#but there HAS to be something here

[the-nation-of-today]

Ballerinas, Barbers, and Brides

(or: an attempt to theorize on what BVB 7 is going to be about)

So everyone saw my deranged theory post yesterday. Here is my attempt to take that theory and put it into actual coherent thought.

We know BVB 7 has been teased and talked about. But what is it going to be about? My theory is that BVB 7 is going to be a concept album that focuses on a story about antagonists and the dangers of giving in to your darker wants and impulses. 

Let's get right into it.

I. BACKGROUND

Where are we right now in regards to the state of the band and its music?

Of the concept albums, we’ve already had two that focus on the heroes of the story (Wretched And Divine/Vale) and one that focuses on an antihero/morally gray character (The Phantom Tomorrow)

We know BVB 7 is being actively worked on

Andy has teased his notebook for this album (posted on his Insta story in June)

CC has recently been in the studio tracking drums with Erik Ron (he posted it on his Instagram story, I had a screenshot of it but have since apparently deleted it to make room for concert content.) (Edit: we found it!! Posted August 27th to his story)

Jake has teased multiple possible in-progress songs while on stream (I don’t have any clips of these but if anyone does please send them over and I’ll add them.) (Edit: a Twitter friend is letting me share these tweets from back in August re: what Jake has said)

Both Andy and Jake have teased that the new music is going to be heavier and harder with the incorporation of bits of death metal and deathcore, along with the tease of more Andy screaming. Andy in particular teased it in this Icon Vs. Icon interview about The Mourning (if anyone has a Jake tease, do share and I'll add it.)

II. BLACK SWAN

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that this part does not have as much solid ground to stand on as the rest of the theory. However, it’s still worth talking about. This theory stems from the makeup looks that Andy did in Mexico and in the band’s pre-Mexico photoshoot. It’s been affectionately dubbed the Black Swan look due to the similarities between the look and Natalie Portman’s appearance on the Black Swan movie poster

But let’s take a look at what the actual plot and message of Black Swan is. According to IMDb, Black Swan focuses on Nina (Portman), “a talented but unstable ballerina on the verge of stardom. Pushed to the breaking point by her artistic director and a seductive rival, Nina's grip on reality slips, plunging her into a waking nightmare.”

Then, we get to the message of the movie itself. According to this article by Courtney Campbell of The True Colors: “In “Black Swan,” the movie highlights the dangerous divide between being passionate of your work and being obsessed with perfecting it. The director and Lily showcase passion; both of them are clearly enamored with ballet yet their psyches aren’t ravaged by it. Nina and her mother represent obsession. The pair have devoted their lives to ballet to the exclusion of everything else.”

So now we come to the crux of it: obsession. Nina, our protagonist, obsessed over ballet and her attempts to be cast in the principal role in Swan Lake. Because of this, her mind quite literally breaks and she begins to hallucinate more and more, to the point in the ending where she believes she is stabbing her rival with a shard of glass but instead has stabbed herself. Nina becomes her own worst enemy and, depending on how you interpret Black Swan’s ambiguous ending, dies because her passion became obsession.

So what does this mean for BVB 7? Well, there are many parallels between the world of Nina and the world of music- namely the desperate need to “make it”, and then stay relevant. It’s not an uncommon trend to see musicians fall into the same spirals that Nina did. While her story is an exaggerated one due to the nature of the movie, the themes are all too relevant to the life of a musician. In fact, loathe as I am to admit it because the movie is not good, we see a very similar theme in American Satan, which Andy starred in.

Black Swan is a story about how your need for perfectionism can twist you into something darker, and how being solely obsessed with one thing can cause your life to end.

III. SWEENEY TODD

Now here is where the theory really starts to hold weight. If there is one thing to know about Andy, it is that Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, is one of his favorite musicals of all time. He’s dressed up as the titular barber before and has recently gotten a new Sweeney Todd tattoo.

In case you aren’t familiar with the plot of the musical, let’s do a quick look at the synopsis. According to Wikipedia, the musical “retells the melodramatic Victorian tale of Sweeney Todd, an English barber and serial killer who, while seeking revenge on Judge Turpin who wrongfully convicted and exiled him to steal his wife, murders his customers and, with the help of his accomplice, Mrs. Lovett, processes their corpses into meat pies.”

Pretty gruesome stuff, but we really shouldn’t be surprised here. Essentially, the story is about a man who was once gentle and kind and has since been twisted into something cruel and evil. Sound familiar? Perhaps like a certain protagonist of a ballet movie previously mentioned? It’s also worth mentioning that, at the end of the musical, Todd ends up being killed because his blind lust for revenge has distracted him.

