So, the groupchat accidentally discovered forbidden Mechanisms lore????
While looking for old pictures from when the band was still Dr Carmilla and the Mechanisms, we stumbled on two old webpages, both TV Tropes pages for the band as “Dr Carmilla & the Mechanisms”.
One of these pages is here, hosted on a Fandom wikia called All The Tropes, and the other on the actual TVTropes website.
These pages are nearly identical (we’ll get to the differences), and stood out to us specifically because of their Identical and Weirdly Specific text, featuring descriptions of the band that none of us had read before.
(We’ll get to why the content of the page is extremely fun and wild.)
We wanted to know if this was just a really random, made-up fanpage, or if the page was legit, and…
The earliest known version of the All the Tropes page that can be verified is from 2014- however, with the Wayback Machine, a version of the TVTropes page can be seen from November 9th, 2011. This version entirely matches the All The Tropes text as it still exists, and, after a chat with an All The Tropes mod, it turns out that the AllTheTropes page would have been copied directly from the TVTropes one, as ATT was a mirror of it. Aside over, the first edit on the TVTropes page is from October 19th, 2011, and it was created October 4th, 2011.
The age of this page already does a lot to verify that it was potentially written by folks close to the band / in the band, since the amount of fandom that existed for them in 2011 was…pretty much none!
What’s very compelling is an edit from August 29th, 2012, which updated the band’s roster - “scoobyben” is Ben Below’s username!
So this page is at least in part legit material from the band.
There’s a lot of things here that are just simply, extremely fun and extremely wild.
Do read the whole page (I encourage reading both versions because they are slightly different), but here’s the highlights:
Jonny d’Ville described as “an unloveable traitor”
Nastya’s “delicious viola”
Ashes “provides the band with bass guitar and silent judging. Also, cake”
The first version of this page named Brian “Steampunk Jesus”- this is changed to Drumbot Brian by Ben in the August edit above, but since he is referred to as Brian in the 2011 Spaceport Mahon, so whether the name is a joke, or a placeholder while Ben chose a name, is unclear.
The trope “Rhythm Typewriter”, referring to a typewriter being used as a percussion instrument, is listed, along with one word: “Interlude”, which is presumably a song title. This is Forbidden Lost Song 1, as the groupchat has no idea what song this is
The trope “Clone Jesus” is listed, presumably referencing something about Brian having been Jesus? Although the TVTropes.org page was edited (by Ben Below, nonetheless) to give Brian his name as we know it now, this trope was not taken out.
Under the trope “Murder Ballad”, Forbidden Lost Song 2 is mentioned: “Fantasia, also a song about Jonny, features him being stalked and murdered by some kind of creature in a dream sequence. He dies on the moon.”
Mostly we just wanted to bring this strange and forbidden lore to the attention of the fandom, since we were all losing our minds the more we realized that we were onto something.
Also Mechanisms please release Forbidden Lost Songs “Interlude” and “Fantasia” (WE ALL ESPECIALLY WOULD LIKE TO HEAR ABOUT FANTASIA)
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