6. Song of the Hive (What Jane Might Have Heard) - A Song for The Corruption

CW: Body horror, Entomophobia, Infestation, Hypochondria, Insects/bugs, Manipulation, Sickness/plague, Pathophobia, Rot/decay, Trypophobia, Vermiphobia, Worms

LYRICS:

Darling sweet, we sing for you
A symphony of malady and mildew.
Itching with a fever’s heat
Beautiful but incomplete;
Precious dear, we sing for you
All you hope and fear is true .
Your love, our need,
You house, we feed.
Home is where the heart is, aimless though you roam,
In mutual belonging let us make your heart our home

Every plague must have its victims,
Every body rots away
Why hold fast
To what won’t last?
Hail decadent decay

Oh, how many we could dirty
Oh, how many we could bring to the writhing ground.
Feel your power,
As the hypocrites cower
And mucid moans resound.
All vitality forgotten...
Don’t you know, loved one: The sweetest smelling fruit is rotten

CHORUS

Every mold requires moisture,
Every bug a host to drain.
Don’t be tied
To self-ruled pride
Join our symbiotic strain.

Oh, become our new apprentice,
Oh, let us guide you as we burrow through your bones.
It’s all so lewd
This facade of pulchritude
True beauty's sung by drones.
Let us colonize the clean...
Don’t you know, loved one: Every hive must have its Queen

CHORUS
(You need never be alone)

SPOILERS ahead for season 1:
For the full JPE (Jane Prentiss Experience), doctors recommend listening to this on loop until you decide the best course of action is to LARP as a beehive.
I think this was one of the first ideas that popped into my head when considering this project. Some Entities were really hard to translate into song, which is why these come from a bunch of different perspectives. But I had a pretty clear idea of this one from the start, which gave me some confidence.
Not only that, I was also lucky insofar as it’s an entity that actually sings – or, a manifestation of it does. You know what I mean. – AND, there are descriptions of its singing! So I could go through the transcript of Jane’s hair-rasing statement and pick out the relevant info. The descriptor of “nectar-sweet” was one I kept in mind a lot. It inspired the little bits of major in this mostly minor song. Like whenever they call her ‘precious’, or ‘darling, or ‘loved one’ I tried to have those bits be major to stand out, and sound like they could be maybe nice as opposed to creepy.
The Corruption is really interesting to me. I feel like it has both a really clear literal and figurative manifestation. Like, fear of sickness and bugs ‘n stuff. Got it. But also unhealthy love. The danger of codependency. The insidiousness of cults, and how red flags might look like beacons instead of warnings if you're desperate enough. Sacrificing your individuality to become part of a whole if it means you get to belong.
[SPOILERS---] Reading Jane’s statement, it seems like she could just as easily have been taken by The Lonely. But instead of going the Lukas path and committing to that isolation (COVID mood, amiright, folks?), she went the opposite direction, and gave herself up completely to become a home for something else. That aspect? The willingness to do anything to feel like you belong? I find it fascinating that that is categorized under Corruption, not Lonely. And, actually, writing this now, kind of adds a whole other layer to Jane keeping Martin trapped in his apartment. Hm. [---SPOILERS]
I expected this piece to be grosser (I was really hoping to use the word ‘pustule’), but I ended up gravitating towards the more figurative stuff. I think once I realized how to use the ‘home is where the heart is' line – a line I’ve been trying to make into something for fucking a g e s – I had committed to the more figurative aspect of the fear. Probably for the best. I don’t know how to make a song that is worms. Best I could manage was not deleting as many awful, awful wet mouth noises.
Also, not for nothing, I think on last year’s(?) RQ Gaming and Giving Stream there’s a great clip of Hannah Brankin defending Jane by vehemently slamming her fist onto the table and crying “She gave those worms a home!” It's a total coincidence - unless my subconscious was being sneaky - that this song and that quote fit together and it makes me absurdly happy.

[rosemarycat]

"Oh, become our new apprentice" AAH I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE A PRENTISS

[tetl]

now THIS is a song i could be consumed to worms to

[ceilingeye]

When I was a child, I had an obsession with bugs. I got a book called micro monsters, that was full of all kinds of parasites and insects that could infest into your body and kill you, , , , or worse.
When I was a kid, it was so cool. I loved scaring myself a little bit reading each passage. That fun quickly turned into a genuine fear of parasites, which then quickly became a pretty bad phobia of all insects.
Now I practically scream in terror when a moth or simple housefly enters my home, and even seeing a photo of a bug makes me feel itchy.
To say that i understand why this entity is horrifying is a massive understatement. The idea that a colony of insect spawn find a home in my body and eating it from the inside out is something that disturbs me to my core
Well done!