Now, I didn’t think there was much to this, I thought Andy’s Instagram captions were simply alluding to Sweeney Todd because he is, as we know, a big fan.

We have “Attend the tale” which is the first line that’s sung in the opening number The Ballad of Sweeney Todd (“Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd”) and “My friends” which is the title of a song about midway through Act 1/the first half of the movie where Todd first swears revenge. His “friends” that he’s referring to are his razors, his murder weapons.

But this all changed with yesterday’s (9/29) post.

Simply captioned “Epiphany”, that could mean anything, right? Epiphany is a pretty common word. WRONG.

“Epiphany”, in Sweeney Todd, is a major turning point in Act 1. Before this point in the musical, Todd was very self-controlled and precise. At this point in the musical, Todd had the object of his revenge (the Judge) in his grasp, but he escapes. This breaks Todd and that earlier precision is gone. Losing out on one chance of revenge has ruined his already fragile mind so much that here is where he decides to indiscriminately murder anyone he can get his hands on. These snippets from a (semi-negative) review of one production of Sweeney Todd from the Washington Post and a musical analysis of the show by From Score To Stage explain it better than I could.

What gets me is that it is not just a turning point for Todd's character, but for his musical structure. Oh? A change in music you say? A reference to a change in music when the band has teased that their new music will have some changes? Interesting.

But these are just coincidences, right? Let’s take one look further at this band and what they’ve been doing. On the recent Mexico leg, their intro music for when they come onto the stage was just The Phantom Tomorrow (Introduction). But they changed that for the US leg. And what did they change it to? Take a listen (y'know, outside of the various screams of yours truly)

Don’t recognize it? Take a listen to this.

That’s right, they’re using the opening title of Sweeney Todd as their introduction music for this leg. Now, I don’t know about you guys, but that is far too many “coincidences” to not at least make a note of. (Shout out to Tal @sonsofnight for picking up on this btw because I did not recognize it)

IV. CONCLUSION 

So where does this leave us? We have an album we know is in the works and two pieces of media that focus on the twisting of human desires into something darker. Perfection into obsession and controlled anger into revenge. Both end negatively for the protagonist in question, with either an ambiguous or confirmed death.

There is one last point I want to bring up- The Mourning. What started out as The Phantom Tomorrow part two that then morphed into its own thing. And one of the songs on there? The Revival, which has the lyrics “Did you find what you need in the solace? / Is the pain worth the soul and promise?” and “Did you find what you need in the solace? / Is the soul worth the pain of a world we can’t revive?”

Or, maybe in a different interpretation, was what you were striving for worth it? Was that perfection you were seeking worth the mental breakdown? Was that revenge you sought worth carving through the world and spilling its blood? Was all of that worth it, only for you to die at the end?

Whether this was meant to be a tease, I can’t say for certain. But for these themes to pop up in the transition release between TPT and what will (hopefully soon) be BVB 7? All I am going to say is that it lines up just a little too well for my liking to be a set of coincidences. And now that we’ve had the stories of our heroes and antiheroes told, maybe it’s time for the villains and antagonists to take the spotlight.

[gibbearish]

love when ppl defend the aggressive monetization of the internet with "what, do you just expect it to be free and them not make a profit???" like. yeah that would be really nice actually i would love that:)! thanks for asking

[inkskinned]

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.

[mynnthia]

was talking with a friend about how some of dunmeshi fаndom misunderstands kabru's initial feelings towards laios.

to sum up kabru's situation via a self-contained modernized metaphor:

kabru is like a guy who lost his entire family in a highly traumatic car accident. years later he joins a discord server and takes note of laios, another server member who seems interesting, so they start chatting. then laios reveals his special interest and favorite movie of all time is David Cronenberg's Crash (1996), and invites kabru to go watch a demolition derby with him

[canisalbus]

✦ Freshly ordained ✦

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Dog Meshi.

[elodieunderglass]

changes and trends in horror-genre films are linked to the anxieties of the culture in its time and place. Vampires are the manifestation of grappling with sexuality; aliens, of foreign influence. Horror from the Cold War is about apathy and annihilation; classic Japanese horror is characterised by “nature’s revenge”; psychological horror plays with anxieties that absorbed its audience, like pregnancy/abortion, mental illness, femininity. Some horror presses on the bruise of being trapped in a situation with upsetting tasks to complete, especially ones that compromise you as a person - reflecting the horrors and anxieties of capitalism etc etc etc. Cosmic horror is slightly out of fashion because our culture is more comfortable with, even wistful for, “the unknown.” Monster horror now has to be aware of itself, as a contingent of people now live in the freedom and comfort of saying “I would willingly, gladly, even preferentially fuck that monster.” But I don’t know much about films or genres: that ground has been covered by cleverer people.

