#PERCY THANKS FOR SENDING THIS IN <33333 I HOPE U ENJOY THIS

[pendraegon]

Can you talk about your song choice for Percival in mcrthuriana?

Percy!!!!!!!!!!!!!! God YES, let’s get some of that good Percival Content up in this bitch, we’re just gonna sauce this burger right up with a smear of good Percival Condiment and go on our way. I’m so glad you sent this, it’s a nice reprieve from writing solely about Gawain and Lancelot (not that I don’t love those messy idiots, but like oaisjfodisj y’know, y’know). 

Percival got the song SING, I personally think the song’s a bop although I know it’s a pretty iffy song amongst some MCR cohorts lol. (Then again, if y’all don’t like Danger Days, you’re a fucking coward in my book, get some taste. Same with if you don’t like FOB’s Mania but we’re getting off track oafjdoasfoa).

Danger Days is MCR’s fourth album and is basically about a rag tag group of freedom fighters called the Fabulous Killjoys who are against this corporation called BL/nd that runs the post-apocalyptic society. It’s really fucking cool and each member has a Killjoy persona (shoutout to 2010 when we all had killjoy names like licherally, the time is NOW to dress like ur killjoysona lads). Aiding the Killjoys is The Girl, and there’s actually a comic spin off that Gerard Way made based off of the album. Musically, Danger Days is probably MCR’s most…adventurous? The sound is VERY different from what’s expected of MCR and much more on the side of electro with some cool 80s feels sprinkled in. (tbh I think anything from Danger Days is your best bet to get someone who has never listened to MCR before into MCR and then ease them on backwards through the discography, it always works lol) It’s also their least popular album due to the fact that it sounds neither like Revenge nor Black Parade, but as I said, if you don’t like Danger Days, you’re a coward lol.

Percival gets SING because [1] SING’s one of the lighter songs and [2] he’s baby and he deserves this. Killjoys, make some noise!!

Sing it out

Boy, you’ve got to see what tomorrow brings

Sing it out

Girl, you’ve got to be what tomorrow needs

For every time that they want to count you out

Use your voice every single time you open up your mouth

[…]

Sing it out, boy they’re gonna sell what tomorrow means

Sing it out, girl before they kill what tomorrow brings

You’ve got to make a choice

If the music drowns you out

And raise your voice

Every single time they try and shut your mouth

[…]

Sing it for the boys

Sing it for the girls

Every time that you lose it sing it for the world

Sing it from the heart

Sing it till you’re nuts

Sing it out for the ones that’ll hate your guts

Sing it for the deaf

Sing it for the blind

Sing about everyone that you left behind

Sing it for the world

Sing it for the world

So, Percival, Percival, Percival, where do I begin? Percival, as has been often established, is the Himbo. Not A Himbo as arthuriana has…….a multitude of himbos, but THE himbo, the baddest bitch, THE Himbo to End All Himbos, One Himbo to Rule Them All. But like, give the kid a little slack, he’s what? A baby. And like…god, it hurts because Percival….Percival GREW on his quest, but it wasn’t…it wasn’t a natural progression of days turned weeks transformed into months to years and decades, stacked neatly upon each other like stone on stone to build a dazzling monument of his accomplishments, deeds, and failures. Instead, it was the kind of growth found in abnormality, forced, and unforgivable – Percival remains a duality: his innocence and curiosity is palpable until his death, and yet he’s on this quest, this truly…awful quest when you think about it – searching for an item in which the majority of the Round Table hasn’t even SEEN, a fool’s errand, a luckless rabbit chase, and the only thing that can be promised at the end of such a fruitless task is death and dishonor. The former is achieved, the latter isn’t – and yet, Percival is probably the person in the Grail Trio whose honor is perpetually on the line.

When you think about quests (stereotypically) or whatever, it’s like…some kind of grand thing right? Like, this is the culmination of what your hero is striving for, what they’ve been trained for, what they’ve been dreaming of, this tale of noble valor to inspire and to carry us through. But, Percival is…Percival is in NO way a likely hero to any tale. Percival is known AS the fool, Percival makes mistakes time after time partly due to the fact that he doesn’t catch on to what’s going on around him nor can he read the mood, he let’s the Grail and the Fisher King slip through his fingers, his mother dies, on the quest, his SISTER dies, and out of their little trio, Galahad mentions his upcoming demise which must have been terrifying to Percival. In this world, Percival only has Bors and Galahad left, the rest of the Round Table doesn’t matter, the rest of the world doesn’t matter, all it is is Bors and Galahad and Percival against the world, against all odds, and if – if the best knight in the land is to die, then what will be of Percival?  Oh god, I wrote this to like…distract myself from some Lancelot/Gawain mcrthuriana asks but I’m getting sad over Percival iaosjfdoasidja

