Life on the Murder Scene

Life on the Murder Scene (LOTMS) is a live album by My Chemical Romance that includes video footage of live performances, three music videos, music video making-of documentaries, and a two-hour "video diary" that tells the band's origin story. LOTMS was released in 2006 after the band had achieved mainstream success, but before The Black Parade, MCR's biggest hit. As of 2016, fans are still posting excitedly on social media about the video diary.
All of the video footage has been incorporated into gif sets and other fanworks, but the video diary in particular became a major source of Bandom canon for fans coming in later. In a 2011 MCR primer, livejournal fan anoneknewmoose noted that it was the primary canon for "[even] fics that were written in 2008-2010."moose_spam. mcr primer (2/2), posted to livejournal 2011-11-24. archived.
The video diary includes footage of many people who appear as characters in Bandom fic, including all the current bandmembers at the time (Bob Bryar, Frank Iero, Ray Toro, Gerard Way, and Mikey Way), Gerard and Mikey's parents, Brian Schechter, Bert McCracken of The Used, Geoff Rickly of Thursday, and Craig Aaronson.
==Fan Reactions: 2006==
Fans in the LiveJournal community chemicalromance had been eagerly anticipating the release since late 2005, and on the release date people were already discussing their favorite bits: see (2006-03-20). Many had strong emotional reactions when they finally watched it. Some fans said they had cried over Gerard's substance abuse and suicidal depression, while others said they were proud of him for overcoming it and impressed by his bravery in actually showing it in the video. As one fan noted, "it was pretty hard to watch. I knew a lot of it already from past interviews, but actually seeing all that drunken footage on the DVD is very different to just reading about it."salgueirinho. , 2006-03-21.
Some fans who were already familiar with the information covered in the video diary were less thrilled by it. At least one old-school fan was angry that the first drummer (who was fired) was never mentioned, though others suggested that he might have been omitted for legal reasons.lordfuckie. , posted to chemicalromance 2006-03-22. See also the 143 comments in reply.
==Fan Reactions: 2016==
Fast-forward a decade and bitter elitists have fallen away, while other fans are still (re)watching LOTMS and crying.
On Twitter in December 2016:
*"i'm less than five minutes into lotms and i am in tears wtf i've seen this before"Tweet by chokefrank, 2016-12-05
*"i was watching lotms again today and i'm in tears"Tweet by bulletskid, 2016-12-24
*"I STILL CRY FROM THE CHRISTMAS SCENE FROM LOTMS IT'S SO PRECIOUS AND PURE"tweet by QueenFIossy, 2016-12-25
*"Justo así me pasó hoy, estaba viendo LOTMS y de verdad casi lloro"tweet by stainlessshit, 2016-12-25
==Fanwork Examples==
*let’s cover ourselves in blooooooooodddddd! reblog of a 2010 drawing by inkanddestroy
*gifset by coleslawsarchived copy of a reblog "I'm sick of seeing my face." (25 January 2012)
*Maybe Pete Was Onto Something, podfic by draconic_girl of a fic by impertinence. Gerard is in love with Frank, but the only person he can tell about it is his hamster. (2 May 2012)
*gifset about alcoholism by coleslawsarchived copy of a reblog (18 May 2012)
*gifset by killingjarsarchived "Fuck, I forgot to get hand sanitizer." "Fuck you" (14 November 2012)
*life on the murder scene + purplearchived by 1013corpses (21 January 2014)
==Fannish Resources==
*lotms and life on the murder scene Tumblr tags
==References==
Category:My Chemical Romance