I don’t actually like horror or movies. What interests me at the moment is how horror of the 2020s has an element of perception and paying attention.

Multiple movies in one year discussed monsters that killed you if you perceived them. There are monsters you can’t look at; monsters that kill you instantly if you get their attention. Monsters where you have to be silent, look down, hold still: pray that they pass over you. M Zombies have changed from a hand-waved virus that covers extras in splashy gore, to insidious spores. A disaster film is called Don’t Look Up, a horror film is called Nope. Even trashy nun horror sets up strange premises of keeping your eyes fixed on something as the devil GETS you.

No idea if this is anything. (I haven’t seen any of these things because, unfortunately, I hate them.) Someone who understands better than me could say something clever here, and I hope they do.

But the thing I’m thinking about is what this will look like to the future, as the Victorian sex vampires and Cold War anxieties look to us. I think they’ll have a little sympathy, but they probably won’t. You poor little prey animals, the kids will say, you were awfully afraid of facing up to things, weren’t you?

[diornies]

Suddenly, it's December by margaux paul

[nine-aetharia]

y'all telling me the bourgeoisie butcher. the ceo sniper. the healthcare hitman. may have possibly shot that ceo with a vet gun like he was putting down a dog, wrote Deny, Defend, Depose on the bullets, and then deliberately left behind his backpack filled with monopoly money. y'all telling me that is his design

[daisybell-on-a-carousel]

Being someone who read Under The Red Hood and came out with the firm belief that, for Jason, it's not about killing Joker, it's about Jason wanting proof Batman would choose him over the Joker (bc shelia chose the joker). Makes seeing any other media where it's all about just wanting the Joker dead is a teeny bit frustrating. to be honest

Jason could've killed the Joker himself, really, really easily. Jason kidnaps the Joker before the confrontation. I can't open my comic for a reference right now, but it felt like he had the Joker for quite a bit before the confrontation. He had him. He beat him up with a crowbar. He had every single opportunity to kill the Joker himself, but he didn't because that wasn't his goal. Make no mistake, he did plan for the Joker to be dead by the end of it, but do you see what im trying to say here

Edit: If I knew this post was gonna get 1000+ notes I would've tried to word it better or something, this was a rant I made on the way to the grocery store 😭

It's not about making Batman kill either. When Batman says he won't kill, Jason adjusts and goes, 'Let ME kill the Joker or kill me to stop me' instead. The test is all about Batman choosing him. The whole final confrontation is Jason's first death again. The parent, The Joker, and the explosives. It even ends with Jason unable to move as a bomb goes off right next to him again because the parent didn't choose Jason. And instead tried finding an option that'd benefit them and (consequencely) letting the Joker walk, again, lol, lmao <-in agony

[chloesimaginationthings]

The death of Vanessa and the birth of Vanny in FNAF

(Inspired by this art by Yuto Sano)

[astralpenguin]

self care is writing a fic that you’re literally the sole target audience for

[spitedemon]

i really don’t think it’s “typical dragon age fandom nonsense” for people to be genuinely upset about the world state choices. combat, level design, art direction, gameplay gimmicks, those have all varied across each dragon age game. the one thing that’s remained constant are nods to our previous choices.

i wasn’t expecting my HoF to come riding in on a griffon, but i can’t find a monument dedicated to warden tabris somewhere around the anderfels? lucanis couldn’t have some lines about the time that one arainai boy was stirring up trouble in antiva city? you’re gonna tell me that making a mage the new divine wouldn’t have some impact on nevarra and antiva? on the anderfels, the supposed most devout militant andrastian nation in thedas? you’re saying nobody in the north is paying attention to who rules orlais or ferelden? come on.

[hailsatanacab]

Family Dinners - dpxdc

"Holy shit, you're Bruce Wayne!" Danny gaped, jabbing a finger at the man sitting at the head of the table.

The bustling dining room goes silent as everyone turns to look at him.

"Danny, who did you think was going to be here?" Tim asks, disbelief plain in his voice and Danny feels his face flush red.

"Sorry, I, uh, I guess I just never put it together. Tim Drake-Wayne. Wayne Manor. It, uh, makes sense now." He laughs sheepishly and scrubs at his neck before slumping back down into his chair.

