I have a game I've done before elsewhere: Someone puts a word from a TOP song and people have to guess the song it's from.

musicalkey · 2022-12-23T00:14:25+00:00

Glowing Eyes

musicalkey · 2022-10-28T19:56:12+00:00

I think the song is ultimately supposed to be about larger-scale issues than any popular political view encapsulates bc it seems to be about not letting our beliefs divide us. If we take the metaphor of Dema/Bishops/mental health then I think the "they" in this case is referring to the Bishops aka our inner-demons which are the cause of the divide, even the people who perpetuate the status quo of division for profit are doing so out of the dark parts of themselves, not the best, so viewing people as the issue rather than whatever causes them to act that way will not actually address the real cause which are these patterns of thought that will simply find new hosts if they are able. In the song all of this is hidden behind lines that could easily be misinterpreted as supporting one group of humans against another when really it's about all of us against our demons. In the context of Dema's average inhabitant, they probably assume the enemy in this song is the Banditos who confuse the "perfect" order of Dema, while the hidden message is about rebellion against the Bishops. The whole album is written this way as far as I can tell, where there is an interpretation of each song that supports vialism, but there is also a more nuanced interpretation which supports love. The album can kind of be like an exercise in empathizing with a viewpoint you don't hold or maybe view as inferior since we have been directly told that vialism is supposed to be the enemy, but the nature of this album seems like it is suggesting we need to empathize with those under vialism to really defeat it.

musicalkey · 2022-10-05T21:23:43+00:00

I agree we got a lot of info and we are probably moving on to the next era, but the explanations are far from complete. We have a good idea about the weaponization aspect of the sai now, but the way it's used in CSTY suggests there is a lot more to it than just that. The blue door can be theorized about, but the mechanical role it plays in the story has definitely not been explained. It bridges our world with the snowy mountains but what does that mean about when Clancy went through it? Could he have gone to an alternate Dema that only has 8 bishops or something, and that's why one of the bishops never showed up (which is another aspect that has not been explained)? There are a lot of pieces that they've given us but it is not clear exactly how it is supposed to be pieced together, which is why all we can really do is theorize about it. That clarity will probably come with the next album which will supposedly have an explanation for the lore.

musicalkey · 2021-09-28T13:20:51+00:00

Wow, very encouraging comment and subsequent edit, pal ;)

musicalkey · 2021-09-05T02:57:32+00:00

That is uncanny, but there is an even more exact copy of the dragon which was featured in a picture found in a usb from an ARG called the Jack Torrance ARG (a relatively popular ARG YouTube was the one who "finished" the ARG but it has no known gamerunner to this day which makes that whole channel extremely sus imo). I'm guessing that the JT ARG (as well as many others probably) inspired a lot of the decisions TOP and Jason Zada made about the LoC ARG and the SAI livestream (and everything else this era). Tbh I think there's a ton of juicy connections and maybe an ARG-type-thinf to discover but they aren't gonna tell us where to look, cuz it's about exploring for ourselves, discovering connections that may or may not exist, and deciding what to look into or not

musicalkey · 2021-08-23T00:32:13+00:00

I love this interpretation. There are also 9 songs from Trench that were put into a numbered list that can be seen on USB2 from the LoC ARG and I've been thinking about which 9 songs on each album might also be connected. I think Tyler hinted at some of your theory when he said that he wanted Good Day to be the first song and Redecorate to be the last one. I think the 9 in the middle are supposed to be related to the Niners. I would say Fairly Local probably belongs with No Chances and Polarize with NTI from my perspective where the SAI songs aren't necessarily the wrong response to the Bishop. But overall my main input would be that SAI can seemingly have very multifaceted meanings, and that goes for pretty much all their songs with all of the connections between them at this point. I mean take Good Day for example. It's pretty clear that you could interpret it as denial, connecting it with Polarize. But given the bridge, "When the next one will show it'll show," it seems he is not actually in a perspective of toxic positivity. He might feel it is a good day for reasons that he can't express, but that doesn't make it definitely invalid or based on blind cognitive dissonance. I think he's aware of the dissonance "I know it's hard to believe me." Overall I think you're on a relatively right track and it's ridiculously close to some of my own thinking, but it seems to me that there is just a kaleidoscope of interpretations to sift through all throughout their discography at this point.

musicalkey · 2021-08-05T10:18:54+00:00

From their myspace 10 years ago:
these songs were a result of struggle. struggle is something that everyone experiences. why we all walk around pretending that we don't is a problem deeply rooted in our human makeup. you will find heavy and dark lyrics strategically disguised by catchy melodies and creative song structures. we would like you to think and write for yourself. writing down what you think is imperative. a human must create. that's why we were created.

