For every mile of ocean crossed ☆ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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thingwithfeathers2017-11-08 11:58 pm
outstretched) wrote in thingwithfeathers2017-11-08 11:58 pm
fanmix | Halcyon
Tracklist
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When writing a single story over a seven year period, you inevitably collect a pile of songs that remind you of the project you're working on. This mix is meant to accompany my pokémon gameverse redgreen longfic Halcyon, which takes place ten years after HGSS. It's about Green moving to a lighthouse, finding Red, and making peace with his own past.
The progression of the songs in this mix follows the narrative arc of that story. There's a prologue and an epilogue, and then two songs for each chapter. Many of these pieces talk about or sound like the ocean; almost all of them talk about growing up.
Cover Art was commissioned from the wonderfully talented
Prologue. Keane - Atlantic
I don't wanna be old and sleep alone
An empty house is not a home
I don't wanna be old and feel afraid
Although the fic is ostensibly a redgreen fic, it is first and foremost about the ocean. Every time the plot moves forward it's related to water; nearly the entire fic is spent around or on the sea. The first and last songs reinforce that. This song just sounds oceanic, and the song's themes of restless longing and reaching for a different outcome are what defines both Red and Green's lives before the fic begins.
One. The Accidentals - Odyssey
But I'm not weak,
My brain's a hurricane of sky and sea
Poseidon set a broken curse on me
I'm not the one who bleeds with every odyssey
I don't think that Red knows himself easily. He spends 10 years traveling, and what he discovers in himself are his love of pokémon, his indomitable will, and a persistent dissatisfaction for how things ended between him and Green. In the beginning of the fic, Red braves the sea in an attempt to return home, which is one of the most powerful declarations of love I can imagine anyone making. He doesn't know what to expect when he arrives in Kanto, but he has the courage to try and change things anyway.
Two. Fleet Foxes - Mykonos
And you will go to Mykonos
With a vision of a gentle coast
And a sun to maybe dissipate
Shadows of the mess you made
This is Green's song. He begins Halcyon by leaving the Gym, an unconscious echoing of Red vanishing at the height of his power ten years previously. From an outside perspective this is a terrible decision. It destroys his career, discards the reputation and authority he spent his whole life gathering, and removes him from the public eye. It's a rejection of the recognition that Green has chased his entire life. In other fics (notably Whiteout) I talk about how Green is always wondering what Red is looking for, what Red sees. Going to ground like this is one way that Green tries to figure that out. The other aspect of it is that Green realizes, emotionally if not cognitively, that something has to change. Even though he has every outward trapping of success, his life has become stagnant and he's unhappy. It's his past which casts such a long shadow over his life, so it's his past that he goes to face, and he starts that process by returning home.
Three. The Lumineers - Ophelia
Oh, oh, got a little paycheck, you got big plans and you gotta move
And I don't feel nothing at all
And you can't feel nothing small
Honey, I love you—that's all she wrote
This song always sounds like resignation to me, and for most of his life Green is resigned to these things he's assumed are unchangeable facts: Red is his enemy, his grandfather hates him, he can't ever have what he wants. But he can't stop thinking about them either, until Red washes up on the shore. Part 2 is a time of acute crisis, where Green is suddenly faced with every spectre from his past at once. To me this song encapsulates the lies he tells himself about the things he doesn't think he can change, both with himself and in how he relates to other people. To me this song is especially about his relationship with his grandfather, and how both of them believe they’re stuck in their ways. It’s about the moment before Green’s life starts to open up and change.
Four. Autoheart - The Sailor Song
I was your sailor, your demon, your lover
Your overbearing best friend, hoping for some attention
I saw through your automatic heartache
And I knew it's love is as love does, it's downhill from here
It's so hard to quote a lyric for this because literally every word of this song is about this fic, lol, but I especially associate it with Green and Kris's conversation in part 2. Green has loved Red for a...long time, so long that even Green doesn't know how long it's been. It's a constant that he's worked his entire life to reject; he's moved through his life trying on and discarding personal definitions (rival, champion, trainer), all in some way tinged by Red's existence. He's run from it and fought to conquer it and it was almost all in his head. Then, in his conversation with Kris, he finally realizes that after more than ten years, his love for Red isn't going to disappear. Once he can accept the truth of it, he can start to move forward.
