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cringearenachamp · 3 months ago

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Running out of sand: Traces, Twin Peaks, Aging, Grief, and The Self: Part 1

"We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives inside the dream. But who is the dreamer?"

David Lynch is my favorite film director (so far). His work is often surreal and symbolic, metaphorical, steeped in dream-logic, yet at its core EMOTIONAL, sometimes even sentimental. He's rarely edgy for edge's sake (unless it's for a gag/joke), and despite violence against women being a common part of his work (and despite clearly being very attracted to women's bodies) it's clear that he respects women and feels compassion for them. They're often at the narrative and emotional core of his stories, and those stories are so often about trauma, grief, the denial of that trauma and grief (and the often-magical lengths his characters will go to deny these things), and the fragmentation of the self and even of entire communities that trauma, grief, and the denial of these things can cause. Twin Peaks features all of these things and centers around the mystery and tragedy of Laura Palmer, a 17 year old high school girl, homecoming queen, and meals-on-wheels volunteer with many dark secrets that only begin to be revealed after her murder (the least of which being that she uses cocaine to stay on top of everything-- but long story short, she essentially lives a double-life without telling anyone about it).

Twin Peaks was a television series that lasted two seasons in its original run, and ended dramatically but in a way that still left quite a few questions behind: including the fate of one of its most beloved main characters, FBI Agent Dale Cooper. In 2017, David Lynch and Mark Frost (Lynch's co-collaborator for Twin Peaks) released Twin Peaks: The Return, a new entire full season of Twin Peaks. Things still don't wrap up neatly. Traces (heh) of the old series remain, but rarely in ways that the audience would expect or hope for. Questions are raised as often as they're answered, and the questions that are answered are often not answered in comfortable ways. Among other things, The Return is an exploration of aging and death, grief-- Lynch was getting older at this point and his friends were beginning to die around him, including Catherine Coulson, an actor in both Twin Peaks Series, who was dying of lung cancer during the filming of The Return-- and the desperation, arrogance, and futility of trying to return to the past in order to "fix" it, especially for other people.

While Steve is inspired by much of the 60s music David Lynch loved and incorporated into his films, and while Perry and Lynch both incorporate sincerity and sentimentality into their work in ways that audiences can sometimes find jarring, his work is far less surreal than Lynch's: it's musically very straightforward, and often lyrically as well. Lynch's work also isn't nearly as afraid of the dark as Perry's is, either: while being trapped or stuck in the dark is a common lyrical motif in Perry's music (including on Traces), he rarely if ever makes purposefully-ugly art, or tries to synthesize beauty-in-ugliness/ugliness-in-beauty, or sing about the details of any kind of serious darkness. Lynch's work forces the viewer to look into the darkness, dive into it, and come out of it on the other side changed in some way. In Perry's work the darkness is a place to be trapped in AND a place that holds deep personal truths, but it's never a place he invites the audience to. Thus, his work still often avoids what Lynch forces us to see and reckon with.

In other words, the purpose of this analysis isn't to compare Perry to Lynch in terms of artistic output: instead, it's to situate Perry, his work, and the themes haunting it, within a Lynchian context.

Traces is Steve Perry's first solo album in 25 years. A comfortable number. Nice even quarter. The album was inspired by an impulsively entered, relatively brief (1.5 years), intense relationship with a psychologist with terminal breast cancer, his grief, and a promise he wanted to keep for her: to not go back into isolation. Musical isolation? So he says.

The music and the album cover and all that are discussions for another time: this is more an introduction to everything, and a (relatively) brief discussion of the narrative and public relations surrounding it all. The most immediate oddity here is temporal. Time is a shifty thing in many Lynch films: narrators are often unreliable, split into various fragments of themselves, and thus the narrative itself becomes unreliable in a way, various fragments of itself, things that make sense in an emotional or metaphorical way or by using dream logic (common in Lynch!) but don't always make sense in a "normal", realistically logical way.

In the case of Steve and Traces, some of the year math is off. It was in fact just about 25 years since he released a solo album (For the Love of Strange Medicine was released in '94, Traces in '18, so 24 years, but close enough), but it definitely hadn't been 31 years since he left the band, and that was another number he frequently threw out during interviews in this press circuit: 31 years before 2018 would be 1987, the FIRST time he left, and the only time he left of his own volition. Why doesn't 1998 (20 years before 2018, itself a nice round number) count? Legal red tape is one obvious answer, but is that red tape truly so restrictive that Steve (or the other members of Journey) can't even mention the year he was fired from the band? Or is that one fact-- that he was fired, he didn't leave-- something that's still too painful and shameful to invite discussion about?

