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Te’s essay/meta on writing and music and the comments that accompanied it started me thinking about the way so many fans—including me—automatically associate certain songs with certain series/characters/ships/whatever. Apparently, it’s more common among the newer set of fans (as in, those of us, like me, who’ve been in fandom under five years) and some fans don’t do it at all.
That puzzles me. I can see why fans choose not burn their own Remus/Sirius and Spuffy mix CDs (for one thing, it’s bloody hard to find an Mp3 of Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs’ “Hey there, Little Red Riding Hood” and no Remus Lupin mix would be complete without it), or don’t care to spend the mental energy required to deliberately seek out “songs that remind me of character X” for a playlist, but surely everyone has listened to the radio and thought, “Hey, this song reminds me of X” or “this would make a good vid for fandom X” at least once. Even if they don’t make vids. I don’t know about anybody else, but my brain does that sort of free association thing constantly.
I have songs for every fandom I’ve ever been in or read extensively in, songs for every one of my OTCs and OTPs (except Newt Call/Clay Mosby.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pixyofthestyx, help me out here. What’s a good Call/Mosby song? Something less melodramatic than Metallica’s “Until it Sleeps,” which is all that comes to mind at the moment), songs or poems for my original fiction, it goes on and on. I even know what voice parts various characters would sing if my fics were musicals or operas (Barbossa, for example, would sing the deep baritone of operatic evil). I’ve written filk. I wrote a songfic once, though it shames me now to think on it (mainly because another HP fan mocked me over it, thereby ensuring that I learned better). My brain generates vid bunnies just as often as it does plotbunnnies, though lack of proper computer equipment keeps me from making most of them. I always just assumed that was the way every fan who also enjoyed music thought. Or at least, the way any fan who’d grown up watching Disney Musicals and The Sound of Music thought.
Because making connections between concepts and genres and different forms of media is what being a fan is all about—like a far greater writer than me once said, stories are like spider webs, beautiful, dangerous, and all woven together (except he said it prettier).
Of course, I have internal soundtracks to everything I write and secretly wish every movie was a musical, and that every tv show had a musical episode a la“Once More with Feeling,” so maybe I’m biased.
And on that note, I am seriously irked that Rent only stayed in my town’s movie theater for a week, depriving me of an opportunity to go see it. Because, AU version of La Boheme, how cool is that? But hey, maybe the screen actors guild will send my dad an advance copy, like they did with Walk the Line (which is wonderful, btw, and everyone should go see it and rejoice in the glory that was ‘50s and ‘60s country music and marvel at Joaquin Phoenix’s ability to play guitar like Johnny Cash).
That puzzles me. I can see why fans choose not burn their own Remus/Sirius and Spuffy mix CDs (for one thing, it’s bloody hard to find an Mp3 of Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs’ “Hey there, Little Red Riding Hood” and no Remus Lupin mix would be complete without it), or don’t care to spend the mental energy required to deliberately seek out “songs that remind me of character X” for a playlist, but surely everyone has listened to the radio and thought, “Hey, this song reminds me of X” or “this would make a good vid for fandom X” at least once. Even if they don’t make vids. I don’t know about anybody else, but my brain does that sort of free association thing constantly.
I have songs for every fandom I’ve ever been in or read extensively in, songs for every one of my OTCs and OTPs (except Newt Call/Clay Mosby.
pixyofthestyx, help me out here. What’s a good Call/Mosby song? Something less melodramatic than Metallica’s “Until it Sleeps,” which is all that comes to mind at the moment), songs or poems for my original fiction, it goes on and on. I even know what voice parts various characters would sing if my fics were musicals or operas (Barbossa, for example, would sing the deep baritone of operatic evil). I’ve written filk. I wrote a songfic once, though it shames me now to think on it (mainly because another HP fan mocked me over it, thereby ensuring that I learned better). My brain generates vid bunnies just as often as it does plotbunnnies, though lack of proper computer equipment keeps me from making most of them. I always just assumed that was the way every fan who also enjoyed music thought. Or at least, the way any fan who’d grown up watching Disney Musicals and The Sound of Music thought.Because making connections between concepts and genres and different forms of media is what being a fan is all about—like a far greater writer than me once said, stories are like spider webs, beautiful, dangerous, and all woven together (except he said it prettier).
Of course, I have internal soundtracks to everything I write and secretly wish every movie was a musical, and that every tv show had a musical episode a la“Once More with Feeling,” so maybe I’m biased.
And on that note, I am seriously irked that Rent only stayed in my town’s movie theater for a week, depriving me of an opportunity to go see it. Because, AU version of La Boheme, how cool is that? But hey, maybe the screen actors guild will send my dad an advance copy, like they did with Walk the Line (which is wonderful, btw, and everyone should go see it and rejoice in the glory that was ‘50s and ‘60s country music and marvel at Joaquin Phoenix’s ability to play guitar like Johnny Cash).
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On the other hand, I do tend to write what I call 'songfic' - these are stories which are inspired by the lyrics of a particular song (I listen to lyrics a lot). Generally I'll use either a particular line as a jumping off point for a song, or I'll use the "feel" of the whole song as an inspiration. If I'm quoting the song at all, it's usually a brief verse at the beginning of the story.
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And I suspect that the music thing is as much a generational thing as it is how long people have been involved in fandom, because I've been in fandom, to one extent or another, since I was twelve, which is just under nine years now (wow- I'd never realised how long that was).
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About the music: Maybe there is a difference between visual people and tactile people in fandom or some such.
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Well, I enjoyed it, and so did my parents. The soundtrack was great, and Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon did an awesome job of singing like Johnny Cash and June Carter. And the film managed to avoid either making people into saints or demonising them (I think Johnny Cash may have insisted on that before he gave them permission to do the film--I know the script began production before he died).
Of course, I really like most Johnny Cash songs. For viewers that are less then enthused about "Folsom Prison Blues" or "Jackson," it might not be so much fun.