"Well," Tim says with an indulgent sigh, "at least I know you're not just friends with me for my connections."

"Yeah, I'm really sorry, I just never thought about it, I guess."

Danny sinks lower as everyone around him laughs. Come to dinner, he said, the food is the best, he said, ignore the family, he said. Danny really wishes he'd listened to Tim and just ignored them—almost as much as he's regretting accepting the offer in the first place—but... he's having dinner with Batman.

Ancients, that's so weird!

The last time he saw Batman was in the future and, suffice it to say, it was not going well. There hadn't really been time for family dinners there.

Wait. Family dinners?

He peers around the table, openly gawking at everyone as it all clicks into place.

"Everything alright, Danny? Now realising who everyone else is?" Tim asks with a roll of his eyes.

"Uh... something like that..." Danny mumbles as everyone laughs again.

From further down the table, the smallest Wayne scoffs and clicks his tongue.

"I thought you said he was smart, Drake?"

"So, you all do it, too, then?" he asks, ignoring the jibe. Danny's only a little bit jealous as he thinks of how much easier they must have it, how much easier it'd be if his family had been on his side, too. "You all work together?"

"Nah," Dick says from across the table with a brilliant grin. "Tim's the only one that works with Bruce, we all have different jobs. I'm a police officer in Bludhaven."

"Disgusting." Danny blurts out without thinking—because seriously, what kind of self-respecting vigilante would also be a police officer?—before clapping a hand over his mouth. "Sorry."

The whole table laughs again, the loudest being the blonde girl a few spaces down from Dick. Look, Danny wasn't really paying attention to names when they were all paraded in front of him. Dick only gets remembered because his name is a joke.

Come on, Danny, recover!

"That's, uh, not what I meant, though."

"Oh?" Dick asks, cocking his head slightly to the side. Is it Danny's imagination or does his smile tense slightly?

"Yeah, I mean like, you know, in costume. It must make it so much easier to have everyone together like this."

"Costume? What do you mean?"

Yeah, Danny's not imagining it, everyone tenses up at that. It's really only now that he's realising that this probably isn't how he should bring up that he knows about their... night time activities. In fact, he probably shouldn't be bringing it up at all.

"Uuhhh..." Danny looks wildly around the table as he continues making his stupid noise. Think, think, think! There must be a way out of this!

"Danny?" Tim asks, looking concerned.

"Oh, Ancients, this isn't how I wanted it to go at all," he mutters, slipping even further into his chair. He's almost on the floor now and he so, so wishes it could just swallow him up.

His real first meeting with Batman was meant to be cool! He had planned to be Phantom, maybe save them from a tight spot, prove his worth as a mysterious and powerful ally as thanks for the help Batman gave him in the future.

"Danny, what are you talking about?" Tim starts tugging on his sleeve in an attempt to pull him back up from his pit of despair.

Eventually, Danny relents and sits up straighter, hiding his face in his hands and whining all the while.

"I'm sorry, I just didn't expect him to be here and it threw me off so now I look stupid and it's so embarrassing!" he wails, flailing his arms wide. "Why wouldn't you warn me that Batman was your adopted dad, Tim? Couldn't you have let me know?"

"I'm sorry, what? Danny are you alright? There's no way Bruce can be Batman, look at him!"

"Yeah," the blonde girl laughs from the bottom of the table, "look at him! That's a wet noodle of a man! Batman can actually do things, B is incapable of pretty much everything."

"Thank you, Stephanie," Bruce sighs, massaging his forehead.

It's... Those are the first words Danny's heard Batman say since everything went down and it's enough to knock him out of his embarrassment.

It's really good to hear his voice again. Especially now, when it's strong and healthy and full of personality—even if that personality is little more than a tired father right now—far better than how it had been, at the end.

Danny sits up, back straight, and grins. He's got this. He remembers it perfectly. Some people count sheep to fall asleep, Danny repeats his mantra to be certain that he'll never forget it.

"Gamma alpha upsilon tau iota mu epsilon, 42, 63, 28, 1 colon 65 dash 9."

Once again, the whole table falls into silence.

"Holy shit..." breathes the other D name (Duke? Danny's pretty sure he's Signal) from opposite Stephanie. "Isn't that...?"

"The time travelling code." The littlest Wayne says stiffly. "We have met in the future?"

"That's not just the time travelling code, Dami." Dick says, looking between Danny and Bruce. "That's the family time travelling code."