(from Lost Highway-- and the character saying this is not a nice or happy guy)

Neat narratives are appealing when you're trying to sell something, of course, and they're especially nice when you have preexisting control issues, you're uncomfortable facing your own complications and messes, and you're used to having to present a "face" to the world that isn't your own. They're also easier to create when you have the money and resources to make reality conform to your preferences. In the past, Perry was also often forced to create his own narratives through the whims and preferences of Journey's manager: being able to craft something yourself to your own tastes-- not just the music this time but the story behind it, the image you want to project-- would be even more attractive with this in mind.

Like a fractured Lynch character, then, Perry created a fracture within the narrative of his professional life (you could argue that Professional Steve Perry is something of a character that Steve puts on) and decided on a truth that "worked" the most for him. Jack Cole, the director Steve chose to help create the music videos for his 1984 album Street Talk, astutely pointed out in an interview (alongside Perry) that famous musicians are "life-long actors" and "dual people".

(the face journey Steve goes on while Jack discusses this is amazing by the way he's just like "fuuuUUUUUuuuck. i mean. its fine :)")

If all famous musicians are inherently lifelong actors and dual people, Steve took that to another level, and was extremely intentional in creating a stark divide between his professional and private lives. If you listen to enough interviews, you start to notice that he even has fractures within his professional life: he was whoever he thought would "work"; he was whoever he thought would get him out of an interview "winning" it; he was whatever he thought someone he respected wanted him to be. In a quasi-recent interview Neal Schon even said that he didn't know if he was Steve's friend anymore, because he didn't even know who Steve was anymore.

Duality is an extremely common feature within Lynch's work, and fractures within the self are EXTREMELY prevalent within Twin Peaks: The Return. One character in particular, Dale Cooper, is arguably actually FOUR separate characters. In one instance, you see him create one of those characters-- tulpas-- himself. Each of these tulpas represents something different: Mr. C. is his "doppelganger" and shadow-self-- a darkness he avoids for so long it becomes its own entity through magical means-- while Dougie Jones is a no-thoughts-head-empty innocent sweetie-pie that everyone loves. Other characters create tulpas in order to exorcise their own traumas. Fucking with time and the self, of course, is never without consequence, and these divisions begin to fuck up the very world the characters are situated in: a TV world, a soap opera world, one that thrives on narrative.

Fractures and duality are things that come up within the cover of Traces, as well: the most surreal and metaphorical piece within Perry's entire project, albeit one still washed in bright and vibrant hues, a smorgasbord of signs and symbols that's almost (intentionally?) overwhelming. When you take the initial cover and the alternate cover together, though, they create a whole comprised of stark dualities, and that's what makes it truly interesting. That, then, is what we'll examine next.

#Serious Yakking #this whole thing was inspired by two things: perry-fics posting the alternate cover for traces once #and lovefeedsthefire talking in tags of a post about how steve haunts the people he's left behind #(because twin peaks is all about how laura metaphorically haunts like an entire town of people)#also lol that 'she was 17/beauty queen/met her in a magazine' easily describes laura palmer :skull:

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inkykeiji · 2 years ago

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all wrongs do me right

characters: kawata souya x fem!reader x kawata nahoya

genre: smut with the tiniest sprinkle of angst

notes: i haven’t been able to get the kawata twins out of my head since the first episode of season three so here’s an icky lil piece about souya jerking off to nahoya fucking his girlfriend! as always please heed the warnings and stay safe! | title credit: taste of you by rezz ft. dove cameron

warnings: 18+ minors do not interact, souya is a nasty little virgin, traces of twincest if you can read between the lines, stuffy humping, masturbation, voyeurism aka jerking it to a poor unwitting couple (or are they? muahaha), implied rough sex, slight daddy kink with nahoya

words: 2.5k

Souya feels fucking sick.

It’s something bitter and thick, something that coats the lining of his stomach and sours the back of his tongue, something that furls into a thick, hard lump and lodges itself in his throat.

It’s something he can’t fucking help.