Every time I get to the lyric "but I never really had it in me, did I" I just want to curl up into a ball and cry about Green Oak, man. ;_;
Five. Sleeping at Last - Pluto
I leaned in and let it hurt
Let my body feel the dirt
When I break pattern, I break ground
I rebuild when I break down
Part three, and this song, are about trust. After ten years of separation, Red and Green have to learn each other all over again. Red has no choice but to be vulnerable, since he's still physically weak. But Green is vulnerable too, by letting Red see how much he cares. It's something new for both of them, and it's kind of terrifying, but nothing worthwhile is ever easy.
Six. Death Cab for Cutie - Brothers on a Hotel Bed
The youthful boy who loved
Who turned your way and saw
Something he was not looking for:
Both a beginning, and an end
Red and Green don't fall in love as much as settle into it. They've loved each other the entire time; they just stop ignoring what has always been there. Their romance is beautiful but it also feels inevitable, weighted with history. There's nothing new between them. Once they acknowledge how much they mean to one another, it becomes a foundation upon which they both can build.
Also, the lyric "Even land-locked lovers yearn for the sea like navy men" has kept the fire of this fic alive in my heart for seven years. It's the entire fic summed up in one sentence.
Seven. Vienna Teng - Antebellum
I know the border lines we drew between us
Keep the weapons down, keep the wounded safe;
I know our antebellum innocence
Was never meant to see the light of our armistice day
Part 4! This has been The RedGreen Song to me since Kyuu used this on her redgreen fanmix, and I've used it as an endless touchstone while writing this fic. Just because they've decided to face their childhoods doesn't mean they've overcome the challenges their pasts present to them: there are still fights, within themselves, with other people. Recovery is not linear, but that doesn't mean it's not happening. This song is about the destruction of a relationship but that it mentions an armistice day has always made this song about hope to me, too.
Eight. Bastille - Weight Of Living, Pt. 1
Stepping forward out into the day
Shrugging off the dust and memory
Though it's soaring still above your head
It is out of sight and none shall see
Part 4 is where a real plot starts, so that's where the tempo of the mix starts to pick up, too. Antebellum and this fic are about struggling, because part 4 is where both Red and Green start struggling to change themselves. I don't know what to say about this one; to me this song is so straightforward and so neatly lined up with the second half of part 4 that it doesn't require explanation.
Nine. Stars - Hold On When You Get Love And Let Go When You Give It
Take the weakest thing in you
And then beat the bastards with it
And always hold on when you get love,
So you can let go when you give it
My favorite quote is, "Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, 'I will try again tomorrow.'" It's that kind of courage that this entire fic is about, and this song too—the courage to open yourself up to feeling pain, the courage to face your failures and try to learn from them, to love yourself and admit your love for the most important people in your life, the courage to try and try and try and try no matter how many times you fail. Part 5 is where they start to reap the benefits of their effort towards forgiving themselves and each other, where their lives start to gain a positive momentum.
Ten. Kings of Convenience - Summer On The West Hill
Now I know there is a world beyond
the small place I was coming from
I feel at home here, in the middle of nowhere
...
Please ocean cloud,
let there be no storm on the crossing below
Despite all their traveling, Red and Green had such a narrow view of the world and their places within it, allowing themselves to be defined by things they did as children. By the end of the fic they feel the way this song sounds: calm, centered, above all else peaceful. They have a deeper understanding of themselves and each other. Content with themselves, they gain the ability to be content anywhere. I wrote most of the end of the fic crying about how much I wanted them to be happy, and that's what this song is about too, orz.
Epilogue. Rachmaninoff - Piano Concerto No. 2 In C Minor, Op. 18: 1. Moderato - Allegro
I based the entire arc of the story on the way this piece sounds—roiling, uncertain, tempestuous, sweet at the end, but above all else oceanic. This is just one of my favorite pieces full stop, so now you all get to listen to it too orz.
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