A very good question I recieved on Instagram the other day. No way I would've been able to fit everything on my story without it looking clunky, so I figured I should write it here because it's easier. I most likely will post this as an actual entry on here ...
Short answer:
Indie Rock, Punk Rock (sort of?), and Math Rock (and Post-Rock?)
Long answer:
Indie Rock
The 'indie rock' part is self-explanatory. Bunk Bed Junction's music is not released by any mainstream record labels... such as NSR. I think Mayday herself describes the band as an indie rock band as well.
'Punk Rock'
Since B2J is implied to be, like, a really new band 1 Rocketok EP young... I'm not sure they've had enough time to collectively pump out an EP or an album's worth of anti-establishment songs specifically about NSR. After all, they were totally on-board with the regime up until maybe an hour they got booted off. Unless Rocketok is the punk album they released in the midst of the revolution... hmm.
I could argue, though, that their whole beat-em-up direct action thing + act of taking the NSRtists' songs & album covers and rock-ifying & B2J-ing all over the place is pretty 'anti-establishment and D.I.Y' in and of itself. Right?
As for a certain individual, though... I think any gritty stripped-down, screamed-vocals punk rock 'sound' would come directly from Mayday herself... and the tens (maybe hundreds) of hardly-baked demos on analog tapes she'd recorded throughout her budding guitar-playing career. Nowadays the two musicians work together to make the demos more listenable.
With that being said, I also think some of their music is significantly grittier than what we hear at the Lights Up audition, under the headcann-sumption (<- new noun I made) that B2J made Four Plus to be eeeeever-sooo-slightly more palatable to the judges. (Rockin' socks off is one thing, but they wouldn't wanna make the judges' heads explode... yet...)
Math Rock
Now... on the other hand, I think the math rock aspect would be predominantly Zuke's influence. I mean, he's a drummer with a fascination for the avant-garde. I don't think it's above him whatsoever to try and incorporate some unusual rhythms and irregular time signatures in the music he and May create together. That, combined with math rock riffs -- generally short and continual -- would make for a reeeallly interesting subversion where the drums are the most invigorating part of a track... in which the guitar serves as its steady backbone.
I've always headcanoned that B2J would at some point release a math rock album that draws from this formula. Specifically, it was May's idea to create a not-so-subtle tribute to Zuke... often found 'overshadowed'... where she takes a step aside & gives him his time to play around center-stage.)
'Post-Rock'
Lastly... post-rock. I wasn't sure if I should include this one but I thought I'd might was well. It's Also pretty avant-garde of a genre; I often see it mentioned alongside Math Rock. I won't go ahead and say that Mayday and Zuke make post-rock music often enough to be considered a Post-Rock band at all -- nor do I know enough about the genre in order to confidently talk about it -- but I *do* think it's something they'd have dabbled in eventually... maybe two or three songs in their discography... kind of evolving from the two known instrumental rock songs they've made so far (or three, counting the unused main theme.)
Maybe they have more unreleased post-rock(-inspired) songs than they've put out. And by 'unreleased', I mean one-off, one-on-one experiments with timbre, composition, and texture to be recorded and promptly stored in the depths of whatever hard drive they keep the rest of their music on. A refresher when their usual workflow becomes too same-old-same-old.
so... i miiight have made a mayday head/facemask accessory on roblox.
i love it SO dearly. goodness gracious. kind of a bittersweet feeling, though... i don't know how long i'll be able to keep it for --- could be weeks, months, more than a year maybe --- granted i was caught in a moment (approximately 45 minutes) of excessive self-indulgence and ""borrowed"" the mesh from another group's head/facemask on the catalog. (i drew the face myself but that's semi-irrelevant)
i feel like that's reason enough to suspect she might disappear sooner or later, but the thing is. like. she's been off sale since i published her to the marketplace. and i can't/don't plan on putting her on sale or making money/robux off of her. would that be allowed, since it's essentially just an unpurchasable, super-niche retexture? i used to spend hours on Robloxian Highschool making custom accessory textures for Deltarune and Total Drama cosplays ... it's just like that, but i can wear it anywhere. i scoured roblox's UGC Guidelines, particularly the Intellectual Property subsection of Policies and Guidelines, and from what i've gathered, it's.................. mostly subjective.
