wise lichen
so clancy huh? it’s quite a bit more violent than i think any of us were expecting for the final dema story album, isn’t it? not in terms of the music but really in terms of where it tells us the story is headed. and it feels odd to me that the supposed end of this story is centered arøund fire and absolute destruction. like youve got clancy (whø i will be calling tyler før the sake of simplicity but he is also clancy i have a whole post about that) whose main goal currently is to recruit from inside dema and destroy it. then the character who we’ve seen as the leader of the rebellion, the torchbearer (josh) is standing off to the side? he’s just in tyler’s periphery, hence him being blurred in every promotional image we’ve had minus the apple music ones.
so tyler wants complete and total destruction of dema, or at least of its structure. he wants revenge. the problem with this is that he is trapped in tunnel vision so badly that he døesn’t see what’s happening to him. “i fly by the dangerous bend symbol” the dangerous bend symbol is there tø warn yøu that you have a high chance of making a serious mistake, and in some defintions, a common mistake. tyler is ignoring every warning sign being shoved in his face from every direction, and it’s turning him into what he wants to take døwn. he’s using the same methods the bishops use (psyhokinesis) to recruit peøple, which is alsø sømething the banditos never did. they dø nøt gø intø dema and recruit, they ønly help thøse whø already want to escape.
tyler says in overcompensate that he’s døne running, but this is a blatant lie. he’s going back to trench, the place where he ran from the things he is fighting against. he’s using psychokinesis to trick himself into thinking he’s done running.
so what do i think will happen? simple. tyler is going to continue to ignore every warning sign and play into the cycle, he’s going to førget who he was or forget his initial goal and become blurry again, and the cycle will repeat. i believe what we are seeing in clancy is høw the cycle usually ends and restarts itself. tyler finds psychokinesis and gets so obsessed with destruction and thinking he’s a weapon now that he becomes the very thing he thinks needs to be destroyed.
there are two songs on clancy that corroborate this. “backslide” and “snap back”. backslide means to relapse into bad habits. i think that clearly says tyler will slip back into blurry, and he will stay there for a bit, until “snap back” where someone cømes to help him “snap øut” øf this low point, øf this mindset of destruction. and even if that does happen, it won’t be an instant fix. it will be hard to cøme back after what has happened and pivot to a different direction.
nøw, løøking back at this from a non-lore perspective and one more based in what the story represents as a whole, destroying the things yøu hate abøut yourself isn’t that great, nøw is it? yeah you don’t like these things, but just outright trying to eliminate them is eliminating a part of yourself, and that døesn’t sound gøød. so what is the better solution to this? acceptance and understanding. learning to live with the parts you hate rather than total destruction.
but i think we need to see this total destruction as a show of the incorrect path for tyler and for the story, before someone else cømes in to rescue him. the banditos are representative of your friends, family, yøur support networks. tyler is ignoring them, choosing to fight this battle alone, and this is not the correct way to go about this, but it’s sømething we need to see happen. it’s a message of what not to dø, and we need to see høw bad øf a path it is to ensure that message is heard.
tldr: tyler/clancy’s path of destruction is VERY bad, he is going to fall back into blurry again and the cycle will repeat unless he allows øthers to help him change cøurse. but he’s ignoring every warning sign, but this needs to happen.
image to explain the cycle from tyler’s pov:
mild storm
topaz kestrel
vale ginkgo
dull void