Benny Weir Pianist Headcannons
Okay, so, l've seen a couple theories and HCs on Benny's whole missing mother and absent father situation and the one I'm going with is inspired by the idea that his mom died when he was young and dad kind of couldn’t handle it so he just dropped him off with Evelyn and only talks to Benny every once in a while. I’ll try to find the people that originally had this idea.
However, I stumbled upon this video of Atticus playing the piano the other day and fell in love with the melody (pretty sure it was an impromptu cover of Victor’s piano solo from The Corpse Bride, but since it came out 12 years ago, I can’t find an elongated cover of it that old that he could have been playing. He’s obviously trying to remember something at the start, and this is the closest thing I can find). And he also just loses himself in the music after he settles into it and that struck something writhing my little former choir kid heart (but seriously, I played this on loop while writing this HC and then to fall asleep. 9/10 would recommend).
Anyway, here's my sad backstory pianist Benny HC. Also, I never learned piano, just four years of varsity choir in high school and a single awful semester in college, so be gentle if some of the terminology is incorrect. Enjoy!
His mother was a concert pianist and some of his most clear memories of her are of watching her play at the old piano in his childhood house and losing herself in the symphonies she produced. It felt like watching someone pour their soul into the world.
She died when he was 4 and he went to live with Grandma Weir a few months later.
Eliana Vyette (tis what I’ve decided to name Benny’s mom. Take it up with my 3 am self if you’ve got any qualms. She’ll be answering questions between 12:02 and 12:04 in the morning) almost never wrote down her performance pieces or played them for an audience multiple times over the course of her career. Or, at least, she didn’t write them down in any decipherable way (think how alchemists used to encode their recipe’s in ciphers, but make it sheet music). And there’s not a lot of publicly available recordings (either video or audio) of her performances. So, like 87% of her catalogue is lost (if people did some deep digging, they could find copies in their parent’s CD collections, that one dusty camcorder that struggles to turn on, the corrupted hard drive on their older cousin’s 2002 Toshiba laptop).
Benny, however, has everything his Aunt Sassy (yes, she’s canon, she was mentioned in the movie and he says her name too easily for him to be pulling her completely out of thin air), Dad, and Grandma saved. Sheet music and recordings (let’s say he’s got maybe 65%. Not everything, but better than nothing. It’s in varying qualities though).
So, when he was old enough, six and three months, he asked Evelyn if he could take piano lessons and she didn’t even hesitate in saying yes. Because, let’s be honest, the Grand Piano sitting in storage needs to be brought out of retirement and this little boy needs something to connect with his mom and maybe bring him out of his shell (he befriends Ethan a few months later on the first day of Grade 2)
But, this is the one thing he has to connect with his mother, replicating her concerto melodies as best as possible. So, nobody but his piano teacher and his grandma know that he has even touched the instrument. Much less that he’s actually really proficient, a bit of a prodigy. But he doesn’t want to be what his mother was. This is for him and him alone. He plays for himself and no one else. So, Ethan, his best friend, thinks there’s not a musical bone in his lanky body, especially after his especially robotic drum performance in the Freshman talent show (gonna be real, after learning that Atticus Mitchell played the drums around the time of filming IRL and was the drummer in a band with his older brother, I was a bit shocked at how static he portrayed Benny’s drumming. And then I went and remembered he was in Radio Rebel, and was the lead singer of the pop-punk band. He’s obviously faking playing the bass, but he’s credited with the vocals for all three songs on Genius so 🤷‍♀️)
So, there’s the gist. I’ve got two more parts. The first of which is underdeveloped with Benny and Erica being in Music Theory and the teacher pulling up one of the recovered Vyette performances, unknowing her son is in the room. The second is when a romantic OC discovers Benny playing for the first time and then everything that comes afterwards in the timeline of him playing around and for her (I’ve got the sweetest idea for a first dance!). Literally only Erica ever susses it out and it’s because she was in that class with him.
I’ll come back and edit this with formatting later when it’s not 3 am.