root@azure-void:~# cd /manifesto
root@azure-void:/manifesto# ls -a
. .. manifesto.readme blackflamingo.manifesto
root@azure-void:/manifesto# cat blackflamingo.manifesto
[ !! SYSTEM WARNING: OVERCLOCK DETECTED // SAME SHRIMP, WRONG OUTPUT !! ]

I have some thoughts regarding the Sleep Token fan analysis (and I mean some fans, not all; I’m not trying to make sweeping generalizations here…if it sounds like I am, apologies) of Jerry, the black flamingo on the Even in Arcadia album cover. This is just one bird nerd's opinion. (gl1tchk1ss@pm.me)

No hard feelings either way. I get that a manifesto on the plumage of a fictional album-cover animal is…not everyone’s cup of tea, coffee, or whatever keeps you verticalclass=""

Let’s begin.

When we see a black flamingo in nature, we’re looking at a melanistic occurrence. Melanism is a genetic mutation that
causes an excess of dark pigmentation. It’s rare. Like, stupidly rare. Rarer than most people realize. I went digging
(because of course I did) and found a fascinating paper on Greater Flamingos and melanistic coloration in the wild. If
you’re a paper nerd, have at it; link’s here and if you breeze past it because for some reason you actually wanted to
read this mess… it was also in the Links for the Lazy section at the top.
I don’t know what kind of person stumbles onto my cursed corner of the internet, so I’m assuming you’re either here for
the biology, the band, or the chaos. If you’re still reading, bless you. Buckle up. It’s about to get weird.

Flamingos get their rosy plumage from carotenoids. Let me back up for a second. All flamingos, regardless of species,
start out gray, flippy-flappy little babies doing their tippy tap dance in the water with their
parents. As they grow, they eat what I can only assume is a flamingo’s idea of fine dining: a mix of crustaceans and
algae. That’s what turns their feathers pink once they work through their system. A shrimp cocktail of coloration, if
you will. It takes time, but that’s the payoff.

Here’s where I think people are missing something obvious to full-on bird nerds. It’s the kind of detail that flies
right past anyone who isn’t neck-deep in flamingo biology due to a hyperfocus tunnel kicking in at 4 AM. 
Especially when it comes to that lone bird on the "Even in Arcadia" album art. I mean, how many Sleep Token fans are
also birders? Probably a handful at best. And let’s be honest, we’d make a terrible birding group. 

Too spread out. Too awkward. 

C’est la vie.


Bearing all this in mind, consider this: 

it’s not the quality of what they are consuming, these melanistic flamingos.
They’re dining at the same seafood buffet as the rest of the flock. 

In the species of flamingoes this has been
documented in (two as of this writing, the Greater Flamingo and the Lesser Flamingo), we must consider that melanism 
is how their bodies process the carotenoids. From what I have gathered in my research, it doesn’t seem to make them 
a more desirable candidate for getting a mate for the breeding season (although this is purely speculative on my part).

No dancing, no mound building (which is a Greater Flamingo activity), nothing that shows that these individuals are
living the typical flamingo life. Birds with unusual coloration (whether melanistic or leucistic...basically anything
too far from the norm) have much lower success mating.


Jerry (goodness…what a name for a flamingo. I suppose it’s at least gender-neutral, so it’s not all bad but I can’t help
but wonder what Vessel’s thoughts on that name are. I suppose we’ll never know, and I can tell you this: if I ever do
hear from a reputable source one way or the other... I’ll keep it to myself unless I have a signed note from Vessel)
isn't marked by consuming darkness if he or she (or whatever pronouns a flamingo would use …honk/honkself probably?
Every Merlin BirdID sound for the 6 flamingo species is just ..honking in various octaves)

It eats the same algae/shrimp cocktail as everyone else. They have rosy pigments, its pigment pathways are altered. 
They misfire. 

Badly. 

Boldly. 

Darkly.

If we look at this bird as a figure in Sleep Token lore as a metaphorical standing for isolation, outsider status, or
emotional maladaptation, we can see that the black flamingo is broken in a way that dooms him to be forever othered,
even in the middle of a massive flock. It's not due to "consuming darkness". It's how he's made.