Souya has barely spoken more than a handful of words to you—you, always so sweet, so nice, so kind to him; you, always desperately striving to include him in activities and conversations despite his unintentionally sharp edges and inherently callous tone; you, always gracious, never shameless, even in the face of his accidental offense—but he’s stained his stuffies and his sheets to you more times than he can count.

Tonight will be no different.

He should feel fucking disgusted in himself, he’s sure—he does feel fucking disgusted in himself, he thinks. But it’s not enough to stop him.

Nothing ever will be.

Even though his bedroom is all the way across the expanse of the flat, he can still hear you, every single time.

He swears if he listens hard enough, he can even hear that precious little gasp, caught somewhere between surprised pleasure and sharp pain, as his twin brother pushes his cock into you for the first time that night.

If he shuts his eyes tight enough, he can even imagine your back arching off the mattress as Nahoya fills you, each vertebra bending with each inch shoved into you, spine forming a perfect curve, hips inadvertently pushing downward, eager to meet Nahoya’s.

You must look so gorgeous—at least half as gorgeous as you sound, if not even more so. Souya wishes he could see you, just once—he thinks that would be enough to satiate the gnawing and clawing at the bottom of his ribs, maybe.

Maybe if he had a photo or two, or a short video, he wouldn’t be forced to resort to such deplorable methods every night; maybe he could even jerk off discreetly, stain his bedspread to the thought of you quietly and without any of your help, instead of encroaching on your privacy like this.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

Because as much as he wishes it wasn’t, and as much as he tries to trick himself into believing it isn’t, this is a compulsion, an addiction, a creature raging out of his control, growing stronger and stronger with desire, with desperate need, every day.

Maybe he’s stupid to think it could ever be satisfied with anything less than your cunt. Maybe he’s stupid to think that it could even be satisfied at all, that this voracious, all-consuming craving isn’t eternally greedy, perpetually needy, that it’s hunger isn’t boundless and it’s yearning won’t grow once it gets a single taste of you.

A loud whine draws him out of his rumination, his cock twitching against his old stuffed shark in response, and he bucks his hips against it twice, smearing a webby streak of precum across the fuzzy material, its fur gone all clumped and crusty from too many nights like these.

That whine in particular never fails to inspire a full flock of butterflies to flutter in his tummy, a half-stifled whimper of your name heavy on his tongue.

This is how it always starts; some aimless humping, lazy and languid with no real tempo, briefs already kicked to the foot of his bed in a crumpled little heap, hips squirming and writhing in erratic little motions as he rubs up against his stuffy—just teasing, really, exactly like what Nahoya’s currently doing to you.

It never stays like that for long, though.

Because Souya just can’t fucking wait—too eager, too desperate, too hungry to ever take his time with it at all, to indulge, to savour, to draw it out—and it always materializes into Souya curling a fist around his cock much too early, his other arm wrapped firmly around his stuffed shark as his hips roll and his hand works, the head of his cock grinding against the plushie, a leg thrown haphazardly over it.

It’s really fucking perverse.

But your moans are already climbing in pitch and frequency, too, meaning Nahoya has already traversed past his tantalizing and is moving on to something a little more satisfying.

As expected.

By this point, Souya’s such a seasoned pro that he knows the general pattern and rhythm of your whimpers and moans and mewls, the general pace and timing of his brother’s fucking, that he can stroke his cock in the same manner.

If he focuses hard enough, closes his eyes and hones his concentration, he can almost imagine it’s him fucking you instead. It wouldn’t be all that different, would it? His cock’s half an inch shorter than Nahoya’s, but it’s a little girthier, which Souya thinks probably makes up for it.

He’s sure it wouldn’t feel all that unusual to you; not when he has Nahoya’s style and pattern of fucking so memorized that he’s sure he could imitate it pretty well, given the chance. How much different could it be, really? They are twins, after all—he bets with a blindfold on, you might not even be able to tell the difference at all.

Maybe. Maybe not. He sure would like to find out, though.

A stab of guilt sears through his stomach, chased by sick thorns of pleasure sprouting in his gut, the fisting of his cock accelerating. He’s not sure Nahoya would take too kindly to Souya thinking of you in such a manner. He’s not sure he cares.

Because it all feels so good, head gone cloudy with a thick haze of hedonism, smothering any flickers of remorse, consuming them and adding to the sheer exhilaration of it all.

