Hi friend. J come with more song analysis
FRIEND, oh dear dear mutual, you’re Hurting me Baaaad with this one. paris in flames has honestly been becoming one of my favorite songs, not just one of my favorite thursday songs and Thiiiiisss<3…
also, just to connect the bodily dysmorphia and dysphoria a little bit again on that “needle is a vector” bit— of course it’s about heroin (and aids, which is also a great point OMG!!!!) but that heroin use is also due to a dissatisfaction with one’s body, right? so the needle is a vector for skinniness, for thinness, for Change. and that need for change is due to dysmorphia, but also due to dysphoria. especially because geoff wants to get Smaller (smallness being a typically feminine trait). maybe the skinniness also helps him feel more feminine, even if it’s a subconscious thing. this whole Taking A Shot To Change Your Body thing reminds me a lot of hormone injections as well. like maybe this is also about estrogen/testosterone shots too. the needle is a vector for Change once again. miss rickly is SO good at these double meanings... gosh!!
the whole “dead man’s crescendo” thing is really good too because i think geoff speaks in very violent terminology when she discusses gender stuff (see Signals Over The Air and even For The Workforce, Drowning and SO many more too that i’m just forgetting rn)… he uses a lot of war and general violence motifs, like gerard (see Mama, Drowning Lessons, Destroya, etc). i think the Dead Man could also be referring to transitioning being a means of killing the man inside of you. which is really interesting actually, because gerard likes to talk about Killing The Woman Inside Of You. they both talk about gender stuff in such a different and yet hauntingly similar way. they both seem to paint gender as a war you fight against yourself, but they’re seemingly fighting two different things— geoff is fighting against masculinity, gerard against femininity. and i keep thinking about what you said about geoff being more self-aware than gerard is. while he physically expresses himself as less feminine than gerard, he’s probably more Present in the “female part of himself” than gerard (who i Think perhaps tries to compartmentalize their own femininity as more of performance art, despite saying that she identifies with the female gender a great deal on multiple occasions) is. meanwhile, geoff understands this femininity/womanhood as being very close and personal to herself. i say all this to say that i do believe, from his lyricism and the way he’s spoken about it, geoff’s sense of self is more consciously female. they’re each other’s foils your honor!
the shadows of trans women… their ghosts… it’s very mcr/thursday parallels again tbh. but also it’s so goddamn heart-wrenching. it does, of course, make me think of trans women who were killed or otherwise hate crimed but also of trans women who never felt comfortable enough to transition. which is. hahaha. Okay Then Geoff Rickly. strangles her a little bit……
I NEVER WVEN THOUGHT OF THE FUCKING PROSTITUTION THING BUT YOU’RE SO RIGHT AND I HAVE NOTHING TO ADD. OH MY GOD OF FUCKING COURSE. the commodification of the trans woman’s body (and the body of the trans person in general, for that matter) is also such a recurrent theme in thursday’s lyrics. again, i think of Signals Over The Air: “they stole the love from our lives to put the sex on the radio” also reads as being very much about this to me.
i think “erase all the maps” could also be about restricted access to hrt? in the sense that it’s directly getting rid of the ways to get to one’s destination, and transgenderism often being seen as a “journey.” if we do take this interpretation as being valid, this makes the car crash themes SO much more insane too!!!
okay that’s all i have to say on this at the moment. i could expand on it but i think this is all i can get out and still have it make some sense for right now… Thank You for sharing your thoughts this is so precious to me & important😢🩷 i love trans women. i love geoff rickly. i love thursday.