#my family & friends won't let me yammer about this anymore so it's getting dumped here

[artist-issues]

Listen, insecurity is self-focus. It's hard to have, it's sad to struggle with, it's a bloody battle to fight against it—but that is still what it is. It's you, tunneling your vision onto your flaws, then constructing your life and the way you interact with the outside world around hiding those flaws. Or, maybe you're not hiding them—you're just ordering your life so that you feel some control over the flaws. Or you're not acknowledging them as flaws at all, you're saying "flaws" but you're treating them like "badges of identity, who I am, unique character traits I'll always be dramatically associated with."

That's insecurity. You're not secure in who you are, where your worth comes from, and what your purpose is, so you make it up for yourself. Whether that looks like hiding the flaws or pretending to own the flaws.

BUT. Then insecurity still controls you. One way or another—because you're constantly fighting it with tools that don't work, because they're all based on you. Your opinion of yourself. Self-focus. And you can't be trusted to maintain a sound, or even accurate opinion of yourself at all times. You're the least objective observer of your own self.

But if you keep it, the rampant self-focus leads to deep darkness that you can’t find or feel the way out of. You can start thinking that you have no impact for good or bad (because you “impacting something” has become the dream) in life, so maybe you better have an impact in death.

What you really need is someone outside of you, who knows you perfectly and you can't hide your flaws from them or fool them with overcompensation, to assign worth to you. And purpose. And because that person is objectively right about you, and loves you, they're an anchor when your own opinion of yourself gets skewed--or when others who don't know you skew it. Then you can rely on that anchor and stop focusing on yourself so much, because the anchor is there, He's not going anywhere.

So here's my take on Clancy, Trench, and the whole DEMA thing.

1. Who is Clancy?

The protagonist. The little red “you are here” embodiment of where Tyler Joseph is, in his own brain, as he goes through different headspaces. I don’t think he’s all of Tyler at once all the time, but for the purposes of this post he’s Tyler, in the same way that the little car emoji in your GPS is ‘you’ on the map.

The main thing about Clancy is that he has only a few characteristics.

Characteristic 1) He’s got a special gift.

It appears to be “writing,” at first, but then that’s expanded to “he’s good at using creativity.” You can tell, because when the Bishops don’t kill him even when he becomes a symbol of rebellion—which wasn’t really something he did on purpose—instead, they make him write for them. And later, that’s expanded to “good at using creativity,” because Clancy a) has been able to escape an inescapable city by performing and b) is the only character we’ve seen gifted with NED’s seizing antlers—which are literally “what grows out of the head of creativity.”

Characteristic 2) He doesn’t know what’s going on, and he’s never 100% sure what to do about it even when he does have a grasp of his situation.

This characteristic is important. Clancy is an instrument in other characters’ hands. He does choose to escape, but his resolve to stay out of DEMA is pretty shaky. When he escapes, he isn’t sure where he’s going. When he’s brought back, he’s not sure if he was actually brought back or if he gave up. When he is rescued the second time, it’s because he’s needed for something, not because planned it. When he’s captured the second time, it’s because he’s needed for something, not because he decided to go back. When he’s set free on the submarine, it’s because someone else planned to rescue him. When he starts the burning of DEMA, it’s because someone else gave him the antlers.

And the entire time, he’s sort of going back and forth as far as how he feels about it all. He definitely doesn’t like DEMA, but he doesn’t really know what else to put his trust in. He doesn’t know what the Banditos are planning well enough to take part in it. He’s “blown about by every wind.”

Until this album cycle. When he very definitively decides he is going to burn DEMA down, follow the plan of the Torchbearer, and use the gift he’s been given to do it. He even starts to understand what old dreams and feelings of attack were coming from. So there’s that.

Basically, Clancy is a character who grows and changes. He goes from “where am I and where should I be going?” to “I know where I’m going, even if I don’t know if I’ll make it or how to get there, and I’m going to take the steps I can.” Which is important, when the setting of “going somewhere” is Tyler’s psyche.

And with that:

2. What is DEMA?

It’s Tyler’s bad headspace. If Clancy’s there, he’s trapped in the headspace where dark thoughts run the show, and he easily slips into patterns that they lay out for him.

