9/11 Changed The World

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You guys remember 9/11, right? That day you got excited about at first because your teachers brought a TV into the classroom and then when your parents picked you up from school crying you were like damn this might be important? Well, it was pretty huge. It formed the world you live in now.

My Chemical Romance became a band because of 9/11. 

So 9/11 wasn’t all bad. Mostly bad, but glass like 95% empty, not all the way bad. When Gerard Way saw the towers fall he grabbed his guitar and wrote a song, Skylines and Turnstiles. He then called up a few future-members of the band and boom, on September 12th, 2001 My Chemical Romance was created. 

If you were like me that means 9/11 all but defined who you are. Blink was obviously my first step into pop punk, Fall Out Boy really got me in, but all that opened up alt-rock and “Welcome to the Black Parade” had me pulling into my high school parking lot every day, throwing the car in park, and staring into the rear view mirror wondering if that would be the day I had the courage to pop on some eye liner. I never was brave enough, but rest assured I wanted to. Without 9/11 I’m never listening to “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” in my bedroom and realizing, yep I might be mentally ill. Without 9/11 I’m not blaring “Helena” before hockey games and getting so jacked up I almost score a goal. “The Ghost of You”? "Famous Last Words”? “This is How I Disappear”? All smashes. MCR had me feeling emotions I wouldn’t even really know until much later, and would never learn how to process. 

You know Twilight? Well, it doesn’t happen without My Chemical Romance. The books were born as something of a MCR fanfiction. Stephanie Meyer, the author of Twilight, has said that Jacob’s character (Team Edward over here, because I’m always on the right side of history) is based on the aforementioned MCR song, “Famous Last Words.” The band wasn’t super into the idea and turned down offers to be on the soundtrack, but Meyer still put them on her playlists for the books and once you’re aware MCR was a muse their influence becomes pretty apparent throughout the whole thing. Edward was even brave enough to put on the guy liner. 

But wait, there’s more! EL James, the author of Fifty Shades of Grey, has said that HER book started as TWILIGHT FANFICTION. Lot of fan fiction going on here…not as much as Bin Laden's hard drives, but still a lot. I haven’t read the books or seen the films but apparently Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele are just Edward and Bella. EL James essentially re-wrote Edward as a kinky businessman instead of an undead vampire and that was that. In fact, her fanfic was deemed too provocative even for fanfiction.net (the free site she was writing on) and was taken down so she decided fuck it, I’ll just make my own site and post it there. That went viral, she expanded her stories into a book, and a year later she sold 70 million copies of that book.

Now, I don’t need to tell you what Fifty Shades did to the world. It made kink mainstream. It brought BDSM into every bedroom. Everyone reading this has now participated in some form of it. It could be as simple as a little choking all the way down to learning how to tie knots like you’re a boy scout. It’s affected the porn you watch and the sex you have in basically every way possible. 

Mid-2000s teenage angst, Twilight, Robert Pattinson, 50 Shades of Grey, BDSM sex. You could do a domino effect that starts with 9/11 and ends with a naked girl telling you to choke her. Thanks, Osama