Percival may not be the hero of it, not truly – Bors, the mind, and Galahad, the soul, but Percival is the heart. They’re a very unlikely trio and that’s part of why I adore them so much — they’ve “got to see what tomorrow brings / […] be what tomorrow needs” as they ARE the only ones who can truly complete the Grail Quest, a daunting task when ⅔ of the company are…licheral children. (I think Val has art with Bors having those child leashes with Galahad and Percival?? Val am I hallucinating or…) “Sell what tomorrow means / […] before they kill what tomorrow brings” is supposed to be a reference to the utter…sheer ridiculousness of this quest, chasing after a holy object bestowed upon God and subsequently taken away from Camelot’s hands due to the the degrading, sinful nature of Camelot, due to how already the Round Table and Arthur’s kingdom is beginning to show cracks in the ivory. The fact that Percival is part of a dying task, a doomed task, a task in which death is promised, and in which even Percival must have known deep down, a fool’s errand. However, Percival still remains optimistic in light of this – but he makes mistakes which cost him dearly (and which people make fun of him for >://). In regards to the Fisher King and Percival not asking after the Grail in that context like – he was Minding His Own Business! He DID want to ask about it but he was warned against opening his mouth and saying whatever came bubbling up from his mind, he was following instructions of his superiors – in fact, while Percival does not “use your voice every single time you open up your mouth” and that is what “gets” him into trouble (which I still think is bullshit lmao). The chorus is supposed to represent what Percival ultimately gives up (“sing it for the ones that’ll hate your guts” and “sing about everyone that you left behind”). Percival is YOUNG, he joins the Round Table to the amazement of everyone by killing that one knight that was being annoying as hell (does anyone remember his name??), and toss in the fact that HE, this knight that everyone thinks is a dumbass, is just a little kid, has no experience under his belt really, who is not as renowned as Sir Bors or as pure and powerful as Galahad GETS to go on the quest and succeeds where so many have failed? That MUST have caused resentment among the rank of knights – the fact that this unknown kid succeeds where so many names like Lancelot and Gawain have failed. Those that Percival left behind – his mother and sister are collateral damage, as well as the fact that Percival can NEVER return to his old life, can never return to Camelot, his life ends with the Grail, and his only place of belonging is by the side of Bors and Galahad. There is nothing else, there is no one else, there is no place else – and Percival KNOWS this, he swears to find the Grail, he swears to make things right, he swears to “fix” his wrongs, his misdemeanor, his sin. “Sing it for the world” is for Camelot itself – the Grail is gone from Camelot due to the amount of sin and disgrace that bleeds through Camelot’s streets, it’s inhabitants, the bed of the Queen, the growing distrust and unease among Arthur’s knights, and Percival is on a quest FOR this world of knighthood that he was a part of for only a brief period of time. So many people brush Percival aside as standing in Galahad’s shadow, and that MAY be true, but despite that Percival remains constant in his orbit, shaky but unfaltering and striding towards what awaits at the end.

Cleaned-up corporation progress

Dying in the process

Children that can talk about it

Living on the railways

People moving sideways

Sell it till your last days

Buy yourself a motivation

Generation Nothing

Nothing but a dead scene

Product of a white dream

I am not the singer that you wanted

But a dancer

I refuse to answer

Talk about the past, sir

Wrote it for the ones who want to get away

Keep running

God…ok..this was…supposed to be in reference to the mindfuck of the Grail quest – Galahad and Percival (probably not Bors) are starry-eyed children (Percival more so than Galahad), and they are on this holy quest in which, at the start, so many well known and beloved and renowned knights are on. But then, people start dying – knights disappear, women and children die, and it’s no longer lighthearted, no longer TRULY a fantasy come true. The progress that Percival makes is built upon the dead, “living on the railways / people moving sideways / sell it till your last days”, Percival journeys throughout the Continent to far off lands, far away from anything he could have ever DREAMT of, meets a variety of people and learns of customs, of languages, of joy, of pain, of love, but the only motivation that he can hold onto is to rectify his mistake and the love he has with Bors and Galahad. He’s part of the “generation Nothing” (think about how many knights just..fucking died not even getting halfway as far TO the Grail) and the promise at the end is nothing but a “dead scene”. Percival is NOT “the singer that you wanted / but a dancer” – Galahad is the singer, Galahad is the one who truly achieves and ascends, but he never would have made it without Percival’s aid and assistance, Percival is the accompaniment, he dances to Galahad’s song and rhythm, and undoubtedly Galahad would have made it without him, but it would have been a far more painful journey, a far more lonelier journey, and far colder. Percival dies at the end too, a hermit in a far off land, knowing that the Grail can and will never return to Arthur’s court, that the splendor of Camelot which he must have heard so many times about as a child is cracking and crumbling and Percival cannot do anything about it, cannot do anything to help, cannot bare to do it. He honors Galahad, he honors the Grail, he honors it all despite the fact that no one truly honored him, and he keeps running into devotion, into something that is slightly more concrete than Camelot, into the smoke and the mystery, desperate to hold onto something now that everything is gone. He refuses to “talk about the past” and “keeps running”, struggling to find a ledge, anything to hold onto. And in the end, does anyone sing for Percival? Sing about his deeds? Sing about what he has done and what he has failed to do? Percival exists in this limbo – he is Chosen to chase after the Grail, to see the Grail, to bathe in it’s light, but he is also perpetually existing in Galahad’s shadow much like Lancelot, but while Lancelot shines brightly on his own when Galahad is covered and gone, Percival REQUIRES that light to survive. Percival has to “be what tomorrow needs” even if that tomorrow never ultimately comes for him.

More MCRthuriana analysis here

#ok so like. ngl when i chose this song i was like (: this is an upbeat song! and percival is babey so it works #but now im like...fuckign sad over percival siodjfoasidjfaso #PERCY THANKS FOR SENDING THIS IN <33333 I HOPE U ENJOY THIS #mcrthuriana #mcrthuriana analysis