This is Biblical, too, this whole “separating parts of your mind,” instead of letting your thoughts run rampant. 2 Corinthians 10:5 is all about spiritual warfare, and the lies of this world and evil, trying to convince you of things that aren’t true, and how the anchor you can tie your thoughts down to is “Who Christ is, and What He says to Do.” By “tie the thoughts down to an anchor,” I mean, “take them captive.”

DEMA is a way of taking them captive, on a meta level. It’s the idea that you can isolate the part of your brain where it’s easiest for them to have free rein, and then it’d not go there.

But in the story, DEMA is characterized by grayness, stone, pointless routines, and the feeling of being trapped. When you’re in that place I mentioned above, mentally, where you’ve focused on yourself for so long that you don’t know what else there is and you feel totally numb, that’s what it feels like.

But there’s two other elements of DEMA that line up with what I was saying up above, about self-focus.

3. Who Are the Bishops and What is Vialism?

The Bishops are Dark Thoughts, and Vialism is the lie they draw the most power from spreading. If DEMA is just a place (the bad headspace) the Bishops are what live in that place, and Vialism is the big lie that keeps you there.

There are 9 Bishops (or 8, after it’s revealed that Keons isn’t really on their side.) The leader is Nicolas Bourbaki, but he doesn’t like it when you use his real name, he’d rather be called Blurryface. Actually, he’d prefer you not notice his name at all, but that’s another topic. Each of these Dark Thoughts controls a different segment of the Bad Headspace.

They hide their faces behind blurry gauze, and divide what little you can see of that with white and black paint. I think this is because Blurryface is named after the Bourbaki group, who were mathematicians trying to prove something about God through their systems—and that’s a very black-and-white, exacting thing to try and do. But at the same time, while they’re so coldly examining God, the Dark Thoughts don’t want anybody to be able to see anything clearly about Dark Thoughts. Anyway.

The Bishops don’t want anyone leaving the dark headspace. And Vialism is a “religion” where you believe that the only way to “paradise” is by killing yourself. Once the citizens of DEMA kill themselves, the Dark Thoughts convince everyone else that this was an amazing thing to do, call the dead people “Glorious Gone,” and celebrate it. All the while, they use antlers to control the dead bodies as part of that plan.

I think the concept is so cool that we miss how wonderfully simple it is. It’s just this:

The dark thoughts make you believe that you can have no impact unless you’re dead. They don’t care if they’re magnifying your flaws and telling you to accept them, or if they’re magnifying your flaws and telling you you’ll never be worth anything because of them. As long as it leads to the same conclusion: “So you won’t make an impact. Unless you die.” And they go, “see, look how impactful it was when these other people killed themselves. What a stir they made. What a memory they left behind. That could be you; nothing else you do is getting you that.” That’s what puppeting dead bodies and calling it “glorious” is for. That’s the lie that the whole system, the routines, the atmosphere of the dark headspace, is reinforcing.

That’s the Bishops, and Vialism. Of course because they’re getting so climactic about it, we should look carefully at two:

3.b Who is Keons?

I don’t know for sure. He is either representative of music-as-a-temporary-diversion, because he is a Dark Thought that manages to be helpful (like putting lyrics about your insecurities into fleeting songs) or, my most recent understanding, is that he is part of a representation of God. Or, if you prefer, “Someone Outside of You Who Wants to Break Into the Dark Headspace You’re Comfortable In and Get You Out.”

The main point is, he is characterized as warm, steadfast, personal, in cahoots with creativity, and sacrifices himself for Clancy’s escape. Tells us two things. First, that he’s different from all the other Bishops, who are abrupt, cruel, and distant. Second, that he dies. (Unless he comes back somehow before the Lore is over, which would just reinforce my idea that he’s part of the representation of God.)

3.c Who is Nico?

Nico is Self-Focus personified. He was initially “Blurryface = Insecurity.” But remember, we talked about how “insecurity” is just a gateway word leading to “self-focus,” ultimately. Just like how the character “Blurryface” was the surface-read of Nico, and Nico is “his real name.”

Wrap the name of a scientist who thinks everything through analytically (not just himself, but God) around the name that literally means “I don’t want you to see me clearly/see my flaws,” and you get “Self Focus.”

