#too all the boys ive loved before imagine

[proud-cloud]

Three Cheers for sweet revenge plot song by song according to me

My credentials are that uhmm ive listened to this album like weekly since i was like 12 and uhm im taking english A-Level (crime and tragedy) sooooo

Full disclaimer i could do a line by line analysis on pretty much all of these songs but then this would be stupidly long so im just touching on the points or lyrics i think are most important for the plot! Oh and i cant spell and im trieddd of writing academic essays so im kinda yapping ngl

HELENA

honestly i barely have anything to say here but i imagine its the demo woman’s funeral (yes ik its abt Gerard ways grandma but let me cook) kind of setting the tone and exploring his grief, creating the circumstances for his deal with the devil - especially in the bridge.

GIVE EM HELL KID

Ok so here!! Is where i start to have more to say!! So in my head the man (im just gonna call them tje man and the woman or like he/she from here on) has accepted the deal with satan to kill 1000 evil men and is basically on a killing spree? So from my immense medical knowledge of watching house im preity sure epidrene is a steroid, which like gives him energy (interestingly ive been on them a few times for asthma and they have a long list of mental side effects such as uhhh mania (fall out boy whooo) anxiety and depression which maybe foreshadows his sorta insanity towards the end as his guilt haunts him) acting as a symbol of his immense motivation to see his wife again, so verse one especially is before his downfall where hes like yippee killing people to see my wife again!! The chorus i imagine is sang by both him and the woman in heaven as they both long for each other uhm and later on in the song it does seem as if hes begining to kind of loose it a bit due to his grief? kind of foreshadowing his well everything later on in the album. In the bridge i imagine hes kind of mocking their teenage selves (linking to im not okay later on) especially in the line “we are young and we dont care” criticicing their hopefullness by comparing it to their current circumstance - ironic as it only gets worse from here.

TO THE END

Now i know this is based on a rose for emily (i tried to read it and there were a LOT of slurs from what i remeber so that was yeah) but for the sake of my silly little narrative were kinda just not gonna touch on that. So here i believe the man has been set to kill this couple, just to find the wife has killed her husband (with the “cyanide you drank” i assume) which drives him into a sort of crisis, questioning if this was what would have happened to him and his wife if she had lived and they had stayed married for this long (fueling his sexuality crisis in prison). I could go so much further into this, especially language wise but for the sake of everyones sanity ill leave it here :)

YOU KNOW WHAT THEY DO TO GUYS LIKE US IN PRISION

so hes literally in the middle of a gunfight in the centre of a resturant and the police come and theyre like come with ur arms raised high and ok so!!! Theres many people who could explain this better than me but the man gets arrested for killing all these people and gets sent to jailllll. Ive heard some people talk about it as an allegory for SA in prison and others who talk abt it as him realising his gay/bi ect and honestly i can see both. I really like the line “too much to late or just not enough of this, pain in my heart for your dying wish, i kiss your lips again!” Which, running with the latter intrepretation, suggests hes feeling regret for all the murdering hes done and is questioning if he ever did love his wife this much, and if he should move on and fix his mistakes. So to make a long story short he has a sexuality crisis in prision! Toward the end, he escapes prision and with his “friends” from jail, lilely from setting it on “fire” (i got the friends bit from the lyric “but ill go down with my friends”) escaping jail but at the cost of further loosing his sanity and grasp on morality.

IM NOT OKAY (I PROMISE)

for conveniences sake he either gets knocked out (the giggles at the end of prision i guess beinf from a concussion or something?) or just like goes to sleep somehwhere after the prison break with the other ex inmates and has a flashback to his time in high school, when he fell in love with his wife. As an audienve were kinds like dude she did not like you back then calm down which makes us question the morality of his mission, but for him it reminds him of what hes fighting for and erases the doubt he had in their love in to the end and prison. I will say im kinda pidgenholing this in with the flashback but uhm yeah!

THE GHOST OF YOU

This song acts as a continuation of his grief, back in the present day after im not okay made him remember what he was doing this all for. This basically confirms his belief that killing all these people is right because he needs to see her again. He battles with his morality knowing that she should be “never coming home” cause shes dead but then considering the deal with satan and its morality asking himself “could i? Should i?”. Towards the end, it seems like he decides killing the men to bring her back is the right thing to do. the line “If i fall, down” seems to show his commitment to her regardless of morality, hes willing to ‘fall down’ to hell if it means he gets more time with her which is ironic as he later does go to hell, but never gets to see her again.

THE JETSET LIFE IS GONNA KILL YOU

and hes back to killing again!! I think “her killing jar” is a metaphor for his fixation on his wife and the things its driving him to do. Hes trapped as if he was in a jar by the deal he made with satan for her. Its kind of difficult to explain but essentially hes assuring himself that hes doing it all for her and its all worth it as his sanity slowly dissipates, which i believe is demonstrated through the lyric “pull the plug” kinda symbolising hes giving up on himself and dedicating everything to her. Now this is obviously unhealthily obsessive and is the point where we definately start to question if what hes doing is right - is he not essentially playing god now? Should one man act as judge, jury and executioner?

INTERLUDE

ok its literally just the interlude but here i beleive he is praying for god, the “saints”, to “protect” his wife in heaven further showing his like motive? For all of his murders - his love for her however dangerously codependant.