[sarahsprole]

"Darling sweet, we sing for you. A symphony of malady and mildew. Itching with a fevers heat, beautiful-- but incomplete. Precious dear, we sing for you . All you hope and fear is true ." Descriptive beyond understanding! It really captures Jane's fear for the hive, but in a sick way, love for it. She loves feeling needed and like she means something to the hive. "There is a wasps' nest in my attic. Perhaps it can soothe my itching soul." That line strikes me new when I heard this song. 'Itching' is a feeling that would be described when thinking about bugs, yet she is reaching to those very bugs to stop the itch. It just shows how convincingly beautiful their song must have been, how the feeling of being a true home to something and being loved by something is so addicting, that she'd care for the infection eating her alive. I like the psychological side of the Corruption. Don't get me wrong, I love myself some good worm wife, but something about being loved in a horrible way that is ACTUALLY rotting you and eating you is amazing. Out of all the other Fears I think I'm more Corruption aligned. I'd hate the flesh-worms, but i think I can relate to Jane with how quickly I'd fall in obsessive "love" with the feeling of being needed by something who loves me back. Anyways, you're take on the hives song is my personal headcanon I LOVE it so much! Now THIS is a song I could get slowly eaten from the inside out to!

[bucketlist]

When a nest of worms rolls a nat.20 to seduce

[mantaraywizard]

This song is beautifully haunting. "The sweetest smelling fruit is rotten" I'm losing my MIND these lyrics are so good!!!

[belugaval]

gOD this song is HORRIFYING AND HAUNTINGLY BEAUTIFUL. if this song came from the other side of a door with a heavy padlock i would saw through that padlock. i cant decide if it would be better or worse with instrumentals.

[sourwitch]

That description says something that I've found in my own (attempt at a) Smirkean theory of balance.

I consider Lonely and Corruption opposite. But for as much as all opposing enteties codependend, Corruption and Lonely are surely the most similar. And I think that's not just clear in how both rely on trapping those they isolate in longing for them, but if you consider the Entities as in some sense people... Then both Lonely and Filth operate in the same fashion: Find one who will want them, and cut them off from everyone but them, eager to hold them and jealous of all else who may want them.

The difference, then, lies only in how they actually treat you. The One Alone neglects you, leaves you wanting for what it can't give. The Sickening Rot gives you everything it has, everything it is, and expects you to do the same.

Essentially, the Corrupt lacks boundaries.
The Silent Voice has so many, its closest intimacy is sitting on the same bench, sharing neither thought nor touch nor glance.

Both feel safe, homely, but in inverse fashion. They keep you safe and hurt you at the same time. One by having people that you trust with your life, because they've already taken it from you. The thing that will hurt you most being the thing you trust most. And the other shelters you by keeping you apart from anyone who might, forbidding you the contact, and yet allowing you to suffer by your own hand all the same.

[lekswig]

avatar of the corruption here. Unga bunga.

[scintillantflea]

In decay, it becomes hard to tell where one person end's and another begins, which I mean more than literally. In a slum houses lean on each other where they where built to stand proud. Idk all your songs are really good I really liked the vast but didn't have anything to say about it; I wonder if you whould like to do one about the extinction? I whould love to see your take on it.

[gabrielluz]

Hear me out: a Worm That Walks bard. A human-shaped, writhing, shifting mass of worms singing around, seducing people and other monsters with their sweetly rotten melodies of festering love, ,

[rosemarycat]

Another great song! I can very clearly see the choreography that would go with a large crowd all singing this in unison surrounding Jane.

[nonyanae]

LYRICS:

Darling sweet, we sing for you
A symphony of malady and mildew.
Itching with a fever’s heat
Beautiful but incomplete;
Precious dear, we sing for you
All you hope and fear is true .
Your love, our need,
You house, we feed.
Home is where the heart is, aimless though you roam,
In mutual belonging let us make your heart our home

Every plague must have its victims,
Every body rots away
Why hold fast
To what won’t last?
Hail decadent decay

Oh, how many we could dirty
Oh, how many we could bring to the writhing ground.
Feel your power,
As the hypocrites cower
And mucid moans resound.
All vitality forgotten...
Don’t you know, loved one: The sweetest smelling fruit is rotten

CHORUS

Every mold requires moisture,
Every bug a host to drain.
Don’t be tied
To self-ruled pride
Join our symbiotic strain.

Oh, become our new apprentice,
Oh, let us guide you as we burrow through your bones.
It’s all so lewd
This facade of pulchritude
True beauty's sung by drones.
Let us colonize the clean...
Don’t you know, loved one: Every hive must have its Queen

CHORUS
(You need never be alone)

[Kalenelizabeth]

Id let it consume me if it sang like this too

[Hornsby_Shackleton]

The description for this one is god damn hilarious

[Croike]

Time to infest other people's recommends.

[isacolor]

i dont know if it was intentional, but when you said apprentice, it sounded like prentiss

[WormHome]

I can settle this, the worms mostly sing all star by smash mouth. This is pretty good tho.

[cnidarianglow]

Been playing this on repeat until I can sing all the lyrics in harmony… I feel like a part of the Hive now ☺️🪱☺️🪱

[justeundonut-moi.]

There is never a day where this song isn't Beautiful !