Of course everyone wants to say, “Nico is Clancy, too.” Because “Blurryface is part of Tyler.

Yeah. Self-Focus is still you. It’s you focusing on you.

So yeah, you can say Nico/Blurryface is Clancy/Tyler, that somehow Clancy was the thing he was trying to escape and fight all along, etc. Sure. Say that. It goes with my take, actually. Whether Clancy is his own thing and has been imprisoned several times by Nico, or whether Clancy is a vessel for Nico and he doesn’t even know it, the “Nico is Self-Focus” still exists.

And how can Clancy defeat Nico? When he’s never been able to before? When he might even, possibly, be Nico?

Well, the short answer is, Clancy can’t. Just like you can’t stop focusing on yourself by intensely thinking about how to be less self-focused 😅 because that’s still self focus.

Let’s talk about who can defeat Self-Focus.

4. Who is the Torchbearer?

I personally believe Torchbearer is representative of God. He doesn’t pull Clancy out of DEMA and then carry him off to a happy meadow. He rescues Clancy, and then he sends him back to get more people out of the dark headspace. Just like God doesn’t save you and then beam you immediately into eternity and out of this present world. Just like, in March to the Sea, “then You put me back in my place / so I might start another day.”

Also:

The whole plan is Torchbearer’s.

Even in captivity, he’s with Clancy, inexplicably, and the Bishops can’t get rid of him.

He’s carrying fire, which is kind of “a baby sun” and the sun has always been representative of God in twenty one pilots stuff. Also, fire is real, natural light, as opposed to the neon glow that the Bishops wave around.

He’s the leader.

He’s doing all of the rescuing.

Tyler said he has the ability to guide—which is literally the whole point of creating the world of Trench, to navigate your headspace’s, so why wouldn’t the Clancy character be the one guiding—because you can’t guide yourself, you need someone who knows your head better than YOU DO.

Tyler said there are three of him. Like the Trinity.

Now. Torchbearer could just be representative of someone who knows Tyler’s brain really well and can remind him of truth. A good friend. His best friend. But you know what? That doesn’t account for all the above imagery.

5. How will it End?

Clancy has gone from trying to figure out what’s going on to feeling like he knows what’s going on—he’s taking on a leadership role, and he wants to kill Nico and destroy the dark headspace. But this whole thing is about a cycle “Clancy can’t escape.” And there are theories that he’s inextricably linked to Nico. And focusing on your self-focus can’t defeat your self-focus.

Besides, the whole Blurryface album was a cycle of “I’m messed up and I know it —> But if anyone else knows I’m messed up they’ll reject me —> Someone needs to remind me that I’m unconditionally loved.” Tear in my Heart is about his wife (from the outside) beating his insecurity up and taking what’s inside his heart (good and bad) and violently pulling it to the outside.

The Judge is about needing someone who knows him and has more power than him to pull him out of the cycle. Same thing with Not Today. Same thing with Goner.

Clancy cannot save himself. Clancy can only “save” himself by accepting that someone else needs to save him. Only in that sense. Meanwhile, someone else has to save him. Because someone else is what the cycle was missing. Insecurity balks at vulnerability.

So what I think will happen is, Clancy will think he can defeat Nico himself. In fact, that was part of Torchbearer’s plan. Clancy will climb the tower by himself, thinking it's his job to kill Nico. It won't work. They'll either mutually destroy each other, or Clancy will try to destroy Nico only to find that he can't do it, or Clancy will get straight-up defeated by Nico. Could be because Nico can seize him. Could be because Nico and Clancy are linked and Clancy can't figure out how to kill him when that's happening. Could be because Nico is just stronger than him. Either way, he never should have tried to do it himself.

But actually, all Clancy can do is die. Or get defeated. And when Clancy's down, the Torchbearer can save the day.

Because the only solution to self-focus is dying to yourself. Realizing you can't do it, you're in no way the solution. Then resurrecting to live for something that is NOT YOU. No longer considering yourself. So insecurity is dead. Because the self you used to focus so hard on is being totally taken care of by God, so you don't have to focus on it anymore. That’s God’s plan. That’s a Christian principle, that’s the Gospel. And they’re Christians.

And so help me, they said they’d conclude the story this time. He promised this was his battle! They're going to say what they believe, this time!