Pathetic little noises keep leaking through the gaps of his teeth and the seam of his lips no matter how stubbornly he tries to silence them, pulled from his throat with each swift tug of his hand.

He can’t hear much of what Nahoya’s saying to you, his voice too muted to be anything other than an indistinct rumble undertowing your precious little sounds, but whatever it is, you’re eating it up.

“Please, please, pl-please,” you’re begging in response to whatever his niichan just said, needy and strained, and his cock throbs violently in his palm.

“Please, please, please,” Souya’s rasping out in tandem, stroking his cock in hard, fast, thorough yanks, in perfect time with the fractured words his brother is fucking out of you.

It’s really cute, how increasingly sloppy you get the more Nahoya fucks you, twining your words together with threads of saliva, all slurred and messy. Nahoya gets that way when he’s close, too. Souya thinks it’s kind of nice, the way the two of you match like that.

It’s all so insanely hot, and every once in a while Souya gets extra lucky, fortunate enough to capture a smattering of words from his big brother—never anything more than a handful, just tatters of a single sentence—but his stomach swoops every time he hears that assertive amusement dyed with patronization, Nahoya’s voice husky and edges of his letters gone wispy with breathlessness, Souya’s cock pulsing hotly as another rush of blood surges southward.

“—Wanna be—little fucktoy?”

“I wanna,” you’re gasping out. “I wan’it s’bad!”

Christ, how can someone be so fucking sweet and so fucking sexy at the same time? It’s an intoxicating combination, one that goes straight to his cock, one that twists a feverish warmth in his gut and pulls his muscles stiff and taut.

“Yeah, yeah, take it,” Souya mumbles into his stuffed shark, the rocking of his hips speeding up as he hastily fucks his fist, words tapering off into a gravelly whine, almost as if he’s pleading. “Ta-Take m’cock.”

Nahoya murmurs something else, voice too low for Souya to make out anything other than the notes of sadistic glee steeped in his tone, but you cry out an affirmative in reply, the yelp jostled by Nahoya’s snapping hips.

“S’good, Daddy, s’good, your cock is so good,” you nearly sob, chanted out like it’s a fucking prayer, garbled and soaked with spit, fading into an airy little mewl.

“Fuck, f-fuck,” Souya’s hips stutter, that heat in his belly blazing, curse snarled out through his nostrils in a harsh, stammered breath. “Ha-ah, fuck.”

The expletive breaks on his tongue, jagged and high, and Goddamn it, Goddamn it—

He has to keep it down, for God’s sake—he knows this, knows that, logically, if he can hear you two, then you two can probably hear him, too.

The thought sends a vile thrill shooting through his gut, palm squeezing the head of his cock, the ball of his thumb rubbing across it in slow, lopsided circles, doing little to stifle his rapidly building orgasm, fervour coiling in his belly. An exceptionally loud grunt—much too loud to be discreet, that’s for sure—pries its way past his lips, rough and ragged and full of razors.

And God, he’s so gross, he’s so fucking gross, and can you hear him? Huh? Can you hear him? He hopes you can hear him.

Can you hear him, fucking himself to just the sound of you? Can you hear him, humping away at his old stuffed animals like the dirty little virgin he is, pretending it’s your body, your hip, your thigh? Can you hear him, fragments of your name slicing his tongue, tangling in his drool, never the full thing, shards bitten back and swallowed down to fester in his heart, to feed the animal living inside his ribcage?

Can Nahoya?

What does Nahoya think? How does Nahoya feel about his baby brother jerking his cock every time his niichan fucks his girlfriend, without fail, like fucking clockwork? Would he be disgusted, or did he get that same sordid gene Souya did—that knack for the naughty, for the nasty, for the downright nauseating?

They are twins, after all.

Another spear of guilt pierces his chest, radiating sparks of euphoria through his limbs, wicked little flares that leave his blood fizzing and tummy smoldering, adding to the dull, dense heat collecting in the pit.

He should feel worse about all of it, he thinks. He should feel worse about the utter disrespect he’s showing to the both of you, but he doesn’t. It’s hard to feel anything at all other than the push and pull, the tug-of war between rhapsody and repulsiveness, one only working to fuel and heighten the other.