also. when i say i can't put it on sale, i don't mean it in a gatekeep-y kind of way...!!! i'm quite anxious that people will assume so, and therefore people will think i'm an actual douchebag who wants All The Fun To Himself/Herself before i get the chance to explain myself... which is why i'm posting her on my semi-obscure blogspot and not tumblr or bluesky or tiktok where there is a 35% chance i might rouse more attention than i want... i would FUCKING LOVE to have a bunch of maydays running around on roblox. for that reason, i'm gonna figure out how to properly model a head so i can put that on sale instead of capitalizing off of a stolen mesh... but i haven't figured that out yet. unfortunately she has to stay off sale because i really don't want anything crazy to happen to my account... IT WILL BE MADE EVENTUALLY THO!!!!
mayday avatar in the mayday room :) thank u for reading
I Haven't Forgotten About This Plaaaace!!!!! will be updating my blog more for the new year... the next few things i post here will be miscellaneous ramblings BUT !!!! I will also be writing in regard to fanfic wips and stuff like that! ... i have two fics occupying my mind at the moment and, chances are, when i'm 90-99% finished with them, they'll probably end up here slightly before i officially put them on ao3.
i've also been thinking about archiving my art here as well, just because. it's nice to have somewhere to put everything without giving a rat's ass about likes and stuff. kind of like a museum where people just look and say "wow very nice" and then move on with their days
ALSO! i'm gonna change the blog's appearance YET AGAIN to resemble Zam's recording quarters because 1. i like green, 2. that's the kind of cozy vibes i want this place to give off, and 3. that's where the awesome b2j lore drops happened ingame ... so stay tuned for that [even though it'll probably be Done already by the time anyone sees this. still. i hope you like it ^_^]
^ sketch of zuke provided above for viewing pleasure
feeling sad today and i've spent way too much time on a draft for a separate post so i'm dumping a mayzuke (albeit kinda mayday-centric) headcanon here to cheer me up (even though these could probably also pass as just mayday&zuke typical best-friendship) ... i hope anyone reading this gets some value out of it too. ^__^ comments are always appreciated
★mayday has insomnia and certain sensory issues. it's hard for her to fall/stay asleep normally -- she's got basically a laundry list of things that might keep her up at night: - the room is too dark (one lamp on minimum!) - the room is too quiet - her blanket is too heavy (she prefers to sleep under a semi-thin sheet ... it's already hot enough in the sewers) - she's hungry to an infinitesimal degree (not enough to climb down, but she lies awake and debates on what to hypothetically eat, which in turn only makes her hungrier, and then she's gotta have something) - she's thinking about potential ideas for songs, whether it be melodies or lyrics. (she's thought up some pretty good ideas to the sound of Zuke's snoring below. it's the great ideas that have her scrambling out of the bunk to jot 'em down.) - she straight-up doesn't feel like it, even though she knows she has to, for the sake of her health...
it might be a bit lengthy, but... the list seems to just somehow evaporate whenever she falls asleep on Zuke. her best naps are always the ones where they're practically slung across one another on the couch, grounded by each other's touch. sometimes they'll even cozy up together in the bottom bunk. Mayday usually sleeps on the inside. i mentioned previously that May dislikes when the room is too quiet... well, Zuke likes having a fan blowing on him at all times, and the hum of it remedies that silence. but. well, ironically enough, she HATES the faint tickle of the breeze it generates. good thing Zuke ends up bodyblocking it for her more often than not!!!
May is suuuper thankful that he's here. and really, really grateful for her best buddy. grateful that they've reached this level of mutual comfortability with one another. really! but May... perhaps her more stubborn half... can't help but feel kind of odd about the idea of depending on him for a good night's rest. even if she can't deny the fact that his presence feels like a shield. and laying on him feels like laying on the perpetually cool side of a pillow. but, like, if the pillow had a heartbeat and smelt good and talked in its sleep.
and even when they're nodding off separately in their respective bunks, lately Zuke's snoring (the mere thought of him always being here to fall back on) has been enough of a narcotic to lull her to bed, so... can she really complain?
hrmmm -- about my previous post. i realize i do signal Rock Likers to be an oppressed group of people under NSR's rule. or, rather, i guess NSR Fans[?] (and subsequently EDM) as an oppressing force in general -- considering DK West's experience with said fans as a Rap artist, implying that EDM fans' hostilities extend beyond just Rock.
