The Home For Wayward Cats

Who knew that this was going to happen?

If you had asked me, I would have sworn that Gerard and Frank were both too fucking busy with all of their projects to have a My Chem reunion. Glad to be proven wrong, but 2019 has certainly been a year of My Chemical suprises.

I, like ~6000 other My Chem fans, tried to get tickets to the LA show. And failed. But to be honest, I wasn't expecting to get tickets - the odds were really against me (6300 capacity venue, and all of the My Chem fans who wanted to go. It sold out in about 5 minutes. And there were rumors of a full tour after the LA show, so I consoled myself with the fact that by not spending $ on the LA tickets + cost of getting to LA and etc, that I could 1. see more shows during a full tour and 2. put money toward my next tattoo.

I already have the design - it's by the same artist (amanda on Instagram who did my last tattoo design, which I don't think I posted here The next tattoo is a tribute to INOK, which is perfect for this resurgence of My Chem feelings, because I'm still not okay. :D

This was the other tattoo she designed for me - lyrics from Frank's song Great Party. (My heart needs work, it does what it wants to do

Anyway, the INOK design is two crossed croquet mallets with a flower behind them, and the words I'm not okay. Pretty excited for this one.

So, yeah. New My Chem show, which I'm really hoping means more shows (I desperately would love to see some Conventional Weapsons songs played live, please!) and maybe even new music (which would also make me pretty damn happy).

But also, if you've drowning in my chem feels, I just want to point out that no_tags is running another round to help people deal with their feelings. As always, it's a quick and dirty challenge, timeline like so:

Friday, November 1: Signup/prompting post
Sunday, November 3: Prompt claiming at Noon EST
Saturday, November 9: Posting

Signups and rules can be found here. You should definitely join in the fun.

Holy shit, what a whirlwind the last few days have been.

U've been entertaining myself with thoughts about how much of a fucking troll Frank is, and how much he enjooyed having this reunion show announced on his birthday. Best present ever, having your favorite band get back together for your birthday.

How are you all handling the news?

I know several people who are struggling with February, in terms of physical illness and mental health; and apparently I am one of them. February has felt like I'm slogging through sand. Or maybe, considering where I live, snow. Either way, I'd like to be done with it.

There are a lot of liberals/progressives out there that are big Bernie fans, but I am not one of them. This op-ed from Teen Vogue by Isabella Gomez Sarmiento perfectly encapsulates why I'm not that into him. (via forests_of_fire)

( Cut for talk of death, illness, grief, marriage equality )

Let's start with some community promos.

For all things Umbrella Academy


theumbrellaacademy is a new community for The Umbrella Academy! It's a general community, and while it’s mostly for the series we welcome discussions about the comics as well. As the show is newly on netflix, episode discussions will be under cut tags.

What’s welcome? Pretty much anything really! Episode discussions, icons, screencaps, gifs, thoughts on the comics, art or fics. Anything goes

And for your Umbrella Academy kink needs, there is a kinkmeme: umbrellakink

There's an interesting little podfic-to-fic challenge going on at remixapod



It works like this. Podficcer A submits between 3-6 of their podfic, then Author B creates a fic inspired by one (or more) of the podfic.

no_tags has posted, with 8 amazing stories. If you know me, you can easily guess which prompt I left. If you really know me, you can easily guess which story I wrote. I've got to comment on the stories, and once the reveal happens, I will rec my favorites.

And lastly, the_postal_pub, a community for letter writers. Which, I want to get back into the habit of sending out mail, so...we'll see.

---

As for the Umbrella Academy, I did watch it all over two days. It was not perfect but I totally loved what they did with it. Keeping my fingers crossed for the green light on Season 2. Tell me in the comments about what you liked, what you didn't, who was your favorite character, and what scene did you love the most.

Of course, that means that there may be spoilers in the comments, so beware of that.

I'd never heard the word neuston before, and I consider myself pretty scientifically literate.

Neuston: the aggregate of minute aquatic organisms that float or swim in the surface film of a body of water.

Now, I knew that there were some creatures that floated on the surface of the ocean, like the Portuguese man o' war. But it never occurred to me that there was an entire ecosystem of animals that live in that top layer of the ocean.

And just to be On Brand for humans, neuston meadows are being endangered by our activities. The fact that these specific activities are designed to clean up the oceans doesn't make it better.

( Cut for pictures )

I shoulda waited before posting that last one, but I was just so damn excited.

But there were two other things.

