#and also if u are Like Me and choose to assume blurryface and clancy have also always kinda been the same guy

[kickedin17]

So I've been privately quite resistant to the theory/read that clancy is being possessed through all of this and that's why he's acting the way he is. I've been ruminating on it more & I pinned down that the reason for that, the thing for me, is like. This album cycle so far has effectively served as reclamation for clancy - of his name, his life, the people and things that matter to him. Lyrically the album details a person resisting the urge to fall back into old harmful habits and isolate himself, which clancy does (with at least some self-awareness) by "overcompensating." We knew from the start of this era he was willing to do whatever it took to remain himself and to take down dema and end the cycle.

Obviously we still don't know exactly what happened after the end of the paladin mv. In my opinion we also don't know what Exactly last night meant either other than that clancy has drifted somewhere dangerous and maybe irretrievable (though I highly doubt that), and that he simultaneously seems to be crying out for help. Maybe all that means he has been seized this entire time or is dead already or whatever whatever. In My Opinion though, I think it's just the less logical conclusion to jump to because what does that leave us exactly? A clancy who once again has been stripped of agency. A clancy who, once again, is defined almost entirely by the perceptions and movements of the bishops or the banditos or whoever else thinks they have claim over him and his name and his face and his message. For him to come out of the gates swinging so hard but ultimately end up in the same place he started is maybe *realistic* if we are talking about literal cycles of addiction or mental illness, but we've already been exploring that for the last 10 years on 3 albums prior to this, and that's not what clancy (album/era) has been doing or saying to me. This is a person who is fighting so hard not to repeat the cycle that they go too far. They self destruct. They know there are people waiting for them to be better and they're trying, but it's a big fucking ask, isn't it? It's so hard to find balance, if that's something you've never had before. It's so hard to get it right.

Outside of my personal clancy/blurryface dichotomy theory (which I think explains why his shirt is sometimes black - it's blurryface, not necessarily clancy being smeared (unless you assume those two states are one and the same which on a separate meta level they probably are but getting into that is going to add like 3 more paragraphs to this)) - I believe clancy has been himself, unequivocally, through this whole era so far. I believe last night he was cognizant and chose to push the torchbearer away, maybe because he lost trust in him due to paranoid self sabotage, maybe to try to protect him because clancy is also aware that he's on a crash course but cannot find the brakes anymore (the line). Maybe some combination of both.

Also worth noting - his letter about "absolute power" did not anywhere say that he wanted to be a bishop. It sounds more like he wants to be a king (of a kingdom swingin on a swing etc etc). Whatever he's trying to turn dema into I think it will be different, even if it's ultimately just as toxic. We know, and he knows, he can simply destroy it all (bandito/overcompensate), but that's also hard. It's so so hard. I don't know how many of us ever actually make it that far - I know I never have. I think that's probably what he went in intending to do but it doesn't seem like that's where we've actually ended up.

The cycle might repeat again, and maybe (my fingeys crossed) take us back to blurryface somehow for its 10th anniversary, but I think it's going to be different this time. We aren't going back to jumpsuit/the start of the trench era. We aren't going back to how things were during sai. These concerts were intended to be flashbacks, memories, "reminding us why we fight." Reminding clancy why he's doing what he's about to do. Which is different than whatever he's done before. Whether or not this "sounds like an ending" (it doesn't), I think this is something new. That doesn't mean it's something Good. But we don't quite know that yet, either.

In short and to try to make this probably incoherent post more coherent: To Me (and I could be wrong, I've been wrong before) it is still clancy, just like it was always clancy. Whatever he's going through and whatever he becomes are because of his own actions. Not the bishops, not the banditos, not torchbearer. Him. And isn't that so much more tragic? And so much more real?