the world of trench

a sideblog diving headfirst into everything you never wanted to know about the world of trench - all posts are just theories unless otherwise stated - all theories are mine unless otherwise stated - ask a question about how things work in dema/trench, or submit a post about how you think things work there! - sideblog by @bbluejoseph

[neonthema]

on the building of Dema

i. In its construction, Dema- back then, a sandcastle of many names, was a pinnacle of efficiency. Models and calculations, faultless dreams of a mathematician, someone who believed the chaos of outer space is but to become order. 

(the closest star was not amused, as it only shone brighter)

ii. In its birthing days, Dema- back then, a place of many opportunities, was a rapid, striking success. Drafts became concrete, and first voices, before only imagined, filled in the halls. They spread, they reached out their stranded hungry hands; so, the homes happened. 

(and hospitals, and schools, and stores, and slaughterhouses, and and and)

iii. Dema- back then, a meaningless word, came to life. 

(when it was never supposed to be) 

(mother of sufferers) 

iv. And so it was said, the building – done. He dreamt of things to never change again, he believed he was graced with the knowledge of turning wilderness of people into something practical.

v. And they hid in their homes, feared for their inefficient lives.

vi. It can’t be! He cried out in a place with stuffed meaning, unspoken; as the sun dimmed and dimmed, and dimmed until no more was it close. 

vii. It can’t be- the change he tried to avoid. He came back and forth, with a hand and a sword, emptying every surface of what he deemed chaotic.

viii. It leaked through.

(it always did, and it hurt; and the star burned his skin, a scourge unto his blackened hands)

(abomination, you will be marked forever)

ix. From morgues in hospitals, stores and houses he built a wall.

x. In its downfall, Dema- back then a grave stepped in, was a cover upon choking subtlety. He built a wall of what the people have made, after him, of course.

xi. Abomination of guilt. Abomination of misunderstanding.

(he had choices taken away from him for he said he’s stronger than his maker)

xii. Now, in its being, Dema- now, the dreamless sleep, is of people he followed, people he cursed. Of every single closed eyelid over the blurred, reddish sun.

[orpheuseus]

I HAVE A TØP JUMPSUIT THEORY

Okay, so you know how sometimes in different songs in the Blurryface album (and Vessel) there are certain lines where both Tyler and some deep, twisted voice are singing together???

For example in Screen, the line “so excuse us while we sing to the sky”.

In Stressed out, the lines at the end “used to play pretend used to play pretend etc…”

In Fairly local, the lines at the end “yo, this song will never be on the radio etc…”

And while there’s no music video for Screen, there are mv’s for the Fairly local and Stressed out. In those music videos, when those lines are sang, Tyler’s neck is black and his eyes are red, like he’s suddenly possessed by Blurry and it’s blurry controlling tyler and making him say stuff.

Well that dark, mysterious voice of blurryface?

It’s in Jumpsuit.

It’s quite faint, but you can hear a deeper voice behind Tyler’s when he sings the FIRST “if you need anyone”

And after the red bishop (nico I think) marks Tyler with the black stuff, it spreads to the rest of his neck and all of the sudden hey look blurryface is here.

AND THAT IS WHEN THE MUSIC JUST SUDDENLY TAKES THIS TURN.

Like it was all rock and roll and rebellious before the bishop caught up but when the bishop got tyler and marked him, the music becomes soft and numb and he suddenly follows the bishop without question and my theory is that BLURRYFACE is singing those soft lines. But heres where this kinda gets odd and Im sorry but its just my thoughts.

I think blurryface sings the “ill be right there” to the bishop, showing that he’s some mindless drone

Then tyler breaks through for a second, “but you’ll have to grab my throat and lift me in the air” and that’s tyler being rebellious without full control.

“I’ll stop my plans” is blurryface talking about tyler trying to escape, I’ll stop my plans of trying to escape dema.

“But you’ll have to tie me down and then break both my hands”

Then he sees the flowers, and That’s one of the first things that kinda breaks him away a sliver

But then Blurry keeps repeating the “if you need anyone"s and that’s when the flower petals come, and then tyler isn’t blindly looking forward anymore. Now he’s looking up at the Banditøs, now he’s coming back to his senses.

And he starts singing his rebellious song from before.

And when he’s running from the bishop, the paint (blurryface) is gone.

[orpheuseus]

46 seconds into the Nico and the Niners music video, Tyler puts another flower into a drawer of flowers. That’s the flower that he had in Jumpsuit, when he was trying to escape Dema. I can only assume that he takes a flower from the trench every time he tries to escape. Tyler has tried to escape about 6 times.

[orpheuseus]

46 seconds into the Nico and the Niners music video, Tyler puts another flower into a drawer of flowers. That’s the flower that he had in Jumpsuit, when he was trying to escape Dema. I can only assume that he takes a flower from the trench every time he tries to escape. Tyler has tried to escape about 6 times.

