lamplitwrld

so ethel cain's music has its own lore and characters: the protagonist is ethel cain, a daughter of a dead preacher who feels that she doesnt quite fit into her small town anymore. willoughby tucker is her childhood first love.

first things first, the primary theme of ethel cain's work is generational curses. and wow i really wonder what the characters nico di angelo and jason grace could have to do with the theme of inheriting cyclic trauma, heavy responsibilities, guilts/wrongdoings, a loss of innocence, and fatal flaws from your parents..?

and to detail on ethel and willoughby's characters: 

willoughby's father is a harsh, rough, and neglectful man. he embodies everything willoughby fears himself becoming and looms as a presence in the background of his and ethel's relationship. meanwhile, willoughby resents his mother for breaking her promises by leaving him, having never truly nurtured him. ok zeus and beryl i see you!!!

willoughby is idolized as strong, masculine, and untouchable by others. he feels that this unrealistic expectation only drives him into the direction of his father, but ultimately there is a fundamental misunderstanding between the way he perceives himself (a real, vulnerable human with anxieties and weaknesses) and the way he is perceived. while i don't view willoughby and jason as 1-to-1 parallels (jason also has things in common with ethel, which i'll discuss later) i think this is possibly the most jason coded thing ever. relevant songs: nettles, a knock at the door, waco texas, and tempest.

as for ethel!!! ethel was hurt and traumatized starting from a very young age (if you choose to look further into ethel cain's lore, please research the TWs as there is a LOT going on). but for what i think is relevant to nico's and jason's characters:

ethel struggles with feeling out of place in her own hometown, especially with a dead parent. she resents her family heritage for being something that suffocates her and defines her identity (similarly to nico...). also, she struggles with feeling hard to love: "to love me is to suffer me" (nettles) / "everything i've loved, i've loved it straight to death" (a knock at the door). i think you could loosely connect ethel's issues with attachment and losing people to nico with bianca, percy, and jason.

ethel feels that she is forced to withdraw from others to cope with her pain. she tells willoughby, "you'll go fight a war, i'll go missing / i warned you, for me, it's not that hard" (nettles). and just fuck yeah that is so jasico. jason led the romans during the first war. nico ran away after it. aghghhgghghgh

also an aspect to ethel's story is that she runs away from home and, while on the road, puts her trust in two different men who do not have the best of intentions for her. i do not want to be insensitive or gauche in my comparing this to nico's encounters with minos, but it's a (frankly quite dark) aspect of his story that i feel like is often overlooked. that being said, i am again NOT trying to make a 1:1 comparison here.

FINAL thing i'm going to ramble about holy shit i'm so sorry. death. jason. jason dies.

in ethel and willoughby's story, willoughby leaves ethel and their hometown, and she describes this loss with immense grief. this can be compared to jason's death i honestly think. but the big event is ethel passing away, which takes place 1-2 years later.

sun bleached flies. this is THE song. it is about ethel's death and how she has come to terms with all the things that she has had to suffer and sacrifice throughout her life. growing up in a tight-knit community, she has had to hide her pain, bear the weight put upon her by others, and live her life like she's "watching it from the sidelines". now, she has accepted that "god loves you, but not enough to save you"; no one is coming to rescue her. she forgives what she has endured and resigns herself to the idea that "if it's meant to be, then it will be."