Cape Escape Vibes - Keaton

Now let's hear Toaster's thoughts on some mood music for Keaton.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhFUzvyRnohA-9ezeijkX_jTBzi2T2XgW

If you know anything about me, you know that I ruminate on and iterate on characters for a very long time. Keaton was no different. Much like Beck before her, Keaton was an OC of mine from a completely separate context that I slowly refined into what she is now.

Keaton is a hacker, someone skilled in uprooting secrets and walking amidst danger. She's a face in the crowd that catches your eye, someone able to push her way through the moshing crowd and exit your life, never to be seen again. Simultaneously prey teasing at you to chase her, and predator luring you into a trap.

Vessel - Red Sex 

This song has stuck with me ever since I heard it in the trailer for the Handmaiden. I think I was at a showing of Nocturnal Animals in a small boutique theater in Seattle. It's an earworm, wriggling into your brain and nesting. I think the discordant melody really fits Keaton's character. This song feels like it's writhing, but something is there in the middle, something forcing its way in. The house beat in the background mixed with the droning feels like hypnosis and the atmosphere of a club that isn't stopping around you. It's overwhelming. It threatens to swallow you whole. But, isn't there something appealing in walking on the knife's edge? The night has just started.

Mass of the Fermenting Dregs - I F a Surfer 

Shoegaze is a wall of sound. I want to cling to that, no solace or reprieve. Miyamoto Natsuko's wailing voice is drowned out by the rest of the sound. She's lost in the noise like the swimmer spoken of in her lyrics, washed out to sea by the churning waters. It's always been like this.

Nucleose - Superego 

Ah, Vriska Serket. Patron saint of edgy internet girls with long black hair. Keaton shares a lot in common with this character, one of my favorite in all of fiction. This song is a dance with a steady background beat that pushes forward in an almost prog-rock way. This is a song of focus and intention, escalating as the guitar riff meets with the almost dream-theater like break two minutes in to reveal the true melody. There's a fun back and forth between the darkness and reverb of the guitars and the lighter, sharper notes of the piano. Like Keaton's contrasting masculine and feminine features, there is an interplay of identity and composition that is so multilayered and simmering. It feels like resentment.

M.O.O.N - Paris 

Like Superego and Red Sex, this song has a droning quality that feels like it is constantly taking forward steps. The most interesting part of it to me is the creeping feeling that accompanies the rest of the instrumentation. There's a cleverness to how the song feels like it can loop into itself forever, always ending up back at the same point despite feeling like it is always escalating. This song feels like being awake for 72 straight hours, unwilling to stop moving until you've done what you've set out to do. Keaton is persistent, and once her eyes are locked on a goal she will pursue it to the end.

SHE WANTS REVENGE - Tear You Apart

The breathless paranoia of the vocal track builds into a confession of violence, toying with the interplay between predator and prey. In this song there is power and violence in romance and passion; there's no difference between sex and murder. Keaton is an asexual character, but I think her lack of physical sex drive motivated me to channel her passions into other aspects of her character: A pursuit of justice, an application of violence against the status quo and the systems of conformity that lock the world into the sad state it is in. Keaton the Stag will not be fucked with, and if you catch her eye you better watch out.