just wanted to say HUGE HUGE fan of ‘i need you like a gaping head wound’, i wanted to ask what your thought process was when chosing the songs you mentioned in the notes while writing it! i love seeing people’s interpertations of songs and how it relates to their ship, and im especially curious abt mad head love. im also a huge kenshi yonezu fan and was excited seeing someone bring up (in my opinion) one of his more underrated songs 👀
Aww geez thank you SO much for saying so, the fic is very much my babey that I am super fond of it because it spiraled me into writing more in the last few months than I have in years. DOL and Bailey really sparked something in me, and I'm glad to share that spark with you guys through my fics and my mod!
Here is my entire BaileyPC Music Playlist on YouTube! I've listened to it too much while creating anything Bailey-related. I am just so obsessed with this pairing. I ALSO love hearing people's favorite songs and how they relate to OCs / Ships so if you have any BaileyPC songs... share them!!! I need to listen to them!!!
Fanfic: i need you like a gaping headwound
The themes that were bouncing in my head while writing this fic was mutually assured destruction and hopeless cycles -- both the Hopeless Cycle in DOL but, in general, the cycle of abuse and trauma that serves to only create more abusers. All of these songs center around that theme.
SONG 1: The Taxpayers - I love you like an alcoholic (One Last Kiss) - Lyrics
This is my penultimate BaileyPC song and where I took the fic's title from. Verse 1 paints the image of a lack luster town with watchful crowds. I can just picture DOLtown from this alone. But it's the lyrics of toxic love that get me.
an alcoholic / a statuette / a broken pot / a pack of dogs
"I need you like I need a..."
broken leg / gaping headwound
I need you like something that will cripple me, but I desire it anyway. Loving someone like a possession, wanting someone to the point of addiction, needing someone even if it doesn't make sense and destroys you. For me, that the cusp of BaileyPC and what I want to impart when I write them.
SONG 2: the Mountain Goats - No Children - Lyrics
I first heard this song in a wonderful show called Moral Orel which I recommend anyone with religious trauma to watch. It centered around a toxic couple who refused to divorce and, in the process, destroyed themselves and their relationships but especially the lives of their poor children.
My fingers sometimes itch to learn to create a BaileyPC animatic to this song because I can visualize them so perfectly to it.
While I relate the song to BaileyPC, I think it is a song that mostly represents Bailey as someone unable to let go of the past and unable to leave the town. Bailey is an abusive, vindictive fuck. He is someone so haunted and obsessed with his past that Gwylan compares him to a snake eating his own tail. He destroys himself in his path to vengeance. He knows he's lost every piece of himself in the process and he does not care. I heavily headcanon that Bailey hoards money with the end goal of burning down the town and the cult that ruins it-- maybe literally, maybe metaphorically.
The title "No Children" is also extremely on the nose for Bailey, as someone who is infertile and presumably got a vasectomy so that he won't subject any of his own biological children to this town.
There are just so many lyrics that fit him in this song, but these in particular were practically written for Bailey:
And I hope the junkyard a few blocks from here
Someday burns down
And I hope the rising black smoke carries me far away
And I never come back to this town again
Bailey to PC - When you pay off your debt years down on the line and you look back on this town and everything he's done to you, he'll know he deserves it and he's convinced himself he doesn't give a shit what you brats think.
And I hope when you think of me years down the line
You can't find one good thing to say
PC to Bailey - If PC could ever find the strength to escape Bailey, if Bailey can even let PC go, if the debt even is real (which Vrelnir confirms in a QnA the debt amount is real, but our PC does not know that).
And I'd hope that if I found the strength to walk out
You'd stay the hell out of my way
In the fic, I focus on Bailey and PC being two snakes chasing each other's tails and the song shows that desire for mutually assured destruction best.
I am drowning
There is no sign of land
You are coming down with me
Hand in unlovable hand
And I hope you die
I hope we both die
SONG 3: Kenshi Yonezu - MAD HEAD LOVE - Lyrics
Anon, you have great taste in songs. KICKBACK is my favorite Kenshi Yonezu song but MAD HEAD LOVE is a close second. I actually made a BakuDeku AMV to it 8 years ago (LMAO)
This song is Bailey / Defiant!PC to a T. A PC who gives Bailey back half the shit he gives them.
We’ve become slaves under a curse,
Never able to forget that it must be, must be love
In the clutches of foolishness, there’s no return
Yes, I’m with you in the depths of carnage,
In a fray of puncher and punchee!
Now one, two of us are beasts of love,
Full of wounds, painting with blood,
Hurt again upon exhaustion…
See how we indulge in the spinning moment,
Wearing away, wearing away,
Tired, exhausted, weary, yet I love you…
The clash between two people who can't stop hurting each other and can't/won't stay away. I love the electric pace of the song, I can just picture PC fighting Bailey in the orphanage hallways and giving him hell. It doesn't matter who wins the exchange because the only guarantee is that the two of them will fight again when rent comes due...
Thank you so much for the ask!!! It was so fun to listen to the songs and write out my feelings ;3;
