Cheeks

"Cheeks" serves two purposes. One, it is an open mockery of the perceived values of Althusians. But two, it also serves as a marching song, making the process of moving to a field of battle just a little bit easier, a little bit lighter (and related to this, it helps let off steam afterward). Over time, it has also evolved its own place among military performances.

The piece first emerged almost seventy-five years before The Mudeweian-Althusian Accord, when Althus was broadly thought of as something of a political rival. Muxterans leaned into this at the time, resulting in the earliest known versions of "Cheeks". The lyrics have since faced minor alterations, but the tone is mostly unchanged.

"Cheeks" was originally written as a diss track about the "wacky foreigners" on the frontier of the Stenza Empire, thought to be composed while An'hulla was still consolidating the empire. While there was no official recognition of the song for political reasons, and it was kept out of such "polite" spaces, the piece spread like wildfire among the common man, and each planet ascribed to it their own layers of meaning. "Cheeks" would eventually reach a point where it is sometimes hummed aboard ships or on the battlefield, having gotten stuck in soldiers' heads. It made a quick and dirty marching song in most circumstances and served other entertainment purposes in the meantime. It is now common enough among Stenza themselves that officers are forced to pretend the whole matter is a "common rabble" thing while they get about the business of strategy.

The most common public reaction tends to follow the formula of initial confusion, getting into the beat of the song, scandal as the realization of its meaning hits, and then a days-long process of analyzing the text's meaning and one's relationship to it. It usually takes people days to decide whether they like the song or not, although along demographic lines, common folk tend to prefer it and upper class people tend toward (at least a public show of) scandalized reactions to its mere existence. (The one notable exception is Ilin, who openly enjoys it.)

"Cheeks" has gained "meme" status outside of Muxter and its people, where much of the symbolic undertones have become lost. As a result, many know something is being said, but it takes a fair bit of research to determine what that something is. (This also adds an element to the discovery of the song by first-time listeners, and is seen as part of the process of understanding "Cheeks".)