#rel talking

that specific brand of christian tøp fan pisses me off soooooooo bad, the lack of media literacy is goddamn astounding. it'd be impressive if it weren't so rage inducing.

Because to me, the song is very clearly about mental health. And when he says ‘devil,’ it doesn’t feel literal or supernatural at all , it feels like a metaphor for depression. Like that feeling that there’s something dark stuck inside you or attached to you, almost like a presence, because that’s what it feels like. So it doesn’t make sense to me to read it in a supernatural way or tie it to the idea that depression is connected to a lack of God or faith. And it makes even less sense to me (especially considering everything he’s written about this before) that he would make a song about being at rock bottom and just wanting to be ‘found’ by someone, and mean that God is the one saving him — like saying God pulls you out of depression — when his whole career has kind of expressed the opposite, or at least how abandoned he’s felt. Not to mention that this whole ‘God saves you from those dark moments’ narrative just feels ridiculous, especially when we’re talking about a mental disorder and not just a rough patch in life, like struggling to find a job or something

Anyway, I just wanted to ask because that specific line always confuses me when people interpret it like that. Like, what is ‘the devil’ supposed to be here for that logic to work? Because if he’s saying the devil exists as proof that God exists and is there for him, then the song starts to feel kind of… psychotic, instead of just being about faith or struggle.

Like, he’s describing a really dark mental state, and then suddenly the biblical devil is actively dragging him down even more? When depression is an illness, not some literal entity chasing you. And then he’s leaving ‘clues’ so God can find him — but in Christianity, God is omniscient and omnipresent, so that wouldn’t even make sense.

It just feels way too extreme to me, and I don’t really see Tyler as someone who would frame it like that. I try to see it from that interpretation, but it just doesn’t make sense to me, because that’s not how he usually writes about God or faith. It makes way more sense to me that he’s talking about being at rock bottom mentally, and that ‘finding him’ is more about someone pulling him out of that state and bringing him back to life. But without actually saying he needs help — more like leaving little clues that he wants to be helped without directly asking for it. So it feels like he’s basically expressing how much he hopes someone will understand and help him, because he doesn’t want to feel that way but doesn’t have the courage to say it out loud.

Because of that, I can only really see it as something about a human relationship, not a relationship with a supernatural being. I also don’t think Tyler nowadays has the kind of relationship with God or Christianity that fans assume he does. In Downstairs, he even said during the listening party that he almost didn’t include the song on the album because he wrote it a long time ago and didn’t feel that way anymore and at the end of the song he’s basically trying to fully surrender himself to God just to feel worthy of His love.

Sorry for going on such a long rant, I just really enjoy talking on this Tumblr.

first you need to acknowledge that there is a specific kind of christian tøp fan who is just kind of stupid. i do not say that lightly. they view everything through the lens of god and refuse to see any other perspective because they view it as being "disrespectful to god" even though the actual words are clearly not about him in the first place. they are not media literate, they are not creatively minded, and they will not have their minds changed.

they find it easier to completely warp the meaning of a song, to warp the actual words being sung, than acknowledge a song might not have anything at all to do with god, or might even be about a real person.

the people who think drag path is about god are the same people who think tally is about god. their opinions are bad, wrong, and not to be taken seriously.

It honestly looks like Tyler is filming some kind of rescue video or something 😭 but what I find funny is comparing it to that other video of him with Josh—just look at the difference in his body language with Jenna 😭🤨

https://x.com/buterflysoup/status/2030846591360221657?s=46

(clickable link)

and i did the scrolling to find the other one as well but tumblr only lets you add one video file to a post and i'd rather have the cute joshler one actually on my blog so.

I'm always interpreting this picture where he touched his ring after the marriage was finalized as "what have I done" short realization his gut feeling gave him before his I have to pretend and it will work face comes back. I think he's now more aware than ever of the mistakes he made and that hits hard because it feels like torture now living like how he never wanted to live.

https://pin.it/7lopstip5

(clickable link)

Take “Tally,” for example. There are so many parts of the lyrics that clearly point to a relationship he has with another human being. Faith — no matter the religion — is ultimately a one-sided relationship. You speak to it, but it doesn’t speak back. So if he were writing a song about God as if it were a fully mutual, human relationship — where they fight, where the tension is so intense he compares it to lightning striking at the same time, where he expects the other person to throw his mistakes back in his face, where he thinks maybe they should both go their separate ways but still calls that person’s mind extraordinary (which is literally in the official lyrics of “Tally”) — that would honestly feel strange.

There are so many ways to write about faith, but writing it like you’re getting direct emotional back-and-forth from the other side would be… odd. Like Dr. House says: if you talk to God, that’s religion — if He talks back, that’s psychosis.

And after so many songs where Tyler openly shows his conflict with God, his doubts, his questioning — and even that line in “Center Mass,” “My tattoos only hurt when meaning fades / I think my skin got worse with good intentions” — I genuinely don’t understand why most people assume he has this beautiful, stable relationship with God that would inspire a song like “Drag Path.”