Flamingos are hyper-social (remind you of any other species?) and mate-selective (again…sound familiar?). Every
documented melanistic flamingo has been seen lingering at the edges of its flock, never fully integrated. Knowing this,
the black flamingo on Even in Arcadia feels less like a quirky mascot and more like a metaphor for the crushing
loneliness of being built differently. It’s maladaptive emotional processing: overthinking, over-feeling…and it echoes
through so many of Sleep Token’s heartbreaking tracks on their albums. (Take Me Back to Eden, the entirety of “This
Place Will Become Your Tomb”-- need I go on?) There is definitely some next level symbolism going on here 
(and bless you, Vessel, you absolute bard, for the symbolism.)

For the sake of ST themes, let's look at melanism as symbolic. What do we have?


- Melanism = overprocessing, over feeling, over loving until it consumes and transforms you. Basically the entirely of
lyrical canon. Don’t tell me you don’t see that. If you don’t, you’re hearing but not listening.


- Darkness as visibility = A black flamingo is immediately and violently obvious. It can't hide its otherness; the
difference is visually aggressive. Beautiful? Of course. But beautiful like blood on a white lace handkerchief.
It's the contrast that draws people in.


- Social rejection: melanistic flamingos may not get full social exclusion; they're not "wrong", threatening, 
or completely unnatural to their peers. They pass the sniff test for being a flamingo. But they're still not the 
prime candidate for being a mate. 


Sleep Token lyrics drip with longing for belonging while knowing it’s fundamentally impossible. 
The melanism gets it in one, visually speaking. I am hypothesizing that this flamingo, as Vessel’s stand-in, :


• Is an over processor of all things when it comes to emotions.
• Is visibly different and inescapably obvious.
• Feels rejection in a harsher and more alienating fashion (rejection sensitivity).
• The dark plumage visually codes him as “too much,” not “too little.”

It fits Sleep Token’s clear love of scientific tragedy, at least from what I’ve seen in my brief time as a listener.
Now here’s where I am going to deviate from the norm. Yes, I absolutely adore birds. Yes, the black flamingo on the
cover of Even in Arcadia at once caught my attention. But there’s definitely something a little deeper, in my completely
unofficial opinion that makes this flamingo’s acceptance as a mascot for parts of the fandom seem…a bit off.

I’m not sure what the right word for it is…maybe the ick? I don’t know. Cutesy memes are and always will be part of
fandom. And fandom will always have parts that will be toxic. Trust me, I survived the SuperWhoLock era. That was its
own special hell. And I mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone who identifies with this flamingo. I’m just a fellow
over-analyzer, with thoughts being what I overprocess instead of carotenoids. It's likely why I can relate so hard to
Sleep Token's (and by default Vessel’s) lyrics. They feel like emotional and cognitive overclocking, rumination, hyper
fixation, and dysregulation. Burning out is inevitable but while we're crashing, let's have some soul-crushingly
beautiful piano.


This brings me to my point, I guess—maybe I’m beating a dead horse here. Looked at this way, the flamingo isn’t
aspirational, but neither is it a true curse. It’s a biological maladaptation. If we look at it as a self-portrait of
Vessel, we can look at it this way: his own body betrays him. Emotional dysregulation. The scumbag brain of meme-days
eld.


And if you trace that through the whole discography, it’s the same story told in different keys. What I’m saying here
is…bless Vessel’s heart (and not in the sarcastic Southern way, but the genuinely empathetic Southern way). He’s given
us this onyx feathered creature as a self-portrait and an homage to the emotional dysregulation arc Sleep Token/Vessel
writes about.

I do want to say this, though, just as a personal aside and strictly in an armchair quarterbacking way: Vessel/the black
flamingo isn’t broken in the way a cracked bone is broken. He’s just made differently. No accident, nothing to really be
fixed…just biology running a different code. It's not wrong, per-se, to be this way. It just is what it is.
But different still gets you left behind in a flock built for pink. I'm certain there are a lot of us out here,
undocumented instances of black flamingos, who feel that in a very visceral way.

Sidebar on Mythos vs. Scientific Methodology

If you're more into myth than science that's fine, but I'm thinking Vessel is leaning scientific here and this is why:


We know that Sleep Token has some more science coded lyrics; I mean they've got a whole song called Alkaline
(which, fun bird fact: flamingos feel in waters that are more alkaline than other wading birds.) 
I don't have the exact details on since I’m not an ornithologist, just a birder with too much time to think. 
Frankly this is just me getting this shit out of my own head, so I don’t explode.