[keons]

Thanks to Brad’s photo on instagram we now know the bandito’s have bikes in the bandito camp so it’s safe to assume that at least one time josh grabbed tyler out of dema and sat him on the handle bars of his trench bicycle and sped through the streets of Dema at 12 mph.

It’s my personal headcannon that the bikes have yellow streamers on the handle bars, and Ned will hitch rides in the front baskets.

[to-uninspire]

doubt is about tylers inability to escape dema in the early trenchverse

[re-decorate]

We’ve come to know Dema as a very cold and sterile place. No one—and nothing—thrives in Dema. You simply fight to survive. I imagine that the bishops make sure to maintain this barren environment. There wouldn’t be any gardens or grass fields or even artificial turf. Even weeds peeping through cracks in the concrete would swiftly be eradicated. No flowers, no green, no color at all. Dema is dull and lifeless.

So what if, during their routine raids on Dema, the Banditos have missions specifically to plant gardens in the city? Overnight, vacant lots that once held nothing but dirt are suddenly full of flowers—most of them yellow. And although the bishops would quickly destroy whatever flora they find, the color, however brief, cuts through the lifelessness of Dema and is a breath of fresh air for the citizens: a glimpse into the world outside the city and a reminder that they are not alone.

So that’s what this vine on the side of my school library reminded me of. The vine clearly isn’t supposed to be there, but nevertheless, it is. Defiant. Just like the Banditos.

[keons]

In Dema there’s an old rabbit ear tv in every apartment but the only thing that plays on it is cycled vialist propaganda and only in black and white of course, but the residents still watch it because it’s routine and they forget that they’ve watched it before and I’m thinking about Tyler sitting with his eyes glazed over watching the screen when he hears a noise outside his window that knocks him out of the trance and he looks out and sees Josh with his brightly colored hair that contrasts so starkly to the black and white of the tv and Josh is holding up his torch and staring right back at Tyler and that’s what wdbwotv is about.

[de-ma-do-nt-con-trol]

idk if this is true but could trench/drma exist in another universe, but they're on Earth? like nobody knows about it but it's there and then if so, could Hometown be about that? like 'where we're from, there's no sun, our hometowns in the dark' could be saying that the people on Earth don't know about dema and trench, and that they're in the dark (aka in the night, they're asleep) sorry if that was confusing (and I'm probably wrong(

it's entirely possible! dema is, in the metaphorical sense, mental illness, and mental illness isn't something new. it's possible dema has existed, in one form or another, for centuries--and, in addition, that people have been trying to escape it, meaning trench exists alongside it. imagine the city changing over the years with the inventions of new technology; the city walls adding barbed wire, searchlights, perhaps some deterrents like tear gas. perhaps dema never began, it just always is. hometown does sound like it could be about dema. i'll have to check further into the lyrics to see if there are any other references. thank you for submitting this! it really made me think differently on where (and when) dema exists.

[intrepidbandito]

•1984•

[stimmytyler-deactivated20200301]

three categories of banditos, not mutually exclusive

1. Rebel- led by josh. yeah all the banditos are rebels but they're the ones spraypainting signs with yellow paint so the bishops can't see it but it's a signal to the citizens. they fuck shit up. the avengers of trench. they will sacrifice everything for the escaped citizens. their teamwork is their strength. no rebel will accept defeat. they will fight for their lives. they are a symbol of strength. they are always vigilant, taking shifts to guard the camp at night. they're always ready to move the camp at a moment's notice. their first concern is never themselves.

2. Practical- led by jenna. they make sure things are liveable. medics and cooks and builders and hunters, ppl who look for food and gather supplies. people who make trench a good place to be. they farm. they're the ones to steal food and supplies during rescue missions to dema. trench is not dema- so they express joy in everything they make. blankets and tents are brightly dyed. paintings cover everyday items to make them more beautiful. they embroider clothes when sittig around campfires. so much color. so much yellow. bc of them, everything is less like a temporary camp and more like a home.

3. Communicator- led by tyler. they convince citizens to leave. they think about trench and dema and vialism and put into words the place of each. they can teach the differences to both parties and make sure trench doesn't become dema. they think of rules and help plan rescue missions. they spy on bishops, learn weaknesses. they create symbolism in the nature around them. understand the stark contrast between dema and trench. everybody does, but they love to teach, to create.

