the entire city of Chicago loves him, every time he was on screen or speaking everyone screamed so loud (I don’t blame them), and he did his entire ending ment in English which was so good!!!

I love all of the dreamies and I absolutely hate that the concert is over and it’ll be god knows how long before I get to see them again, but they kept promising to see us again very soon and that the album is coming with a cute and sexy sorta Hello Future vibe, and I kept waiting for Mark to drop the date because he kept teasing us with talking about the album.

But now it’s over ☹️ and they get to go home and rest for a bit before the European leg of the tour at least

Also I handed out all of the bracelets I made, which I’m so happy about and I got compliments on them, on my hair, on my shirt and my photocard holder which I made so I was like so happy ☺️☺️ everyone is so sweet and awesome, and there’s one girl that was handing out her fanart of Mark and it was so so so cool and I’m so glad I got a little copy of it

[letsmakesomeonehappytoday]

.

[mothcpu]

lunacy! lunacy! lunacy! lunacy!

[atlantis-area]

SHINee - Atlantis (2021) 3rd anniversary

[dontlookforme00]

What if I told you I have never had an original idea ever

FLASH WARNING FOR SPEEDPAINT UNDER CUT SORRY

Speedpaint time !! Never uploaded a speedpaint. Ignore the canvas flipping, this is so so much less than I usually do.

Side note. Yes I changed Heart to be a jester, I'm very sorry, but his fucking lipstick was impossible to get right. Consider it a reference to my Jester!Heart drawing that one time.

I also added (or tried to) little straps on Soul's mask as a nod to a Soul design posted by the original artist of the cccc cover art. Reblogs appreciated

[glassofpumpkinjuice]

if you're a fall out boy fan you're allowed to disagree with genius dot com about the lyrics. whatever you hear is correct actually <3

[uhbasicallyjustmilex]

oh my god oh my god oh my GODDDDDD i can’t BELIEVE i found these on my little rainy october thrift shop wander this morning. like, one would have been more MORE enough. but both?? at once??? i am quite simply floating and may never touch back down to earth

[tilebytiles]

shelf reveal. kinda (literally just my vinyls + bigger kpop albums). i officially own a copy of every am album 🥸‼️

[deus-ex-mona]

can’t believe chizuutan bought 60 copies of the nonfan+hitsuyou fukaketsu single and still holds the belief that aizo is straight

[evangelineartemiasamos]

All those small moments Tobi came up with like

I totally wondered myself when in concert what he did when he ran off the stage every time and look, it's all part of the movie! He planned it all along

He even makes fun of all the costume changes

Like when he's confused about the sudden Year Zero outfit and makes Eww when he sees he holds the cross UP lol

The way his parents seem to scare him about death only to scare us

How you barely notice all the times he throws the mic from one hand to another by the way the movie is edited UNLESS you give that special attention and see how it's suddenly in the other hand (I watched it twice okay)

That time when he's on the drum pedestal and we see him from the back as he looks over his shoulder to us

"When I first came here to be an entertainer ... well, that wasn't ME, but you know what I mean ..." Might be me but I love how he lets his own self shine throw the personas sometimes. He's so touching and caring beneath all that

Tress Biyan for fuck's sake

My utter confusion about the red demon windows during Square Hammer, what does that mean?? They were monochrome white the other events -

Remembering the striding away after the finale was the sexy teaser when the movie webpage was first announced only to learn he falls on his face next thing (his self irony is so charming)

[good-beansdraws]

@apatchworkstar it was supposed to be a quick little mockup of the pose you mentioned, but I got a bit carried away...

I hope she's smug af in her door art!! 😤👏 (Also I know her whole thing is vigilante justice, but between Jackalope calling her our "deputy" and the song title itself I gave her a police station door)

[smtown-tourist]

Wow… TaeKey went from matching couple’s bags to matching couple’s underwear real quick

[fantasy-costco]

Can not stress enough the value of having physical copies of photos in your home. First thing we did at our apartment was put up a gallary wall and we've been adding a few more pictures over time and it's so nice. Really lovely reminder of the people we love and who love us.