Thick cords of drool are dribbling from the corners of his mouth now, panted out with his hot breath and his whimpered words, rolling along his jaw and dripping, slow and sticky, to puddle in the ridges of his pillowcase. Are you this filthy, too, when Nahoya fucks you?

You’re getting close now, he can tell, moans catching on Nahoya’s rough, fast thrusts and shattering into choked little gasps.

You’re trying to get his name out, and God, it’s so fucking cute, adorable little Naho-Nahoy-Naho!’s spilling from your throat in a single continuous stream, juddered by his big brother’s plunging hips.

Would you sound just as pretty trying to get Souya’s name out?

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Nahoya’s panting out, voice still tinged with that trademark teasing tone, almost as if he’s egging you on, a question of if that’s all you got infused into his words.

A threat is uttered, something about hurrying and making a mess on Daddy’s cock, and Souya coughs around the spit pooling beneath his tongue, wheezing out strands of saliva smudged and gauzy across his stuffy.

Because Christ, you’re so obedient, so keen to please, a chain of jagged affirmations pouring past your lips punctuated with the sweetest sounds of effort, your dedication to his big brother so fucking sexy, your dedication to his big brother rivaling his own.

A growl rumbles behind his ribs, and Souya shoves his face in his stuffy, teeth sinking into the cotton flesh in an attempt to muffle the sound.

His jaw already hurts from being clenched so tightly, a stiff ache that has settled deep within the straining hinges, something he’ll spend half an hour massaging out tomorrow morning.

But right now it doesn’t matter, not when that ball of heat is roiling in his gut, curling tighter and tighter and tighter with each quick pump of his fist, teetering on the edge of an explosion.

It’s as though he can’t jerk himself fast enough, hips twitching in quick little motions, sloppy and irregular and so, so fucking eager, into his own grasp, fucking his slippery palm.

His breath stutters as he tries to quiet himself, desperate to hear you cum, harsh erratic exhales huffed out against the synthetic fur of his shark humid against his upper lip, leaving behind tiny beads of condensation.

A whine splinters in his chest, eyes shut tightly as tears crystalize at the corners, his lungs swelling painfully with stagnated breath while his teeth burrow further into the plush of his stuffed animal, a pitiful attempt to starve off his impending orgasm.

He doesn’t want to cum before you, not again.

Drops of sweat are streaming from his brow and catching in his lashes, his curls saturated with salt and clinging in cute little swirls to his temples and the nape of his neck.

You’re so close, moans climbing higher and higher, louder and louder, faster and faster, and only a few more moments now, he only needs to hold out for a few more moments and then—

And then you’re crying out Nahoya’s name, breathless and beautiful, and Souya’s spilling his seed all over his knuckles and his sheets and the soft fur of his stuffy, hot and sticky and so, so much, groaning in time with his brother as he fills your cunt with his cum, Nahoya’s slurred out good, good, y’did s’good for me, baby forcing another weak spurt of cream to cascade over Souya’s fingers, cock jolting painfully.

He doesn’t stop jerking his cock until it’s too much, until each drag of his fist sends heavy tremors of overstimulation rippling through his flesh, until his thrusts are nothing more than pathetic little ruts, every brush of his cockhead against his stuffed animal causing him to suck a hiss through his teeth.

It starts to creep over him then, that dense film of shame grimy on his skin, that leaden block of guilt acrid in the pit of his stomach, nausea swelling in his chest and up his throat to sit, biting and bitter, on the back of his tongue.

It’ll fuse to him as he sleeps, seeping into his tissues, through his blood and his bones to root, to rot, at the very core of his soul, infesting and infecting, every bit of his being.

And when he sees you tomorrow morning, bright and beautiful despite being stained with his brother’s hands, bruises and bite marks peaking out from beneath Nahoya’s baggy t-shirt, it will reignite, that creature re-awoken, starved for any small piece of you it can devour—a soft smile, a sweet giggle, the brush of fingertips as they pass syrup or the knocking of knees beneath the table.

And Souya’s not sure he’ll ever be able to tame it.

#kawata souya x reader #kawata souya smut #kawata souya x you #kawata twins smut #souya x reader x nahoya #kawata nahoya x reader #kawata nahoya smut #kawata nahoya x you #kawata twins x reader #kawata brothers x reader #eeeeeeeeeeee genuinely we are so far past brain rot they're eating through my skull

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