We also have songs like Aqua Regia, which is the only acid that will completely dissolve and destroy gold. That's a
scientific mortar exploding during a celebration if I've ever scene one. You've got loads of tech-flavored lines, 
such as "who encrypted your dark gospel in body language", "are you the guardian angel hacking into my brain cells", 
"subatomic interactions if it's all good", the short and frank "can we hit delete?". There's clearly a lot
more to this bird that just possible interpretations of ancient Greek...things. This isn't just a Greek tragedy in
pretty cosplay. (And yes, dear, your cosplay is lovely. This is just another perspective.)


We’re all prone to this overprocessing of emotions if we don’t learn to regulate worshipping the wrong gods (or people),
but some of us are predisposed to this way of thinking and feeling, letting love eat us alive, metabolizing normal 
things into isolation and pain because our brains won’t shut the hell up.

If Sleep Token is as intentional as I think (and being someone who also has a bit of an artistic background, I don’t
believe in design accidents), then the flamingo is Vessel admitting:

“I am broken in a way that turns love into poison, and I can’t fix it.”

It’s not edgy; it’s tragic. And the reason it hits us so hard? Because a lot of us in this motley crew can absolutely
relate to how it feels to be a psychological over-processor. It doesn’t have to be spiritual or require doing any work
on the shadow-self. Think of it like the way that some animal coloration in nature is a coded warning. While Vessel's not saying, “hey, this
is gonna hurt you so bad, I will fucking kill you if you try to eat me” (The man is no Poison Dart Frog, although he is 
beautiful in a lyrical sense), he is saying in my opinion:


“I overthink, I consume things the same way that everyone else does, like love, like joy, respect, creativity. These are
the things that I want to take into myself, but the way that it comes out is broken and it makes me feel alone.”


He is “unintentionally” maladaptive because of his wiring. It's the very core of him.


I want to be clear about something. I know I’m probably projecting some of my own motherboard BIOS settings onto Vessel
here, but this wiring? It’s brutal. You overanalyze every action, every word. You pour too much of yourself into
everything. You give grace to things—and to people—that don’t deserve it. And you end up alone. Maybe physically,
because of circumstance. Maybe mentally, sitting in a room full of people and still feeling like the odd one out in a
flock of pink bastards who seem to function fine. (Kidding. You’re not bastards. You’re just lucky you didn’t roll a Nat
1 on executive function.)


And no, you can’t “fix it.” Especially not when people romanticize it. Vessel has the outlet of a stage. He can bleed it
out in music like a medieval bloodletting from behind the mask. People like you and me? If I don’t get it out of my
system, I’ll implode. And when that happens, there are only two outcomes: 

someone I care about gets burned, or I take the hit myself. Permanently, sometimes. That’s just how this works.


This isn’t pretty. It isn’t elegant. And it sure as hell isn’t aspirational. It’s survival. That’s why Vessel sings.
That’s why I write to random strangers/myself in the Void. That’s why I drag paint across canvas. That’s why I’m sitting here, post-op and
exhausted, ranting about black flamingos instead of sleeping like a rational human being. Because if people like us
don’t vent it, the damage spreads like an infection to every part of us, or to everyone around us. And the worst part?

We know it. 
We know it, and we can’t stop being this way.
 But goddamn if we don't hold out hope that someone will love us anyway.


I can’t speak for Vessel, but my life? It’s chaos and soul-gutting. It’s taking my own emotions and field-dressing them
like a goddamn deer just to keep breathing. That’s what survival looks like when you’re built like this.


Well…this was supposed to just be an essay on the possible symbolism behind a melanistic flamingo. Funny how things
wobble off the path, huh?

Hey. It’s okay. I’m okay, you’re okay. Even when our brains scream that this is ridiculous and we’re
about to get laughed off the stage or yanked off with the world’s biggest shepherd’s crook: we’ve got this. I’m rooting
for you.

If you’re one of the lucky ones who can metabolize your carotenoids just fine, but you know a melanistic feathered
fellow?

Tell your friend he’s not the only black flamingo in this shitty pond.

Cheers.
– K

root@azure-void:/manifesto# logout
(CONNECTION TERMINATED)