now playing : doubt // twenty one pilots
going off of this post, tagging @majorcrimes just in case they're interested!
hello my friends, and welcome to another "sherry shares"! today we are not talking about my writing for a change, i want to INSTEAD talk about the TDOPOM era, specifically the music videos, and get into an old theory i have about them!!
the tdopom music videos were always a huge point of interest for me, especially when i initially got into bad omens but honestly? even now. when i started to realize there could be a proper concept and lore, i was hooked. (you have to understand, i'm a twenty one pilots fan.) BUT this was long BEFORE i even picked up the comics.
so here's my past theory and why i thought this could potentially be the story bad omens was trying to tell.
THIS IS GONNA BE A LONG ONE! SORRY! (i'm not sorry)
noah's presence in the videos always struck me as odd. in almost every single music video, he presented himself a certain way that felt oddly detached from every scenario he was in.
let's start with the title track music video, "the death of peace of mind". obviously, we now know this takes place in "the grey" art museum (according to the comics). but ignore all that. to someone who has no idea what the comics are, this is a strange... couple of locations.
one is a room with two soldiers, a couple, and hands holding out like, necklaces? or something? (i might have bad eyesight if anyone knows what the fuck they are). and during the breakdown, they all become guns. another, we see a room full of what appears to be body bags. and of course, the scene with the guy in the car, then in the water with flesh-eating creatures.
we see noah appear in a room similar to that of the one with the soldiers, which to me at the time implied that he is also present there, or was present before or after the event takes place. and if that's the case, it's odd that he is just... there. dressed in all black, standing there, doing his own thing.
we also see him standing in the middle of the body bag room. we see him in the beginning of the video in a turquoise lighting also. to me, i always believed that just based on noah's unusual presence, he was responsible for the way things were happening.
the room opened fire on those people? he orchestrated it. the body bag room? he was behind that. or perhaps he can somehow influence his environment? this was only FURTHER corroborated by the "like a villain" music video.
in the video, though it may just be a cool video thing, we see him in a city, and there are lights overhead that realistically should be casting light directly onto him but aren't. we see him in the snowy environment where a murder has taken place. we only ever see very limited glimpses of his facial features the entire time.
it's in THIS video that i actually begin to question something more along the lines of, perhaps, a "grim reaper" sort of presence. he exists where the dead exist, and simply finds the things humanity are capable of to be entertaining enough to spectate. it doesn't actually matter to him, and maybe that's where the ideology of "like a villain, i couldn't be, i didn't need it, it needed me" comes from.
of course he's like a villain. he didn't need to be a villain either, but if his presence is, let's just say, a bad omen, of course it "needed him". i eventually sort of come to the conclusion that the "grim reaper" concept AND the "influences his environment" concept could coexist.
"concrete jungle", the same concept. he exists, he is present, the environment around him is dangerous and chaotic. and the idea of "i'm the fucking king" leads me to also believe that he is well aware he is corrupting the environment around him! and he finds a thrill in it.
but, "nowhere to go" doesn't quite fit the mold, now does it? so what could there be in that video to suggest something in a similar vein to a "villain noah"? well, there's another thing to consider, right?
gee, noah sebastian. how come they let you have a duplicate?
why the fuck is there a SECOND noah? here is where, admittedly, my theory got a little wild. i want to take a minute to now acknowledge the futuristic dystopian feel of this universe, because this is where i start to question what M.I.N.D. is. the only main thing we know about M.I.N.D. comes from about two videos; the grey, and just pretend.
and with V.A.N i was sure i was onto something. there's a lot of artificial feels in here, technology, maybe even androids, or viruses.
let's talk about just pretend. in the video, we see noah who is notably much older, unless he's just been in that room for so long he looks really fucking aged. he is hooked up to machines that are simulating a reality where he is with a past lover. at some point, the machines start fucking up and what he is seeing becomes gorey, red-tinted, and toxic. this leads him to wake up and rip the wires off of him.
still with me? here's my crazy fucking thought; i think that just pretend and artificial suicide are happening at the same time. two noahs? two noahs. villain noah is one of them, and he is once more fucking with his environment. why? because HE'S A VIRUS.
IF THE WORLD OF CONCRETE JUNGLE were nothing more than a simulation created by M.I.N.D, of COURSE noah being a virus would fuck with his environment! here's why i think AS and JP happen at the same time.
in just pretend, we obviously have the issue where the system starts to malfunction and display darker images. in as, we see a lot of something that would be used to power that machine, don't we? the very same things that noah rips off himself in JP.
also, we have those beautiful in-betweens of THIS noah:
a very glitchy noah that appears to be coming in briefly, as if it's a malfunction of some sort. and of course, how could we forget?
red noah. i think the weird holes in the wall could be a foreshadowing to tdopom somehow in my theory (like the GUN ROOM yknow) but that might be a stretch. this unusual red noah only appears twice, but has a similar red presence to the gorey shit that goes on in the JP!noahs simulation.
i think AS!noah is the general TDOPOM noah, trying to wake his HUMAN SELF UP. ultimately though, as we see at the end of JP, this does not last long. i think in timeline order of this theory, AS/JP are the beginning of the story.
then, the grey is next, being the first solidified existence of our villain noah in the story. a presence projected on a screen in one of the districts. then he begins to "infect" the concrete jungle overtime, his presence alone being enough to cause death and destruction.
i think he also had something to do with how V.A.N was able to escape. like in a similar way to how noah fucks with technology in AS and JP, he was simply an invisible presence who was fucking with that environment also.
but that's just a theory! a... omens... theory? thanks for reading all this if u did, would love to hear your thoughts/theories as well!!
