YMMV / Against Me!

• Broken Base: Special mention for the switch from folksy anarcho-punk to a more stadium rock sound, but the fans are divided over basically every album.
• Creator Worship: Laura Jane Grace is hailed as a Punk Queen Goddess after her transition. Also helped by the punk community's support of her.
• Heartwarming Moments: Most people are incredibly supportive of Laura's transition, including her band members. Given how divisive being trans still is, it's nice to see.
  • "The Ocean" also contains a bit of Heartwarming in Hindsight.
  If I could have chosen, I would have been born a woman
  My mother once told me she would have named me Laura
  I'd grow up to be strong and beautiful like her
  One day I'd find an honest man to make my husband
  • Add to the fact Laura herself was garnering love and respect from the punk scene following her transition. The same punk scene that attacked her for daring to sign to a label. That's pretty amendable.
  • Laura admitted in 2024 that she had spent a while not talking to the rest of the band because of the pandemic, and wasn't sure they'd ever play together again because it'd been an awkwardly long time now to reconnect. The rest of the band were having absolutely none of it, and reunited with her at her wedding to Paris Campbell, and then she knew they'd find the right time soon.
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: Again, New Wave and White Crosses. Also the reason for shouts of "selling out."
  • Though Laura herself claims the band has been labelled as "sellouts" ever since Reinventing Axl Rose, and that the shouts of "sellouts!" from punks just for signing to a slightly larger indie label caused her to be disillusioned with the punk scene real fast.
• Memetic Mutation: Calling Laura "mom" is this for people, especially when Laura embraced it on Twitter and would tell fans to "clean their room".
• Signature Song: "True Trans Soul Rebel" and much beforehand, "I Was a Teenage Anarchist".
• Tear Jerker: A fair amount of their songs deal with pretty emotional topics. Particularly "Because of the Shame":
  I watched your mother bury you today, with tears in her eyes.
  It wasn't her words that shook me, but the resemblance you shared.
  • The entirety of Transgender Dysphoria Blues, but "Dead Friend" "Two Coffins" "Black Me Out" and the titular track especially. You can practically hear the pain in Laura's voice. Also, "FUCKMYLIFE666" is about her and her now ex-wife's breakup.
  • "Paralytic States" off of Transgender Dysphoria Blues deserves a nod- following a (fictional) trans woman in a seedy motel and ending with the reveal that she's Driven to Suicide by her dysphoria.
    By the time the ball dropped, it was already over.
    No resolutions for the new year beginning tomorrow.
  • The Devouring Mothers tour^*An acoustic tour by Laura and Atom, including Laura reading from her old diaries. gives some heartbreaking explanations of a lot of the songs, as well as being clearly emotional for Grace.
  • While "Thrash Unreal" is incontestably a banger, the refrain is a downer once you really listen to it.
  No mother ever dreams that her daughter's gonna grow up to be a junkie,
  No mother ever dreams that her daughter's gonna grow up to sleep alone.
  • Laura's book Tranny really highlights her pain and struggle dealing with gender dysphoria and how her life was growing up, most notably feeling she was dying and what lead to the creation of Searching for Former Clarity.
  • Bigger emphasis in regards to Laura slowly realizing she has gender dysphoria and the fears of what her band mates, her family, her wife, her daughter, and just about everyone would think about her desire to be a woman can be hard for both people with and without gender dysphoria.
  • The later parts of the book in regards to Laura's Despair Event Horizon with Pope's death, the side effects of her treatment into becoming a woman, and eventually, the divorce with her wife really adds to the bitter nature of an an otherwise Earn Your Happy Ending by the end of the book.
• Tough Act to Follow: General consensus is Shape Shift with Me is a good album, but after the highly acclaimed and praised Transgender Dysphoria Blues, the response would be this.