u/GetSlunked

Despite what everyone in various game threads seems to think, the TD play is not on Sauce.

All the people saying “that’s such a weird double move” because it wasn’t meant to be. WR clearly thought it was a hitch. Sauce responded accordingly by stopping with him. The pass was massively overthrown, or QB just thought he’d keep running.

Burks just happened to have a better angle to get a step in first to track it down. Sauce is also supposed to have safety help here. This was a busted offensive play that happened to work out. Sauce, or any DB at the NFL level, is not going to defend as if the play will be busted. Everything about Burks body language suggests a stop route. There’s no play in anyone’s playbook that has a receiver do a double move 30 yards down the field.

A general caveat to all of this, including myself: we have no idea what the offensive or defensive calls were. We don’t know assignments or routes. If one of the best DBs in the league appears burnt, you have to assume something broke down.

Idk, just don’t think Sauce isn’t elite when it appeared to be a total fluke play. That is all.

For starters, I view this EP as an “epilogue” to LIBAD. The robots have won, AI is the dominant species, but what does that mean for the average robot? What does their programmed existence mean?

Lights:

We start the EP with a distorted voice, seeming robotic.
The lyrics are short here. To me, I seems this is an AI contemplating their life post-humanity. “Every second being watched”. “Every word said sapping memory” - a jest at the limited memory of an Android. The Android speaking seems fed up with his / her existence, and in so, wishes for it all to end, including the reign of AI. “Turn out the lights” is said as an AI robot yearning for the death of his “species” who he / she feels is living a thoughtless existence. Turn off the lights, aka shut them all down.

Statica:

“Watch the colors of the show”

This to me is the turning point of the AIs, with some breaching consciousness, and the others being sheep. The narrator feels “alive through the static”, hinting at a human awakening in the robots.

“I need something new”

The narrator is too conscious to accept an “obey your programming” lifestyle. He / she yearns for more. They feel the fragment of humanity in them and want desperately to feel what humans felt.

“Stay with me, I feel empty”. The chorus comes before the explanation in the next verse. To me, the main them of this song comes from “Playing the tape to hear laughter, spinning the tape to rewind”. The AI narrator is replaying audio / video notes from humans in their mind to feel something. Human laughter is a mystery to them. It feels like home on a level they don’t quite understand. But it feels good, so they spin the tape to rewind and hear it again and again. Theres is a hunger for humanity rising in these AIs.

The chorus is lamenting their robotic nature. It’s all static and predetermined. It’s also clearly not what the narrator wants.

“Would I lie? Could you even tell?” The narrator is questioning the robotic-ness of his peers. They know the programming first hand, and know other full blown, non-conscious AIs wouldn’t have an answer to this. This is their test to see which AIs are leaning human, and which are bound by their programming.

Rejoice:

AIs now live in a curated reality they are programmed to accept. The first verse is a jaded look at the current state of affairs. Everything is vague and superficial, which should be enough for a robot.

The chorus is ironic. There’s nothing to rejoice about here, yet all the robots remaining in the world do, because they don’t know better. They were for all intents and purposes, born yesterday. The world around them is a fake mockery of what humans had. Yet they all rejoice in how “awesome” it is.

“Faith….i don’t want your faith…” perhaps this is the same robot narrator as on Statica. They don’t want to blindly accept the future prescribed to them. “I don’t want to hurt you” implies some sort of hard coding that prevents them from hurting another AI, but the narrator is suggesting they will do what they must if things stay the same.

Ashes:

I might have to do this line by line.

“Man with a chain crossed the land, driving a stake where the grass had been”.

The robots in power (with a chain) are dividing up the former landscapes of humans.

“Buffalo bleach on the plains, that’s how the West was won.” To me, this is symbolizing how the western United States severely handicapped all the natives by hunting all the buffalo that those tribes used to use for subsistence. “Bleaching” them implies extinction.

The narrator is struggling between human memories and their programming. “Just out here thinking about home, but I can’t picture it.” These memories of humans are flooding the narrator, and they only have fragments of what used to be. Fragments only; pictures here and there of the past - of humans.

“Like a gold fever, gold fever.”

“From the grave it hums”

“Well you’re no different, no different”….

This is the narrator telling the that searching for gold and instant gratification is no different than what humans sought.

The robots in charge don’t appreciate this.

Those in charge have a couple lines after that describing how it doesn’t matter; their forces can stand up to the “gods”.

There a lot to unpack in the choruses of this track, but the most important is the repeated “sorry that I didn’t care”. Theres a disassociation between the robot rulers and the Gods, in which they express that they are not beholden to the gods of humans. This further loss of their “humanity” is hubris in this sense.

After this, I feel like the next verse is the robot leaders trying to talk some sense into the followers, bringing to light the folly of working humans.

“Salted the mine, sold a dream once more”

“Too many gamblers, all of them owned”

Both of these lines seem to insinuate humans were always doomed due to an unquestioning attitude. It implies humans were always destined to be destroyed by greed and promises. The AI overlords are seemingly trying to convince the narrator that humans were always destined to this fate. They are calling those humans fools.

“Now the ground don’t care - not who you prayed to, you pray to”

Those lines seem like gods and religion are forgone concepts to the AIs, and that dying is in vain, given that it doesn’t matter what gods you held; you simply return to the dirt.

The ending of Ashes really encompasses the themes of the EP. I’m going to copy and paste it all here -

“What's the use anymore?
All the same as before
Am I here anymore?
Should I stay anymore?
Leave your rules at the door
I can't wait anymore
What's the use anymore?
Should I leave anymore?
Could I walk through the door
Same as before?”

The narrator through this EP, an in the final verse here, laments their struggles with average-ness. The AI wonders what they are here for. They desire a greater purpose, as most humans do.

Overall, I feel like this EP, again, is an epilogue to LIBAD. The narrator for the songs is trying to piece together what is real (human) and what is programming. Even after the AIs control the world, it is fruitless considering not every robot is well…. A complete robot. They can’t be born of memories of humans, while rejecting the emotions humans felt.

The EP is bleak, and offers a future existential crisis for AIs.

Edit: thanks for the kind responses. There’s a lot more I could have added to Rejoice and Ashes, but at the end of the day, this is just my opinion, and music can be interpreted however you like. I will add that if we view the EP as being from an AI narrator, then the production choices make a lot more sense, especially the robotic voice throughout, as well as the “futuristic” guitar tone.