i'm not sure if i'll go full Take-Things-Too-Seriously mode where I say people are being outright killed in Vinyl City over music preference... even though there has canonically been violence, and with violence and misinformation comes death... so... this Music shit does indeed get serious *scratches my head*
looking back, i guess it was kind of inevitable -- once the clutches of my obsession took over, it was inevitable that my experiences as a marginalized person who just so happened to spend the first sixteen years of her life living lower-middle class in New York City under a government that doesn't seem to care/is actively working against me, would manage to worm their way into my thoughts about a game that is Smattered!! with hints & messaging about political shit like fascism (forcible suppression of opposing beliefs ... the suppression of rock) and propaganda (see: the language used during the newscast following Sayu's battle + certain aspects of Tatiana's speeches throughout the game) among many others, as this tumblr post so thankfully puts it. and. i mean. doesn't everyone project onto their favorite games/characters?
i don't know what's making me explain myself but... like... i guess it all comes from a place of Not wanting to be seen as unnecessarily edgy or whatever or. like. being insensitive by bringing real-world stuff into this silly ass beat-em-up game JUST to have something bad and ugly to flesh up my lore, for fiction, rather than being duly aware of the nonfiction consequences around it. like... i am aware. and that's precisely why i chose to incorporate it. i know there are people who will see this eventually & roll their eyes regardless. but despite everything i still find a lot of comfort in turning Mayday and Zuke into liberators...
she was born in a lower-income urban area of Vinyl City, methinks.
there's the part of the city with all of the flashy stuff -- where the NSR information building and the giant billboards and the various districts and the tourism hotspots are at -- the Outer Ring / Outer Cities ... and then there's the Inner Cities -- the Mamak area and everything theoretically before that. i like to think that Vinyl City is a LOT bigger than visually expressed ingame (mostly due to No Straight Road's status as an indie boss rush game meaning making the city hub fucking gargantuan was unnecessary both gameplaywise and resource-wise.)
so. Mayday was born in the inner city. it was a place that NSR has already moved on from, left in the shadow in favor of the more commercialized, tourist-oriented, with-the-times outer cities -- kind of like how Rock was cast into the shadow of EDM. the place she'd grown up was more so held together by its people rather than their governing force, thus instilling that outgoing-helper-butterfly software into May's head at a very young age. she knew a lot of people, and a lot of people knew her (which would either prove very handy or very annoying when trying to sneak into local venues at like 16 where she was NOT allowed lol...)
Mayday had earnest connections with so many people, who were in the same position as she was. they were at this dead-end where it was either Get With The Electronic Times or fade into the end stages of irrelevance. and i headcanon that music and music-based (sub)cultures have a lot of social weight to people in the world of 'No Straight Roads', especially to the people who live in Vinyl City, the Music Capital of the World ... therefore, it wasn't as easy as just 'letting go' of Rock. there were a lot of obstinate people without much agency, Mayday included.
the difference between them and May, however, is that her stubbornness went beyond refusing to assimilate. in fact, there's nothing she had ever wanted more than to be a rockstar. to bring Rock back to the top, just as Kul Fyra had done long ago. to be famous. she doesn't realize it outright, but she equates fame with agency. probably because of... the apparent idea of how NSR works as a governing body: it has the NSR elites ... famous musician(s) ranking high in society, with the districts of which they own and have complete control over. maybe this is corny, but i see Mayday's yearning to be a famous rockstar as not only a Kul Fyra-motivated thing, but also a desire to be able to Rightfully give back to people and the places she'd grown up around. (though, The Goolings' stardom was similar in the sense that Rock music was at its peak, therefore Rock lovers were flourishing. Teenage May pined endlessly for a time where it could flourish once again.)
even though, Mayday would probably have her own gripes about joining NSR as a Rock musician, the same force that's responsible for most of her squalor in the first place. but for her case in particular, she deems it a necessary evil.
i will talk about mayday's family now. this section will be probably less cohesive compared to the previous because i'm not firm on it yet but alas!
mayday was raised by her grandmother and dad. she does have other relatives Buuuutt they're not really as important, i guess.
(grandmother, as in her deceased mom's mom by the way. and may's father is her birth father and a widower (though technically they had their daughter as younger unmarried-but-still-devoted adults.) i think that was kind of a confusing way to put it so let me try again: Mayday's mom is deceased, so her grandma (on her mama's side) and her father take care of her.)