Danny's grin freezes in place.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"1 colon 65 dash 9." Dick explains, still flicking between him and Bruce. "It means you've been adopted into the family and we should all treat you as such, no questions asked."

"Tell you what, I'm about to ask a question." Danny says, dumbstruck. "You just told me it was a code to identify time travellers, not anything about being adopted! What the hell, B?"

Bruce looks about as shellshocked as Danny feels.

"We must have been close," he says finally, after opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water a few times.

"No! Not that close!" Danny reels back, taking a deep breath ready to refute it all, but... "Well, I mean, you found me when I first got stuck, and you helped me get better despite being... And then we fought together against the, uh, bad guy, before he, um, he... before you couldn't."

An uncomfortable beat passes while they all pick up on what Danny tried so hard not to say.

"So, you're not from the future, then, you travelled there and came back?" Tim asks, breaking the tension and leaning forward with a glint in his eye.

"Yeah, it was a whole end of the world thing, but don't worry about it," Danny says with a hand wave, "It's all kosher now, won't ever happen."

"What did happen?"

"Seriously, don't worry about it, we cool."

"How long in the future was it?"

"About ten years? You were pretty spry for an old man, B," Danny laughs, wishing they'd get off the topic of what happened and get back to the adoption bit.

Everyone shares degrees of a cautious smile as they relax out of the shock, and Dick—whose grin is the biggest—says, "No wonder you got the family code, you're already riffing on him like one of us. How long were you there for?"

"A week, before I managed to get back to my present and stop him then."

"A week? Jeez, B, that has to set some kind of record, seriously."

"Oh!" Danny says, sitting bolt upright and blinking in surprise before pointing at Dick and bouncing in his seat. "You're Nightwing!"

"What?"

"That's exactly what Nightwing said when Batman told me the code! Makes so much more sense now."

Dick laughs and claps his hands, delighted.

"You were not formally adopted?" The grumpy small one—Dami?—asks, his face pinched.

"I didn't even know I was informally adopted."

"And your parents? Are they alive or dead?"

"Damian, stop—"

"They were dead in the future, but they're alive now." Danny says, looking down. He fiddles with the tablecloth, twisting the fabric around his fingers as he fights down the pang of sadness that he always feels when he thinks of them now. He forces a bright smile on his face and hopes it doesn’t look too strained. "I just, uh, can't talk to them much, anymore."

"Damian," Dick warns, "1 colon 65 dash 9. Treat them as family, no questions asked."

"This is Damian treating him as family, the little turd has no manners." Tim scoffs, rolling his eyes, but he gently bumps shoulders with Danny to knock him out of his funk. Danny can't help but send him a watery smile.

"I have the most exemplary manners, Drake, unlike some people." Damian spits, crossing his arms with a pout. "I was merely ascertaining his status to see how he could possibly fit into the family."

"I know this is all a bit sudden, Danny," Bruce smiles, ignoring Damian and reaching out to lay a warm hand on his arm, "for all of us. But if I felt strongly enough to give you that code after spending a week with you in the future, then you are more than welcome in this family, if you so choose it. I think I can speak for all of us when I say we'd like to get to know you a bit more."

"I know a threat when I hear it, Bruce." Danny snorts. "But, yeah, I get it. I'm sorry this is all so weird, it really wasn't how I wanted to find you again, but... I'm glad I did."

"So are we, Danny." Dick says, with a warm smile. "And formally or not, 1 colon 65 dash 9 means you're family. Welcome to the fun house! No take backs or refunds, sorry. You're stuck with us."

[deviouz]

jason todd who fucks you harder when you try to refrain from making any little sound, any lewd facial expression, any telling that he’s got you practically soaking his cock with your arousal. you might try to hold back from letting him know just how well he’s fucking you, but your eyes always tell. they get glazed over and half-lidded with blown out pupils. god, there’s nothing he adores more than seeing them widen, seeing tears well up in your waterline after a particularly well placed thrust.

he’ll cage you in between his arms and look deep into those pretty eyes with a smug smirk plastered on his face, give you no where to look but at him. he’s got your body shuddering with every thrust, hands desperately grasping anywhere but him to find reprieve, but that plan inevitably falters. arms wound around his shoulders, body bucking upwards with every punctuated thrust, jason finally manages to break you. he’s got you damn near screaming on his cock in a matter of no time, and he couldn’t be more pleased with himself.

[em-bandaid-boy]

Hiiii thanks for 500 followerrrs!!! Idk why so many of you are here but thaanks 💖

(Seriously tho thank you its pretty cool) anyways I drew more murderous robots lol