The whole theme of his life and writing has been that he’s always begged God for help and felt abandoned. He’s said he never felt enough, that he sometimes believed he was suffering because he was some kind of dirty sinner (like he mentions in “Downstairs”). People listen to a song like “Downstairs” and see it as this beautiful declaration to God, like it’s the most gorgeous worship song ever ,so honestly, you can’t expect much critical thinking from them.

Just look at the kind of relationship he describes having with God: never feeling like he’s enough, constantly feeling ashamed, wanting to give himself completely just to be worthy, believing that maybe if he tries hard enough God won’t punish him. That’s the total opposite of what the torch represents in the lore. It’s not that complicated.

Everything he’s shared about his faith revolves around feeling distant, lost, or left behind — and drag path says the exact opposite of that. But especially religious fans don’t want to admit that.

They don’t want to admit that Josh may have impacted his life in a way that mirrors what faith or God represents for a lot of people , that sense of salvation, of not feeling alone anymore, of someone always being there for you. A lot of people say torch in the lore is just a representation of Jesus, as if Jesus never abandoned him , completely ignoring everything Tyler has said in his music about never feeling saved.

So they assume there’s no way he could be talking about Josh and their relationship there (because they project), and about how Josh never gave up on him — because they only see what they want to see. I’ve even seen people claim the bishops represent demons, when it’s pretty obviously a critique of religious structures , but everything gets twisted.

That’s why I can’t see “Drag Path” as being about Jesus. I just don’t think Tyler has the kind of relationship with God today that people assume he does. He’s always talked about feeling abandoned and blaming himself for everything, so it doesn’t make sense for torch to symbolize God when, in Clancy’s story, torch is the opposite — it’s constant, present, never leaving him alone.

But since it kind of resembles the idea of Jesus, religious fans immediately project that onto it because they assume Tyler is just as devoted as his family.

When really is him using metaphors to show how Josh has “saved” him in his own way so many times — being that unconditional kind of love that never gives up on him. Even when he’s stuck in the same endless cycle, Josh is still patient and somehow still believes in him.

You can clearly see the difference between those two narratives. But a lot of people would rather ignore that than admit that Joshler might be way deeper than a “normal” friendship.

And on top of that, so many parts of the lyrics sound like a conversation within a human relationship. It wouldn’t even be that powerful if it were about God, because in Christianity God is supposed to be omnipresent and omniscient. So Tyler singing about leaving traces of himself for the other person to find him doesn’t really hit the same if he’s talking about a being who already knows everything and wouldn’t need clues to “find” him in the first place. All of this just because he uses the word “devil” in the song , as if it couldn’t possibly be a metaphor 😩

So it’s not just that they’re Christian, but they’re << that kind of American Christian>>very conservative. And Maddy has also done several things that show she supports Trump, including liking a bunch of reels from a coworker of hers who posted a lot of pretty prejudiced content (thebackroadbabe).

The whole family is garbage, not just Zack. But it was kind of obvious the path he’d end up choosing would be the one that lets him fit in—having a ‘normal’ hetero marriage like the rest of his family. There’s no way he (especially while struggling with his mental health) would’ve had the strength to go against all of that back then.

yeah, especially because he never actually got out, and living around his family means that he's definitely still subjected to a lot of the pressure they placed on him to conform.

Having kids in the picture makes everything way more complicated than just ‘breaking up and going your separate ways.’ And now that both of them are in that situation, it’s different—it becomes more like a realization that he missed his chance at anything else, and now Josh has his own family with his wife, a life he’s not part of.

And the more you think about it, Breach having so many romantic-leaning songs actually makes total sense. It really feels like he wanted to vent in some way instead of staying in that constant state of denial, honestly, that’s already something. I think he spent all those years still in denial, constantly justifying things, refusing to accept it, and genuinely believing in and putting effort into his marriage. But now he’s in the ‘realizing’ phase, and he can’t keep pretending or lying to himself anymore, and at least internally, he’s able to admit it.

I get why some people just ship Joshler as a joke, they’d probably be a lot happier that way.

yeah. yeah. bullseye, anon, bullseye.

tyler has finally realized it might actually be too late, that they are both in too deep in their married lives, there are kids involved, families, and old hypotheticals and daydreams can't stand up to the harsh light of reality as it now stands.

Like Heavydirtysoul and Ode to Sleep—songs that are clearly about other struggles, and people still try to frame them as Christian songs. And Backslide too, a song about feeling your depression coming back and not wanting to go through that again, and they turn it into a Christian narrative about not wanting to fall into sin or drift away from God.

But if everything in my life revolves around religion, I could probably make even some Taylor Swift songs sound like they’re about God.

oh yeah, confirmation bias is a hell of a drug, and that's absolutely what's going on with that brand of christian tøp fan, they know what they want the song to say, so they do what they need to, so that it almost comes across like that could be what the song is saying.