(this paragraph is not as important either and is subject to change:) now, i don't wanna say the two adults had a strained relationship but for some reason i've always thought that things were just. kind of tense, mostly on her grandma's side & directed towards her dad. it may have something to do with the sudden passing of her mom ... which i do NOT think May's dad was responsible for, but... like... from her grandma's perspective, that was her daughter ... and now there's this sort of pressure on Mayday as the Super-Only-Child and also the only non-washed up person there, so ... it's a large factor as to why neither of her guardians are at all thrilled that she becomes a first-year college dropout.
(Dead Parent trope incoming...!!! yes... i know it's kind of overused and we already have Yinu's Dad [or lack thereof] canonically + Zuke's Dad as a headcanon [also with reason ... it has to do with the reasoning behind DK West's behavior but this ain't about him] which would push the count up to a whopping Three but i promise it's not just a hollow tearjerker...) i mentioned that Mayday's mom is deceased. and if you read my previous blog entry you might remember me also mentioning/alluding to the fact that Momday (i'll just nickname her that hehe) was a HUGE The Goolings fan. when she passed during Mayday's toddler years, she left behind this hoard of recordings & memorabilia and i think Somewhere along the line, May kind of. like. Equated her mother to Kul Fyra, thus managing to imprint on the 'deceased' rockstar...??? and that's why a majority of her actions are driven towards honoring her, making her proud, yadda yadda. her lifelong obsession with Kul Fyra manifests as a lifelong drive to become a rockstar & bring rock back to Vinyl City. (yes... i know people can just be obsessed with things in a normal obsession way... but i think mayday is a very abnormal girl... you can call her case a hereditary Special Interest of sorts...)
anyways, kind of going back to her dad & grandma. she has a good relationship with them both and loves them dearly, really. when she "runs away" from home as a result of their conflict concerning her dropping out of college, she really doesn't "run away" for good. she can't really bring herself to. one of her halves knows she was wrong -- the other half is unshakeable in her belief that she'll fare well without schooling -- like an unstoppable force vs. an immoveable object. but as we know, Mayday is not the best at taking criticism or changing her beliefs when she thinks she's in the right and, subsequently, apologizing for her faults (see: the latter half of the Lights' Up Audition, her dilemma with Zuke's NSR drumsticks, the ending cutscene in the Festival Plaza...) so. to her, it was kind of a guilty compromise. sure, she'd stay in the neighborhood and sure, she'd sneak into the apartment if she needed something out of there, but other than that, yep! totally out of there!
i've also imagined for a while that Mayday is an urbexer. short for urban explorer. given her curiosity and boundless energy, she's probably done tons of exploring in her hometown -- places ranging from secret spots in-the-cut to old, abandoned stores filled with albums from 30-40 years ago, to Vinyl City's awfully spacy underground sewage runoff systems ... she can tell you where a lot of things are. i think this is also how May managed to score her and Zuke's so-called Home Sewer Home. she'd been looking for a side-hustle in premonition for when Old-Man Tuk's shop would eventually fold, and got some kind of job dealing with parcel for a post & mailing facility on the outskirts of Festival Plaza. she almost fell into that BIG ASS TUBE that connects to the Living Quarters. you know, the one that those packages fall from? that May catches and throws to Zuke and he kicks it away? that giant tube...
anyways. Mayday climbed down of her own accord once she got her bearings together (through the tube -- she didn't realize she could enter through the manhole near Aunty's eventual Mamak restaurant) and... Huzzah!! There's just all of this unoccupied space for her to, well... Occupy!!!!!!!! it seemed to be some kind of basement-infused-storage-system-infused-storm-drain. as for the fucking built-in underground helicopter pad and the logistics for transporting furniture i don't have an explanation for that. Heh. Some things are better left unexplained I Suppose...
i'm pretty bad at writing conclusions for these kinds of things so here's a song that i associate with Mayday. thank u for reading! (epilepsy warning -- flashing lights for the video!)
OKAY! Now that i kind of know how this works, it's time to start rambling.
first and foremost:
my thoughts are built mostly off of the foundation/idea that the events of No Straight Roads take place in the year 2006. see this tumblr post and this twitter thread inspired by it for base info. i will mention some of these points as i go.