One is the love meme going on over here. angelofthenorth is hosting a love meme for Dydd Santes Dwynwen, the Welsh saint of lovers. My thread is here, and you should leave your name and/or leave love for other people.

Two is that the next iteration of no_tags is happening. Prompts February 7th-8th, claims February 9th, fics due February 16th. If you've been around here for any length of time, you know how much I love this particular challenge. I just don't know if I can participate this time around - Ande and I are driving down to Chicago that weekend to see the Killjoys art exhibit.

I'm still pondering it; we will see.

(And omg, I need to get back into the habit of tagging)

Couple of interesting links...

There was another fucking huge data breach (dubbed Collection #1 with 772 million email addresses/passwords/personal data involved), so it's time to change passwords if there's a remote possibility of your information being compromised. Or maybe just change your password if you've been using the same one(s) for a while.

Check out HaveIBeenPwned with your email address - and it'll tell you what breaches (past and present) that you're email has been involved in (scroll down after you've entered your email for the listing of the data breaches).

Here's an article about a couple who are searching for a way to prevent prion diseases before they happen. Neither of them started out as scientists, but circumstances have put them on this particular path.

I just saw on Instagram that Frank is doing a mini-tour of South America, which is great for them. SA so rarely gets tours from musicians, so it's nice that they're getting that. Also, the Bouncing Souls are releasing an EP and going on tour, and they're hitting Minneapolis, so that's a win.

I saw the Souls last September at Riot Fest. prophetic and trojie and I all at barrier, getting sprayed by water and dodging crowd surfers. The Souls started with Hopeless Romantic and ended with True Believer, and it was glorious banger of a show. A++++ would totally mosh again.

And relatedly, a subject near and dear to my heart: giving back to music in the age of streaming.

Thanks to gorgeousnerd for linking to this lovely Janelle Monáe lyric prompt table bingo thingy. The deadline isn't until the end of 2019, and like most everyone else I know, I really want to get more femslash out there in the world.

It's hard to write femslash for most fandoms, because there are so few women characters, which is a whole different rant. But I figure I've got Lindsey and Jamia and Alicia, Kitty and Chantal, Greta and Vicky-T. I can definitely add in Laura Jane, and Ashley Simpson. I don't know enough about the other bandom women to comfortably write about them. But still, this is doable.

If anyone has suggestions/tropes/kinks they'd like to see regarding specific characters, let me know. :D

( Bingo card under the cut! )

Look at me go!

( Ramblings about bandom challenges, Snowflake, my fic, feelings, &etc )

I had to sit this one out, because I’ve been sick for more than six weeks and really have just started getting back to normal. But no_tags is honestly my favorite challenge in bandom; it has consistently, over the years, produced some of the most amazing stories in the fandom.

This edition has been no different. The number of people participants has dwindled, and there hasn’t been a lot of people reading, kudosing, or commenting on these stories, which is a fucking shame.

So here is a review of the stories that are in the no_tags challenge. Please go read these amazing stories, even if the pairing might not be your otp. If you read, please take a moment to leave a kudos, or a comment. Encourage writers, so that they keep writing.

(The authors are currently anonymous, but I think they’ll be revealed on Sunday. If you want to guess in the meantime, guessing post is up.)

( In no particular order: )

The no_tags challenge is happening for the first time since 2015, and I’m pretty excited. I think you should be, too. Some of my absolutely favorite stories have come from this challenge.

You can find stories from the challenge:

2009-2012 here

2013-2014 here

2015+ is here (includes some stories from previous years that have been uploaded to the AO3)

If you are a bandom-type writer, you should participate! Sign-up here
Simplified version of the rules:

**Leave 2 prompts anonymously (prompt-leaving rules are here). The rules are kinda complex, but they’re designed to make it possible for EVERYONE who participates to find a set of prompts they can write to, regardless of which flavor of bandom they write. Deadline for signing up and leaving prompts is Friday March 2nd 9PM EST.
**Claim a prompt set. Claiming starts on Saturday March 3rd Noon EST, first come, first served. Claiming is anonymous.
**You have a week to write a ficlet with a minimum of 1k, using one (1) of the two prompts you claimed. All the ficlets are posted to AO3, and are unveiled, still anonymous.
**You comment on the awesome ficlets, and play guess-the-author on the Dreamwidth comm.
**Profit ???

If you have questions, feel free to ask. For all the panicking and flailing I have done over this challenge, it’s one that I absolutely love, and I would love to see more people participating.