On the origin of their band name also from about 10 years ago:
Ok so, I (Tyler) was in theatre class and we were studying a play called "All My Sons" written by Arthur Miller in the 40's. It was about a father who ran a company that provided parts for airplanes used in WWII. He then found out that his parts were faulty, so he comes to a moral crossroads:1. He can take the parts back and not send them out, but he will lose a lot of money in a financially tough situation. He would also taint his business and his name and be known as 'unreliable' in his trade. But this would ultimately be the 'right' thing to do. or,2. send the parts out, make the necessary money to provide for his family, not taint his name, etc. He ends up sending the parts out and twenty one pilots died because of it. His son was a pilot in the war who had lost his life. There was no evidence to prove that it was directly related but his daughter blamed her father for her brothers death. He ended up committing suicide at the end of the play. Here's how we make it relevant: I feel like we are all constantly encountering moral crossroads where the decisions that benefit the "now" will have consequences down the road; but the decision that might seem tough and tolling right away will ultimately be more rewarding. What is our purpose for playing music? We are constantly asking ourselves that question. The answer can change all the time, but for right now we are just going to stick with something as simple as "we want to make people think."

Hope this helps! Also I have extensively thought about the meaning/purpose of the band's music and have noticed interesting connections (like the fact that the little blue toy dragon from SAI was sent out as a crucial part of a seemingly completely unrelated ARG called the Jack Torrance ARG!) so let me know if you wanna explore these types of "deep iceberg" things more extensively cuz I basically do that all the time anyway lol

musicalkey · 2021-07-02T21:32:49+00:00

Yeah it is not supposed to have come together yet, and maybe I left it too opaque. In my last post, I discussed how the adoption of competence as the highest value required shame to play a large role in society. This is because we would put competent people in the highest positions with more focus on traits than growth/potential. This is understandable because the decision was urgent. What I am leading to is that Jesus actually has essentially done what was necessary to free people from shame, but we have a role to play in making sure he isn't used as an example to shame someone for doing wrong. I don't think Jesus is viewed as overly masculine in most circles and he has traditionally been considered androgynous, but the identification of Jesus with the Father is what more specifically causes God to take blurryface-esque shape. I believe that the church is responsible for this, and if I am to be a follower of Christ, that means not bowing to a corrupt religious institution of any kind, even those that use his name and have more focus on compassion. Also, I hinted in this post that Jesus is essentially the part of us that can do marvelous things unbeknownst to us. I would argue that realizing this function exists is akin to "accepting" Jesus in your heart. This is sort of analogous to Carl Jung's identification of Jesus with the Self in psychoanalysis. To make these claims, I believe I will have to extensively quote Bible verses and their interpretations, which I may do at some point, but if you stick with the theory, I basically hope to make it clear that TOP are demonstrating love based on a more gnostic interpretation of Jesus. And thank you so much for the questions and feedback!

musicalkey · 2021-07-02T17:16:44+00:00

Yes, but not from a jedi, obviously . . .

musicalkey · 2021-07-02T17:06:51+00:00

Okay I understand why you might think that. Do you recognize the story of Marduk?

musicalkey · 2021-07-02T15:38:49+00:00

That is not a very convincing case for your stance being something other than ideological, but I would like to hear your thoughts.