!!!also!!! this isn't necessarily a theory, or me implying that certain things are canon, y'know? i guess this'll apply to everything else on this blog, but it's all just stuff i've Literally improvised as i went. courtesy of fanfics & posts i've read and with wonderful ideas... and time-relevant bullshitting and mental gymnastics and me just Filling The Gaps over here.
this will be mostly kul fyra/mayday-centric since they're kindof the driving forces of change so just mentioning that beforehand... Don't worry i will discuss my thoughts about zuke in a later post tho... gehehe
timeline up to canon events, simplified:
•Kul Fyra* is born in April of 1958. [semi-canon birthday -- nsr social media account states that she was born sometime in April, no specific date. I'm thinking either the 4th (4/4, as in 4:4 time signature,) or the 28th for no reason in particular other than 'it also feels right'. Also. for the record I don't think KF or TQ were either of her names at birth but i'll call her KF just to avoid confusion.)
• The Goolings is formed in 1975. Fyra* is 17 years old at the time, though she has finally adopted the stage name Kul Fyra. She is, already, widely considered one of the best lead guitarists in the entirety of the city. Her reign -- or The Goolings' reign -- lasts for almost 10 years...
• ...Until the band's abrupt end in 1985. Unable to see any other way out of this cage, this legacy she had made for herself ... her deep dissatisfaction with the state of her band, her city, and her life -- all under Rock's raucous rule -- Kul Fyra premeditates one final decision. A plan. She fakes her own death on April 21, 1985. To the media, she is another member of the 27 Club: another generational talent gone too soon.
• A week later, Mayday is born. She is born on May 1st, 1985, into her mama's collection of nearly everything which remains of The Goolings. It's almost as if she'd never missed out at all -- Almost.
• Fast forward into Mayday's early-mid teenage years. It's somewhere within 1997-2000 (being 21 in 2006, she would be 12-15 during this time.) NSR has been established for around a decade since then. Also, within this time -- just proceeding the golden era of old-school rap/hip hop -- DK West has had quite the run; he's risen to popularity, shaken the city with his rhymes, then been ousted by the same EDMies who set fire to his car on live broadcast.
• It is late 2003. Mayday is married to music, to her guitar, to her high fantasy of making a name for herself as a Rock musician in this EDM world she lives in. She claims it to be in Kul Fyra's name. She is so dedicated, in fact, that she drops out of her first year of college to focus on music. This, perhaps understandably, goes down as a shitshow with her grandmother and father. The situation is escalated because of Mayday's obstinacy... and by the next week, she's "moved herself out." She takes nothing but her guitar, her wallet, and the clothes on her back.
• Mid-2004 (Mayday is 19,) she (literally) runs crashes right into a spaced-out Zuke on the corner of an inland street. The young man insists he's fine, but Mayday double-insists on dragging him along to her favorite food spot for reparations (Aunty works here at the moment!) There, they talk and eat for a while, generally hitting if off -- even if they've come to the mutual conclusion that the other is odd, be it oddly fascinating. They part ways amicably.
• They meet again literally less than a week later in Tuk's Record Shop, where Mayday has been working as a day job (before it went out of business the following year thanks to NSR's monopoly.) May pitches the idea of starting a band together... and after a bit of thinking & internal conflict, Zuke accepts. It would eventually prove to be one of the best decisions the both of them could've made.
• It is August 7th, 2006. It is the night of the Lights' Up Audition. Mayday and Zuke are nearly two years deep into their band, Bunk Bed Junction. Up until then, they've been playing live locally, recording their own music in the comfort of their hideout, practicing endlessly for this very day. To Mayday, this would be the night they earned their fame. ... And then the audition goes down as a shitshow because, once again, Mayday has a way with escalating things (except this time, it was more justified). They get kicked out, Rock music is banned and it's all their fault, and Vinyl City faces another horribly ill-timed blackout. Bunk Bed Junction has had enough and hashes two-ish decades worth of rock & resentment on the douchebags at NSR.
And ... that's pretty much it for now !! still thinking about the timeline for the length of Mayday and Zuke's actual revolution . if anything changes (which is inevitable) i'll edit this post and include a changelog. again none of this is supposed to be a definite timeline, these R Just a motherload of thoughts i've had .
