Johnny had enough going on. He had enough baggage without trying to teach someone how to carry any of it. He was too busy with his work.
A Johnny/Benny-centric Cicada Season Sequel
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═════════⋆˙⟡ seven days on bayou terrabonne ⋆˙⟡══════════
Cher, Snaf calls him all through the war, through mud and wet and blood and offal. Cher, Cher, Cher, every turn, every chance, and through the full spectrum of emotion a man might feel. Comedy, anger, fear, joy, affection, relief, warning. Fear. Whatever meaning it might have, Snafu gave it a million more, and by the end of it, Eugene responded to it as readily as he would his Christian name, Gene, or Sledge.
when i was a teenager i used to catch myself thinking "i'm really glad i'm alive right now because of all the cool personal technologies that exist" and when i did i'd think it through and reckon that well, its not like teenagers in the 70s and 80s knew they didnt have ipods or facebook or whatever. they were also happy with the tech they had. and i'd reason that in the future there would be more fun technologies that i dont know i'm missing out on right now and the future will be an even cooler time to exist
anyway i was dead fucking wrong about that last part. i hate personal technologies now. i miss having an ipod that doesnt advertise shit to me and i miss when my htc wildfire didnt harass me 45 times a day to install an ai assistant and then install it anyway when i say no and i miss when the internet wasnt 5 websites all of which i have to log into and i miss when i didnt need an app to talk to my landlord. sorry past me you were actually right about 2009
thinking about Breathing universe and how the playlists for it have been, predominantly melancholy indie songs. A lot of the smut fics I write I try to put on sensual/sexual music, something that feels fast-paced and intense. But so much of what I'm exploring in Breathing is like....the mental and emotional journey of Gale coming to terms with his shame and masculinity. and like yeah it's through SEX and i WANT the scenes to be horny but the mindset I'm in is like....what is this doing emotionally to Gale. And so the songs are not. horny.
Anyways that is to say here's the playlist for the benny/brady breathing au fic
as usual, there's the time-lapse and some rambling below the cut:
drawing time: 7h
canvas stats:
song reference for the time-lapse:
i really wanted to find a frank ocean song for hunter, and i think seigfried is closely related to how i see him?
in germanic/norse mythology there's a hero named siegfried (sigurd in swedish) who bathed in dragon's blood which rendered his skin invulnerable, except for a single spot between his shoulder blades where a falling linden leaf landed. that hidden weakness becomes the point through which he can eventually be killed
in frank ocean’s seigfried he presents himself as someone who may appear untouchable from the outside, while still carrying a concealed vulnerability. the song is about alienation, queer identity/his bisexuality, masculinity, and the pressure to conform. frank considers the socially approved future, a house, a swimming pool, a family, while recognising that choosing it could mean living inside an idea created by other people rather than a life that feels like his own
hunter likely has friends, status, and an established place in bandi as the pastor’s son, but none of those things give him real belonging. that life only has room for the version of hunter that he performs. anything outside that role has to remain hidden, like siegfried’s single vulnerable spot
the repeated admission in the song that he's not brave feels significant. hunter is physically reckless and violent, but recklessness is not the same thing as bravery. he can fight, provoke/bully people, smoke, and yet he cannot openly confront what he wants
seigfried contains the possibility of recognising that the prescribed life is not truly yours and walking away from it. hunter never reaches that recognition in a way that frees him. he senses that the role he has been given is unbearable, but instead of escaping it, he turns the conflict inward. his shame becomes aggression, self-destruction, and punishment
the song shares some lines with elliott smith’s a fond farewell (i added the lyrics to both songs below). the friend in that song can be interpreted as not as a literal person, but as smith’s addicted self, or even the drugs themselves. the title suggests tenderness as well as finality. he's not condemning his former self; he is saying goodbye to a version of himself that once served a purpose, even if it was slowly killing him
a fond farewell contains the desire to separate the self from the destruction: this is happening to me, but this is not all that i am. hunter never reaches that distinction. he does not manage to say goodbye to the version of himself built from shame and punishment because he has never been shown that version is worthy of love
i’m not sure hunter ever fully understood that the entity was an entity. he dies still trapped inside the belief that his shame, violence, desire, and self-destruction are simply what he is. but a lot of people do not manage to pull themselves out of destructive patterns, addiction, or family situations/relationships even when they understand what is happening. and doing so without any support is harder still
these are the lyrics for seigfreid and a fond farewell:
it's not surprising, of course. to many, a dog being euthanized for attacking a person is a tragedy. poor thing was in a bad environment you see, it didn't deserve to die. and to many, every criminal should be put to death. they are inherently cruel and cannot change, any sentence more lenient than death is an injustice to their victims. why might a dog maul someone? well clearly the poor thing was a victim, it was circumstance that spurred it to violence. why might a person mug someone? clearly they have a corrupt soul, incapable and unworthy of empathy. they were spurred to criminality by their own sick nature. so to say, in their eyes, a human criminal is less human than a dog
The truth of the matter is that if you’re going to seriously pursue writing, not every line can go hard. It can’t be hard 100% of the time, or the hard just becomes soft. Sometimes the line just has to get the writing from point a to point b.
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