chemical-adjacent

first blog post!!!!! big news!!!!! not really though i’m not gonna throw a party. cool start though.

i’ve never actually posted on a blog before so i’m just gonna do this like i’m writing a rant in the form of an essay i’m actually going to enjoy writing. is that how this works? this is going to be way too long i apologize profusely in advance.

recently i’ve decided to check out a bunch of new things, all of which connect to the wonderful band my chemical romance in some way (ha), shape, or form. anything from solo musical projects and roles in other bands to movies or television shows—some of which aren’t even directly linked to the band.

as i write this, i’m listening to pencey prep’s don quixote, three songs into their first and only full-length album titled heartbreak in stereo (go check it out!!). 

as written in their spotify biography, it was entitled as such because it showcases just that: “their epic tale of teenage heartbreak,” in form of a 40 minute album. though the album was officially recorded and uploaded in 2001, it was remastered and reissued in december of 2020. 

apart from those 10 songs, there’s a small handful listed on their wikipedia page as being released to their myspace page! i’ll have to see if i can find any old links anywhere because i’m currently on the 6th track of the album and REALLY enjoying this. plus i’m a huge sucker for possibly lost media.

besides that, i’ve listened to a couple ofher beyond-mcr projects including gerard way’s hesitant alien, frank iero’s stomachaches, the mock-ups’s single, and leathermouth’s XO. 

unfortunately leathermouth is the only one that wasn’t super my style, but i did listen through the whole album and can definitely appreciate it!! i did recently learn of the existence of mikey way and dave debiak’s band electric century, so i think i’ll check that out next. 

i’m pretty sure there’s still a LOT more for me to catch up on music-wise, but i’ve also picked up a few things that aren’t—the first of many being the 1978 sci-fi horror film, dawn of the dead. 

there’s a lot to say about this movie. probably most importantly being that i never actually finished watching it because the VERY LEGAL website i used to watch it decided to stop loading as i paused it to get a snack (and i still had like, 45 minutes left!!! someday…). 

if we ignore what i missed due to the consequences of me paying for my crimes, from what i was able to watch, the movie isn’t bad at all. i’m all for gorey practical effects, and the way these zombies were treated in this movie compared to so many others was so…mature? i’m not entirely sure if that’s the right word, but those of you who’ve seen it know what i mean. 

the script is corny and has some…quirks, though unfortunately expected being made in the late 70s, but isn’t horribly written by any means. it’s as realistic as it can be (and for a zombie movie, the situations got pretty damn realistic. as i was watching it there were a number of times where i caught myself thinking, “yeah, if this really happened… i could see this shit going down”.), it’s got good dialogue, it’s got REALLY good (unintentionally?? romantic????) chemistry between all four of the main characters, and it’s fucking emotional. 

even outside of the script, the zombies are just painful to look at. the way they interact with each other, their ages, their clothing all tells such a huge story. this movie took the fact that at one point, these were humans—people with lives, families, relationships—so much more seriously than i’ve seen in anything adjacent to the genre. 

but enough of my yapping; why the hell am i even talking about it in a blogpost about my chemical romance??? well, LET ME TELL YOU why i even decided to watch it in the first place. 

in the stifling florida heat of one july in this very year of 2025, ya boy started seeing videos of mcr performing across the country. they (ya boy) had not listened to mcr since middle school. they decided to pull up mcr’s debut album for the first time in years. they heard a song they didn’t remember. queue google search, “what is early sunsets over monroeville about?”. the first link is a reddit post asking the very same question and the rest is history.

the eighth track off of i brought you my bullets, you brought me your love starts out DRASTICALLY different from most of the album, which I think is part of what makes it my favorite. the entire song is a love letter to the movie—from the title of the track being the actual name of the mall the movie was filmed in, to one of the lyrics (“and there’s no room in this hell, there’s no room in the next”) being a direct reference to a line in the script: “when there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.”

though most interpret the song to be about (slight spoilers) the main heterosexual couple, fran and stephen, one reddit user had an explanation i really loved that makes so much more sense—the song is a “what if?” about the other two main characters, peter and roger. 

it’s clear they have a strong bond from the start of the movie—how could they not, already having seen what they’d seen together?—and truthfully even if i weren’t as yaoipilled as i am, i know i’d be wondering what the fuck was going on between them.

i won’t be giving a whole explanation because not only is it pretty easy to figure out what happens from the lyrics, but i’d rather not spoil it for anyone who’d want to watch because i do truly recommend this movie to anyone who’s a fan of the song. (even if you’re not a fan, watch it!! definitely a staple of the movie genre to me. then listen to the song.) early sunsets is already such an incredibly emotional masterpiece, and seeing the inspiration behind it for yourself just adds to it that much more.

i’ve been on a pretty big movie kick lately, actually. just today i finished another horror movie that some of you may recognize more than dawn of the dead—if you’re into fanfiction, that is. have you ever heard of the stigmata, frank?

sorry sorry i had to do it i cringed typing that but it’s fine. i’m posting on a myspace duplicate about my chemical romance for fuck’s sake. ANYWAYS yes i did watch (and complete, thank god) the 1999 movie stigmata earlier today! 

for anyone wondering, one of the most renowned fics in the fandom, a 5-part series entitled unholyverse (which is like, the length of a pretty fucking big book that i unashamedly finished in like, two days total?) was posted in 2011 by the author bexless on archiveofourown—an alternate-universe fic where frank, ray, mikey, bob, and brian work at a tattoo and piercing shop/hair salon, gerard is a priest working for the vatican, and frank unexpectedly comes down with a big bad case of the stigmata after being cursed by a kickass tattoo of a seraph from some random artist he’d never seen before. smart move, frank.

the basic storyline was taken from the movie stigmata, accredited as such in the fandoms list of the first installment of the fic. i’m not going to go into a HUGE rant about this one, because while it wasn’t a horrible movie i’m not embarrassed to say that bexless did it better!!!!!! only downside is she definitely could’ve worked patricia arquette into there somehow if she really wanted to, but i guess i can manage.

as i was watching it, i really expected more of the fic’s actual storyline to pop up in the movie. it was sort of weird because a lot of bexless’s choices made a LOT more sense than what actually happened. i won’t be giving out spoilers for either because if you read ANY my chemical romance fic it better fucking be this one. get in some light reading!!!! 186k is NOTHING okay i swear.

drifting back to something immediately related to the band members, i also wanted to mention the umbrella academy, which i didn’t even watch for the first time with the knowledge of the comic being made by gerard way. i was just that cool.

i first watched it around three-ish years ago, but it feels like MUCH longer. time is wonky. i remember it very vividly, actually—i think i got through everything released up to that point during a week-long vacation to the florida keys over that summer. 

i decided to rewatch it recently (…i wonder why?) following the release and unfortunate flop of season 4, which i do not intend on watching during this round nor do i ever. the seasons gerard actually worked on it were the only good ones and i will stand by that as fact until the day i die. insert how i keep the rent low in my neighborhood gif.

i’m going to be totally and completely honest with you guys. it’s 1:30 in the morning. i started writing this like, two hours ago. i finished heartbreak in stereo an hour ago and i’ve been writing in complete silence since. i’ve already forgotten what else i intended to write about, if anything. this was so exhilarating.

much appreciation to anyone who read through this whole thing!! most of my blogs will probably end up like this, a mostly on-topic yap fest about just about anything in between me working on writing my next big fic. i hope something here was somewhat informative to you, and if not, at the very least, i hope you enjoyed it!

<3