[de-ma-do-nt-con-trol]

on the subject of supplies in trench

in the jumpsuit/natn/levitate trilogy, we get a close look at the banditos and the place they call home. they’re not eking out a living in trench; indeed, they seem to have plenty of supplies to keep them alive, from tents to clothes to food. but where are they getting these supplies, and how? some things, they may be able to get from the terrain around them. animals such as rabbits and squirrels could be killed for meat, and there’s a possibility that there is some edible vegetation. firewood and kindling could be gathered from the surrounding area. still, there’s a lot that the banditos wouldn't be able to get from trench--clothes, medicine, and bedding come to mind. it would be extremely difficult for them to harvest things from nature without tools, such as weapons for meat and axes for firewood. they’d have to get these things from civilization, and there’s only one nearby civilization that we know of in the trench saga. it wouldn’t be easy to get supplies from dema, but it would be necessary. it’s unlikely that the bishops would want the banditos to get access to these things--without them, they would be far weaker, and many would die without reliable sources of food, water, and shelter. if the banditos were out of the way, people might not try to escape the city, and those who did would likely die. at the same time, however, the bishops don’t necessarily seem murderous. nico does drag tyler away from the fire in levitate, but he is presumably only being taken back to dema. it's a bit crazy, but it makes sense; what could the bishops gain from killing off the banditos? why kill them if they could take them back to dema, perhaps make them reform into better, more loyal citizens? i’m not saying they let the banditos steal supplies from the city, but maybe they don’t make it as difficult as they could to get to them. besides, if the banditos learned to trust the food they took from Dema, and the bishops ever did decide they wanted to get rid of them, they could easily poison it and kill off the majority of the population. in any case, we can imagine a raid on the city goes similarly as tyler’s escape. The banditos are quick--they get in, get what they need, and get out. it’s possible that the bishops might try to capture them, but the banditos are as intelligent as they are precise. they’d never raid at the same time each day, and they’d take seemingly at random. food one trip, canvas another, medicine another. it would be impossible to predict when and where the banditos would arrive, and thus more difficult to capture them. the bishops would likely keep the best technology, the more advanced tools, far from the banditos’ reach, but it wouldn’t matter. with the supplies taken from dema, the rebels would be able to build makeshift tents, heal their sick, and grow stronger. nico and the niners would be losing citizens, not to death, but to freedom.

[teenbeachmovie3]

bitches will see anything at all related to dema and hit reblog (im bitches)

[keons]

What if in Dema there are some small shops where you can buy regulated items like soap, ink, sheets etc, and some of the stores are secretly ran by banditos and they make sure to fit FPE into their store slogan somewhere so the people who are awake in Dema know it is a safe place. Like Ned’s Bayou’s slogan being “Fine Pool Equipment.”

[vesselesque]

quick q: do neds live in the trench-verse or just in the chlorine-verse? bc i would love it if there were just a ton of lil fluffy critters roughhousing in trench and lifting everyone's spirits like the endor ewoks in star wars

[de-ma-do-nt-con-trol]

where did ned come from?

when one ned loves another ned very much... I’m kidding, I’m kidding. bad jokes aside, where did ned come from? he seems to appear almost out of the blue in the chlorine video. hang on, this one’s gonna be a bit weird. there’s so little we actually know about ned as a creature that there are multiple possibilities as to his creation. many theories are built on assumptions (I’m having algebra flashbacks). let’s start with the assumption that ned is a singular, unique being, without a species. If he is the only one of his kind, where could ned have come from? many unusual beings are created in film, literature, and legend purely by accident. he might be a curse gone wrong, a hybrid animal, or the result of a chemical reaction or spill. the options here are virtually endless. he also could have been created purposely, which is where things might tie in with dema. It’s possible that ned is an escaped government (dema) experiment, or a creature summoned/created by someone with great power (nico). It’s unclear whether ned actually has a connection with the city seen in the music videos, but if he does, it’s likely that he was created by the bishops, in one way or another. a second, different assumption we could make is that ned is in fact a species, and there are other neds running around somewhere. If this is true, it’s unlikely that he’s in the city naturally--human interference disrupts the habits and habitats of many animals, forcing them to adapt. foxes, for example, are adapting to life in the city, along with raccoons and large birds of prey. humans could have driven ned from his natural habitat, or taken over the one he would normally live in so that they could build homes there. in this case, ned would just be a natural creature, although almost of the cryptid sort. the okapi wasn’t proven to exist until 1901, and new creatures of all kinds are still being revealed in remote locations. Some scientists estimate that 5 million species of living creatures are still undiscovered, and nearly 50% of the world’s oceans have not been explored. ned probably doesn’t live in the ocean, of course, but these statistics help to explain why he is just now being discovered in the twenty one pilots universe. here’s a third possibility, however, that throws a wrench into every other theory I’ve written about him so far: is ned actually ‘real’? he seems to appear only when tyler is drinking (or just around) chlorine. he might be a hallucination, or a figment of tyler’s imagination. josh never appears to interact with ned directly, so it’s hard to tell if he’s actually seeing him as well. my goal with this blog is to explore every reasonable possibility (and maybe a few of the unreasonable ones), so that you, the reader, can make your own choices. where do you think ned came from? Is he a physical being, or tyler’s imaginary friend? let me know in the comments and reblogs. if you have any theories or questions for me to delve into, drop them in my ask box!

[re-decorate]

like neon inside the glass, they form my brain