The Black Parade If It Was More Woke

ANY LORE!! HEADCANONS? HECK YEA! GENDER/PREFERENCES?? YOU BET! ANY LORE WILL SUFFICE THE COUNCIL!!!

Pretty please with a cherry on top :D 😋🍭

AAAHHHH OKAY HWRE ARE SOME RAPIDFIRE POINTS ERM,, you asked about tbp specifically and im just gonna talk about them but i also have plenty of ideas for The Patient too,,, blinks

The members of the black parade WERE living at some point, but they do not remember their past enough to make sense of it. Sometimes they’ll get senses of familiarity hearing a name or seeing a specific person, but everything about their past before death is completely forgotten

Each member has a specific name that was given to them by previously existing members of the parade. Gerard’s character is Death (this is canon and I just built off of that idea), Rays character is Famine, Mikey’s is War, and Franks is Conquest

Yes War and mother war have similar names, but usually the paraders will simply refer to her as “Mother”.

They function as a sort of found family, some have been serving the parade longer than others, so they have closer bonds. Mother War is suspected to be the first, with Death being the first band member to officially become a parader.

Death and War do not remember being related, but like mentioned before, they have a sense of familiarity with each other that they can’t exactly pinpoint.

Mother War is the actual brain behind the parade. Not in a “controlling” way, but because she’s older and has more experience and is less led by her emotions as Death, who is perceived to be the real leader just because he does a good amount of the soul guiding and such.

Death also happens to get attached to the souls he leads, depending on how long he spends with them before they die. He spent the most time with the Patient, which is why he decided to compose an entire album about his experience with him and his story (wow, callbacks!)

Death will appear before a soul dies depending on how long they’ve BEEN dying. The patient, for example, had been slowly losing his life due to cancer he didn’t know about until it was too late, death started appearing to him much earlier than someone who would have an untimely death like a murder or accident. The parade actually comes to gather you entirely when you officially die, similar to the WTTBP music video.

Only people who are about to die or who has already died can see paraders. Death specifically, when he can tell he’s being perceived by someone, feels a strong sense of guilt, knowing that his existence in the real world is nothing more than an omen to someone’s death.

Death is not necessarily sympathetic, however, at least not at first. His behavior is similar to meddling spirits and usually just tries to draw attention to himself and bother his subjects. He has a slow temper and usually puts up a front of smugness and elegance until someone breaks that mask, in which he’s very self-destructive, emotional, and vulnerable.

Fear and Regret are twins!! I believe that’s intentional, I just like that idea.

Nurserard is also here, her name is Decay and she does serve as a medical professional for the paraders and usually greets new arrivals.

Becoming a member of the parade is somewhat random, but also predestined in a way?? To the person who is joining, there are no warnings, even in life, they’re just sort of adopted into the parade without a second thought and no other option other than wandering the wastelands of purgatory for all of eternity. Alone. They cannot pass on to heaven or hell.

The paraders all do “field work”, as in going to souls before death (however short that may be) and bringing them to the parade to go on to their afterlives. They act as support to them, usually having to calm them down or at least get them to understand that they are dead or dying soon. The others have adapted to this in their own ways, Conquest sees it from a more logical stance and doesn’t usually appeal to emotions, Famine is very emotionally supportive, War tends to try and reason and relate to them, and Death is sort of a mixed bag. Usually he tries to stay formal, but this kind of job sort of sticks with you, yknow?

They usually only appear for people who have very little or no support in their death. They’re meant to be there to support someone in their final moments. People with a lot of support from family or friends usually don’t get anything from the parade, they just move on to the afterlife smoothly without any ghosts haunting them until they die.

Death and War are British, Conquest is Italian, Famine is Puerto-Rican (born in the states), Fear and Regret are Japanese-American, and mother war is…. Vaguely American, just from a very different time (if anyone could estimate, probably the 1800s). I don’t care if they’re all “canonically Italian” (I’ve generally never seen a real source in their nationalities) I have my IDEA in my HEAD and I WONT EVER LET TUEM GO.

I like to think they’re somewhat related to / in contact with other depictions of the grim reaper / death, even outside of the extended MCR stories. I just think it’s cute to think that River Styx from Monster High and Death are like… not-biological cousins..

Food, especially good food, is very hard to come by in the Wasteland. When paraders are sent on longer missions, they at least try and sneak around and steal food when they can.

I like to design them to seem just a little inhuman, example being my design for Death who had a half-skeleton facial marking and a weird tail. There’s really no lore reason for it, it’s entirely aesthetic.