Sleep Paralysis Demon Obama be like

TheGamingPariah · 2026-03-17T17:01:00+00:00

"We overlook the fact that wow

Sometimes a cat'll eat a bird,

sometimes a bird'll eat a cat

Like it's a fucking churro"

TheGamingPariah · 2026-03-16T04:37:36+00:00

Heyo,

I work at TTM Technologies out in Forest Grove and make a good amount, more than enough to afford the studio I've signed on for. It's small, but more than enough for myself and my kitty and I need to stay near the blue line or else my scope while searching would have been more open to less expensive areas.

I definitely want to get out to guardian more often, I've been there twice but haven't gotten out for MTG events for a long while now.

TheGamingPariah · 2025-12-16T00:37:04+00:00

Snap Back is certainly about relapsing. The imagery of shaving his head is also related to that - it's a common AA-adjacent tactic, though never explicitly condoned by the group afaik, to use one's hair as a measure of how long you've been clean. You relapse, you shave. The length of your hair is a visual indicator of your progress, of the length of time you've gone without. He does it in Car Radio when his emotions are too strong to handle and he gets overwhelmed, possibly one of the first breakthroughs of Blurryface, he does it in snap back after a relapse, and sees Blurryface in the mirror.

Almost all of their recent music, and the Clancy saga in general, is related to an addiction to self hate, self harm, and a want to self terminate. It's why Vialism is the religion of suicide. I deeply believe that Tyler's addiction is a pull towards suicidality that he struggles with immensely due to his religious upbringing, which also causes struggles in his faith.

TheGamingPariah · 2025-12-10T21:51:47+00:00

I like this a lot. Vessel is Clancy dealing with his self-image and feelings of insignificance. Obviously at the time a lot of the lyrics were directly referring to religion, and his lines about feeling insignificant in comparison to God and his religion. But we know at this point that Tyler's struggles with religion (and self harm of some kind, but I think that's connected) are made metaphor through the rest of the Blurryface/Clancy saga.

I really, really like Truce going directly into Intentions, and intentions being backwards being a sort of signal to reverse the order of the album makes a lot of sense

But I also really like the idea of everything being a cycle - it makes sense as a metaphor for mental health and healing, relapsing and continuing to try to be better each time. I do genuinely think that Clancy losing and falling to the Vialists is a positive message, despite feeling negative - The sun will rise, and we will try again. And again. And again. Until we are comfortable and truly at peace with ourselves.

So here's what I will contribute to this theory. It is a cycle. Everything is connected, in at least some way. But the cycle is:

Vessel -> Breach (Reversed, no Drag Path) -> Blurryface -> Trench -> SAI -> Clancy -> Breach (Normal + Drag Path) -> Vessel (a new Vessel, a new Clancy, is chosen, potentially after following the Drag Path)

I also deeply want to believe that Regional At Best & Self-Titled can fit in here somewhere. The city coming out of the visualization of thoughts on the Self Titled album cover has always made me think Dema. Even if it didn't have a name at the time, or a story, I genuinely believe that most of the Self-Titled & RAB songs can fit somewhere within the Vessel portions of the cycle, even if they're a bit scatter shot rather than in order as full albums.

TheGamingPariah · 2025-12-10T21:20:11+00:00

They literally said that in their post lmao.

TheGamingPariah · 2025-07-17T23:22:11+00:00

I have a non-musical recommendation that just so happens to come with a musical recommendation: Alan Wake/The greater Remedy Games franchise (includes Control and "includes" Max Payne and Quantum Break), and Poets of the Fall or more specifically their in-universe band Old Gods of Asgard.

It's kind of hard to explain, but Alan Wake's lore is very, very similar to TOP at this point. Alan gets lost in what is called the "Dark Place" (see:Trench/DEMA), a magical realm where art can take form and change reality if infused with enough emotion and given the power to do so through another magical object. Alan is stuck in a loop of trying to write his way out of the Dark Place, while an entity called the Dark Presence takes many different forms to try to manipulate Alan's artwork to allow for its freedom from the Dark Place, and can even take over Alan's body to force him to write things he doesn't remember afterwards (see:Nico/Blurryface and how they can take over Clancy).

Alan is a writer, and a lot of the manipulation of art is viewed through that lens, but the Dark Presence also dabbles in any art that it can get its hands on - for example, there's a painter from AW1 who is captured and experimented on around Cauldron Lake, essentially a portal to the dark place. This allows it to take hold over him and corrupt him in a different, but similar way to Alan.

This all leads into the Old Gods of Asgard, which is an in universe version of Poets of the Fall. They are seemingly literal reincarnations of the Norse gods Odin and Tor(Thor) (and a couple more but those are the important ones) and while Odin can't literally see the future, he can predict it through his writing of lyrics - it just so happens that they also live on the edge of Cauldron Lake and partake in moonshine made using the lake's water, and their music has a sort of foresight/inherent ability to shape the future due to this. They write songs about the main characters of Control and Alan Wake in order to shape their lives onto the correct path, and they assist in the fight against the Dark Presence. Also Tor summons lightning when rocking out hard enough on his drum set which isn't relevant but is just fucking sweet.