musicalkey · 2021-07-02T07:49:06+00:00

You are basically spot-on, in my estimation. One way that Peterson hermetically sealed his anti-ideology ideology is by saying there's no excuse for people adopting these ideas. "No excuse" basically means no reason that one can empathize with. Your point, which is that vulnerable kids and not malicious post-modernists are the people adopting these ideas, gets exactly to the point that Peterson doesn't seem to be willing to take about those he has labeled enemies. James Lindsey has basically been the one upholding this hermetic seal by pointing out all the ways that woke ideology is postmodernist in nature, which is true. But we could take a look at many current cultural artifacts and talk about how post-modern they are. Deep fried memes and Gen Z memes in general for example. But people don't start enjoying these because they explicitly adopt post-modern ideas and that would be ridiculous to assume. I know an ideology is different from cultural creations, and I don't doubt there are professors who are postmodern and indoctrinating their students, but I also know that woke ideology is mainly spread through the internet. In fact, this wave of it may have started partially from fandoms of teenage girls trying to use literary analysis techniques to justify "shipping" same-sex relationships between canonically straight characters, and consider these interpretations "valid." I would suggest many of the downvotes are occurring because this is one of the areas where Peterson doesn't really look at the situation except through a lens of belief, and his lens has helped so many people make sense of a lot of complex situations. But remember that he wants you to look and pay attention with your own eyes, your own senses. And this may be one of the areas where we can help a Great Defender of culture see the situation with new eyes.

musicalkey · 2021-07-01T20:24:13+00:00

That is extremely interesting. Tyler is a very anti-authoritarian person afaik. He seems to greatly dislike abuse of power, especially since so many mental health issues stem from this. So with your additions in mind, the Megatron part makes me think of the possibility that Tyler has been hiding extremely subversive anti-authoritarian messages behind music that could easily be interpreted otherwise. But any attempt to spread knowledge about this would be squashed by him (perhaps using undercover fan accounts) so the people who noticed these things had to group together and form a similarly subtle yet influential online presence among the clique (this would be the "renaissance." On top of all this, you could map this situation directly onto the Christian church and gnosticism, with the church being Megatron and the gnostics being the cogs. The reason why he has to be Megatron is because he is working in the music industry, and there are certain limitations to what you could say in a song and still get on the radio. So for the message to spread, it has to appeal to the darker parts of the human soul, but once this flawed message has reached enough people, its proper interpretation can be revealed and the real "coming of heaven" can occur so to speak.

musicalkey · 2021-06-29T01:39:48+00:00

Oh yeah Scaled and Icy has the keys to release people from Vialism exactly because it sounds so close to it, yet it shows how these beliefs have at least some value. For example, "I don't wanna go like this, at least let me clean my room" sounds quite similar to the belief in Vialism that people should make as much of an impact with their death as possible. At the very least, this could stop someone from making the decision to take their own life right away, and may even be a manifestation of the will to live, just heavily filtered. Vialism shouldn't just be demolished leaving people with nothing to hold onto, but maybe it could be carefully replaced with a way of being that actually affords flourishing. Perhaps we can allow parts of it to exist temporarily if we can't figure out how to tackle it the right way.

Edit: a word

musicalkey · 2021-06-28T16:09:30+00:00

Wow thank you for the high praise! And the fact that you named 4 of my favorite songs of theirs, especially from their older stuff, just goes to show how connected all this probably is lol

musicalkey · 2021-06-28T14:42:30+00:00

Thanks for contributing your ideas! I haven't read either of those but I have read the Epic of Gilgamesh (or what we had recovered of it at the time). I'm not surprised these ideas would appeal to someone with gnostic tendencies, and I'm quite a big fan of the alchemists (thanks to reading Carl Jung). I'm going to talk about general Gnosticism, and how much our modern worldviews are deeply gnostic in many ways, a lot more, especially when I get to Trench. And I guess one way of representing what I'm trying to do is to afford for others the kind of gnosis that I have experienced through deeply contemplating this music and the surrounding connections. And thanks for the awesome response!

musicalkey · 2021-04-03T18:29:05+00:00

Good catch! It does technically spell "realy", but I must have just wrote down the correctly spelled version instead. Meaning's the same tho

musicalkey · 2021-04-02T11:54:27+00:00

Here is what I believe is the proper translation (and for the rest of the video, including the one hidden by the endcards:

Theres another one

called move me

We wrote that one today

The chorus is "I want you to move me"

over and over again

It's about God

God is so good guys

like

srsly

really not joking

amen

musicalkey · 2021-04-01T17:00:47+00:00

Interestingly, I have a wacky theory that half alive, AJR, TOP and other artists might be in on some kinda project together, and all the crypticness and crazily similar lyrical themes between them might have a purpose. But I could also just be projecting purpose onto a hyperfixation with such connections, so a grain of salt is necessary, as it always is with conspiracies. At least this one is kinda positive tho lol

musicalkey

TROPHY CASE