#reference for

whoa it’s their dynamic in so many ways -

“Who needs enemies when we’ve got friends like you?”

- all the way down to the mutual attribution of blame, starting with Ernesto’s victim complex, his sense of having been betrayed -

“Betrayed, say you love me but cast the first stoneBetrayed, left me outnumbered to the wolves […]Thought it was me and you against the world But you left me to the wolves”

- and Héctor’s reaction to being deceived -

“Deceiver, left me for dead to the wolves”

ok so I LOVE “Art of War” for them, I’ve been listening to it on repeat since you sent the ask — like I’m not ready to leave this headspace yet, so will update on “Hey Mama” later

You’re so good at what you think you do to me

THIS LINE. The “at what you think you do”, it’s a subtle form of alienation from the you but alienation nonetheless … here we’ve got someone coolly analyzing the difference between what they think the you is doing and what they think the you thinks the you is doing. And once you have that kind of abstraction, once you move from experiencing the moment to thinking about the thinking of the moment, well it’s no wonder that

There are words that don’t belong

and that

You’re no good at what you said you’d do to me

that thinking and speaking become two separate, dissociated, even completely opposed (via the negation) modes. The situation this implies - where what is thought is not said and what is said is not thought - doesn’t just take the form of the art of war, it implies a breakdown of the conditions for singing (love, the connectedness of word and thought, music and emotion):

Because of you, I’ll never write another love song

Considering that the I writes songs and that Imelda means warrior, it’s easy to imagine Héctor as the narrator. The theme of leaving, though, makes things more complex -

There are songs I’ll never write,Because of you walking out of my life

Hard for me not to hear Imelda’s accusations at least echoing here, even if this is a moment where Héctor is watching her leave him / choose not to listen to him / refuse him even a word.

Oof. I love it.

Every morning I forget how it is. / I watch the smoke mount / In great strides above the city. / I belong to no one.

I hope you spend your own new year well! (As for drawing requests...hmm, perhaps a hedgehog?)

I love this for Imelda. It also gets both Héctor and even Ernesto across wonderfully.

This passage hurts:

You took it with you when you leftThese scars are just a traceNow it wanders lost and woundedThis heart that I misplaced

Like it immediately sends me into picturing Imelda’s heartbreak and the process of building her shell, her defenses, her seemingly cold demeanor to the outside world. The idea that her heart has left her body and wanders without her - that her heart is not accessible to her any longer, that she misplaced it herself - it conjures up for me the kind of guilt Imelda goes through in Juju’s Echar Agua Al Mar, when Imelda says in that brilliant story: “Stole from you? Stole from you!?” Her voice cracked, unshed tears burning along with the fury in her eyes. “He stole from your daughter! He stole from me!” She sucked in a breath, shoulders shaking as she fought to keep from crying. “And I was the one who let him have you.”

Once I began to see Imelda, this part became especially painful:

Sometimes I hear you callingFrom some lost and distant shoreI hear you crying softly for the way it was before

I’ve been picturing Héctor’s attempts to reach her both while she was still alive (singing across the bridge, hoping to reach her and Coco in dreams) and after death, when she rejects him but he still continues to try and call out to her, to reach her. T_T

And this:

Why did you go? I had to stayNow I’m reaching for youWill you wait? will you wait?Will I see you again?

Imelda was the one who had to stay (in some ways, this also works for first-person Ernesto) while Héctor left to pursue his dream, the one who had to wait. And yet here the tables are turned: now, even as she rejects him, there’s the question of whether he will still wait for her. Or perhaps she’s accepted him but is still posing that question to herself: will he wait, after all that has happened. And this is just one very limited picture of what could happen - the song opens up so many possible routes for angst.

“Many times. Mostly for physical intimidation, sometimes for combat, there are few bodies better suited for both than Victor’s…and sometimes for pleasure.