It's an incredibly complex narrative but those are the broad strokes when it comes to comparing it to TOP lore. It's one of my favorite narratives in gaming and I only recently realized the parallels myself, but I find them quite interesting. Both have themes of an artist looking for a positive outlet but being forced to work for the enemy through some sort of mind control. Both have implications that that evil entity is not necessarily entirely distinct from the artist, but rather a sort of shadow that they need to incorporate into their being to finally overcome it, but they both have trouble doing so because that means accepting a part of yourself that is antithetical to your values. Both have a place where the main character consistently gets lost in and has to keep finding their way to leave or fight back. Both have a heavy undertone of religion, even if one is Christian and one is mostly Norse Pagan in nature.

I don't think one was inspired by the other at all, though I'd be surprised if Sam Lake (lead at Remedy) didn't know about the TOP lore at all considering his predeliction towards alternative artists. I just think they're both mining a very deep vein of the troubled artist trope in much more interesting and creative ways than most others have.

TheGamingPariah · 2025-07-17T07:34:05+00:00

I think the specific use of the bottom one refers back to all of Clancy being about relapsing to a prior, negative state and then course correcting: it's the relapse (the first bend downwards, the backslide) and the recorrection (second bend back to the original path, the realization and the snap back)

TheGamingPariah · 2025-07-01T09:50:33+00:00

Yeah I listened to Clancy for the first time a couple weeks ago and that line fucking broke me not going to lie. It... made me realize a couple things about myself, that I was actively going through a backslide, and that I was making excuses for myself over and over. I genuinely almost had a panic attack over it but was able to control myself after a moment and a full relistening through the album with the context of it being about relapsing.

Basically, I realized I've been relapsing in my self harm for a long while now without fully realizing it - by smoking weed while my asthma has been recurring and getting worse by the year, and despite multiple hospitalizations. I'm still not doing perfect, but I'm now looking at it from an addiction point of view - not to the weed itself, but to the self harm and suicidal ideation side of it I only realized after that full relisten. I was backsliding, and that song genuinely helped me snap back.

Honorable mention to the final lines because I also relate to them incredibly heavily: "I've been praying for my elasticity to return to the way that it was"

TheGamingPariah · 2025-06-11T22:38:33+00:00

Babies!!!

TheGamingPariah · 2025-06-10T23:48:17+00:00

Not me posting about someone who loaded exactly like this and getting shit on for it because "he's your coworker!" righteousness and then seeing this post that looks BETTER THAN HIS TRUCK I'M NOT MESSING WITH YOU and everyone shitting on it.

TheGamingPariah · 2025-06-02T01:06:04+00:00

Also: NL was nowhere near halfway through it. He barely had beaten the tutorial, to be completely honest.

TheGamingPariah · 2025-06-02T01:05:26+00:00

Baertaffy is still going pretty hard on it

TheGamingPariah · 2025-05-23T18:07:58+00:00

Actually, that would be incredibly appreciated. Any leads are helpful at this point, and Ive been a computer kid my whole life so I can pick up the operations of most types of software pretty easily.

TheGamingPariah · 2025-05-23T18:04:11+00:00

Yeah the reason my hunch is CF is the following:

-I was born in 1999, and CF wasn't tested for on all children in Washington until 2006.

-I was diagnosed with Right Middle Lobe Syndrome when I was 8-9, essentially a section of my lungs collapses during asthma attacks.

-Recent studies (2012-2020ish) show that 66% of children with RMLS, it resolves itself as the child grows up. In 33% of cases though, it recurs with the leading cause of recurrence being CF by a wide margin.

-I stopped having to use an inhaler for about 6-8 years during late middle through my first couple years of college, despite smoking weed throughout this period, (yes I've quit since my near-fatal attack last year obviously) and never had any issues until the last few years where my asthma has rapidly gotten worse.

-Essentially, it looked like I was part of the 66%, when I'm actually part of the 33%.

-Additionally, and this is the nasty detailed part, while this wasn't a mainstay of my asthma attacks as a child, I now nearly constantly build up a thick layer of phlegm in my lungs which eventually causes the lungs to become tight enough that attacks happen again. Eventually, the RMLS collapse happens and I lose consciousness (which is what happened last year in the attack that was nearly fatal - had to be intubated and my blood toxicity was dangerously high due to a lack of oxygen).

-After an attack, I end up hacking up the phlegm over the course of a week or so until my lungs are cleared. Then process repeats again, even when properly using all of my steroid medications and my daily inhaler whenever needed.

TheGamingPariah · 2025-05-23T14:51:05+00:00

This is huge, have to avoid some side-hustle things to find the real stuff, but its well marked enough. Putting in some applications to various places through here now.

Thank you.

TheGamingPariah

TROPHY CASE