THANK YOU FOR THE VENOM

HE KILLS MORE PEOPLE 🔥🔥 its almost like he has to kill 1000 evil men damn. BUT now hes starting to loose his grip on reality and is killing innocent people. I like to think he goes to the church he married his wife in and starts killing people - hence the line “sister im not much a poet but a criminal” - hes changed completely from the man he once was. They try to convince him to like stop saying its not what his wife would have wanted but he does not listen - in the lyric “preach all you want but whos gonna save me” - and continues to spiral into a life of crime and implied addiction (when in the chorus he says “give me all your posion and give me all your pills”)

HANG EM HIGH

THIS!! This is the one i can never fully figure out despite it being so good 🙏🙏 it feels like a cop out to say he suddenly becomes a cowboy or idk has to kill a cowboy but any other way i can interpret it is just the same old back to mourning his wife and dedicating his life to her so uhm yeah take any of those 3 or your own and run with it (please tell me if you know how to make this fit better than me)

ITS NOT A FASHION STATEMENT ITS A FUCKING DEATHWISH

Hes now so deep into his mission he cant quit despite the regret he feels. This kind of links back to his mocking of their younger selves in give em hell through the lyric “do you remeber back there when we met you told me this gets harder, well it did!”. Hes kind of pondering how his life got this bad wishing it didnt have to be this way. however he believes they will soon be reunited - evidenced through lines such as “im coming back from the dead” and the repeated references to resserection and him finding his wife, “your running out of places, to hide from me”. At the end, he says “i lost my fear of falling, i will be with you”, further showing he thinks he will soon see his wife again and simmilarly to the ghost of you shows hes willing to sacrafice his soul just to see her again

CEMETERY DRIVE

trust me the fake music video in my head for this goes HARD. So he visits the cemetary where his wife is buried to kinda tell her in a way? That hes almost finished and he’ll see her soon. And in my like the cool cinemetic imaganary music video he dances with her ghost but uhm plot wise hes kinda lamenting how much he misses here as the chorus goes “i miss you, so far”. Now theres some confusion as to how she died as here it says “and they found you on the bathroom floor” but in i never told you it says “they gave us two shots to the back of the head” so i imagine he got caught up in some like bad stuff and they killed her in their home - the bathroom - which does add some depth to his grief as he feels responsable for her death hence why he wants to bring her back so bad. His dedication to her is reinforced through the lyric “so i wont stop lying wont stop dying” which as ive said a lottt shows his like questionably large levels of motivation in this mission from satan. The repetition of “way down” at the end foreshadows the twist in the next song - that he's going to hell - and this idea has been building up throughout the narrative but its reaching its peak now and we begin to see it as a serious possibility considering the innocent people he has killed alongside the guilty ones.

I NEVER TOLD YOU WHAT I DO FOR A LIVING

Aaaaand im realising ive made it all the way through this without even having to check the tracklist which shows that i lack a life! But anyways this song communicates the concept so well and i genuienly could line by line delve into it but for the sake of conciceness as i have been i will just cover the basic concept

OK SO! Hes metholodically getting through this list (im inferring he has a list from the line “i keep a book of the names”) kind of rushing through them, seen through the fast pace of the first verse, in my head it resembles a video montage of the murder of multiple people off of the list. This is further evidenced through the lyric “another knife in my hands” showing this has somehow become his everyday life as hes become so detached from normalicy in his grief. NOW NOW NOW the lyric “a stain that never comes off the sheets” is an allusion to lady Macbeth (I FREAKING LOVE SHAKESPEARE) (im a hamlet girl tho honestly) where she couldnt wash the blood off of her hands which is a common literary symbol for guilt showing his mission has taken a massive toll on him mentally if we did not already realise this. “It aint the money and it sure as hell aint just for the fame” implies he does not enjoy killing these people despite the fact hes killed probably over a thousand people which againnnn shows his dedication to his wife. Now i know ive said that about a billion times but thats important to consider when we take into account that he does not get to see her again - everything he did was essentially worthless, in fact if anything everything he did just sealed his fate. Therefore, if we view him as a tragic hero (i can go so much more into this but thats for another day) then his hamartia is his love for her, his loyalty which kinda gave him tunnel vision meaning he could not see the flaws his plan and the way he was being exploited by satan.

now theres so much symbolism in the lyrics i could discuss (I LOVE THIS SONG) but i will refrain and kinda skip forward to the bridge/the end. I like to think he turns the last page in his book of names to just see his own name and then begins to spiral - this is where the song goes “and we all fall down”. Im preitty sure gerard ways like screams say “i tried” which like furthers this breakdown as he comes to understand all the wrong he has done and his inevatatable damnation. After a large moral debate he thinks it would have been better if they were both killed together originally “never again / they gave us two shots to the back of the head” and he shoots himself in the hope he will eventually be with her in the afterlife, and if not then a life without her is not a life worth living anyways. It ends with the lyric “were all dead now” (which they are) which reminds me of the rhyme/ game from when i was a kid ring a rosies (which i swear is about the plauge) and how that ends by saying “we all fall down” kinda showing the corruption he brought into the world and that everything must come to an end. This is typical of a tragic hero - his anagorisis (realisation of his flaw / mistake) and then his death - which is why i personally do veiw this album as mostly conforming to troupes of traditional greek tragedy :).

aaaaand thats it!! I dont count bury me in black or desert song as part of the album plot uhhh if anyone else does id love to hear how that sounds so cool but yeah!!! Oh and sorry again for any typos and spelling errors i cannot spell for the life of me uhmm this could be so incoherent for all i know (if so sorry!!) but i hope not 😛

lmk if you’d actualy wanna hear the full yap poetry annotation style for a song cause i love nothing more if not talking i might do the same for danger days if i feel like it so watch out 🔥🔥

[fandom-imagination-ss]

imagine: going on a date with Peter Kavinsky ❤