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Massive Fandom + Music Post
Well, maybe not so massive...
There are a couple of fandoms out there that have had a profound impact on me and my lifestyle (eg, how often I sleep; when I sleep; why my fingers are bent at a funny angle from hitting and holding the shift key too often; how I look at people; how I look at myself; which way the world turns); and very often when writing for them or leafing through the material again I am hit by the urge to supplement them with music.
Under the cut are a couple of the fandoms (obscure or not) which have augmented my worldview and triggered massive music trawling over the last few years. :D Sometimes I talk about the fandom, other times I just talk about the music; sometimes I'm lucky enough to be able to blabber on about both.
*points down* And, music aside, if anyone wants a copy of The Left Hand of Darkness, clicky the cut.
The Left Hand of Darkness; novel, Ursula K Le Guin
Because no one I know online seems to have heard of this, I feel the need to wax lyrical on its behalf. The Left Hand of Darkness could be called a sci-fi book, since it's won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, but to call it a sci-fi book, or "sci-fi", or "fantasy", or "extrapolative" or "speculative" or any other recombination of any words typically associated with the genre would be to do it a grave disservice. Estraven - one of the main characters of the book - tells it more eloquently than I ever will: Names won't do, they must have labels, and say the kind before they can see the thing.
The Left Hand of Darkness, summarised, is a novel about patriotism and expansion, about humanity, about gender, about loyalty, about what it is to be human, about the condition of being human, about politics, about one author putting into 300 very concise pages a lifetime, or maybe two lifetimes. The writing is not convoluted, lofty or excessively literary. It is, like much of Le Guin's work, frank, forthright, and profoundly complex in the way that only straightforward writing can be. I can't summarise things worth a damn, so I'll snitch the real blurb off one of my copies of the book:
Praised as a groundbreaking work of science fiction, The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of a lone human emissary's mission to Winter, an unknown alien world whose inhabitants can choose - and change - their gender. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilisation. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the completely dissimilar culture that he encounters. Completely embracing the aspects of psychology, society and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.
Truth be told, the guy who wrote that blurb can't seem to write worth a damn, either. Winter is a planet that is ambisexual - they are androgynes 5/6ths of the time: genderless, not opting one way or another, just genderless. The story unravels from a myriad number of perspectives, with unreliable narrators and third person reports and a mythology that is at once both epic and utterly approachable. We track Genly Ai, an emissary representing a greater intergalactic body attempting to unite worlds, and Therem Harth rem ir Estraven, Prime Minister of Karhide, exile, traitor and who knows what else - in their journeys through Winter- but it is not the politics of space that the novels centre around, but of the personal loyalties to country, to lovers, to brothers and to self, and of the question of duality, gender and how one other must treat another - again, the book speaks better:
The First Mobile, if one is sent, must be warned that unless he is very self-assured, or senile, his pride will suffer. A man wants his virility regarded, a woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation. On Winter they will not exist. One is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience.
I'll leave it at that, because I tend to blabber when I try to describe things I think are beyond words. Let's just say this - I'll gladly buy and ship a second-hand copy of this book out to anyone in the damned world if it means that it is read by one more person, one more time. If you want a copy, drop me a comment and I swear, I will express ship it or something. I can think of no book or film or song or play or poem more worthy of the expense, which is less expense in my eyes and more due service.
No music for this one, except maybe Dani California from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers - which is in itself less ambient music, totally non-applicable, but in its own way tribute to the journeys and -- blabbering again. I'll post music for this if/when I find people who know what the hell I'm going on about to begin with. *laughs*
Final Fantasy VII; massive videogame/anime/book/everything empire
Needs no real introduction. I came, I played, I watched, I fell in love with Rufus and the Turks, and I've never really turned back.
I don't know how different my interpretation of the Turks - and of Tseng in particular - is from fandom's interpretation, but I think I must be kind of funny in the head about them: for one, I can't seem to write porn about them. *laughs* Which makes me an oddity in itself; but the Turks deal with sex and blood and morality and a lot of kicking shit around, in my head, and all of those things are implicit and need very little explication, as much as I'd like to manage it.
I like the kickass. I like the confidence. I like the blurring of lines between good and bad, the questioning of whether that line exists at all. I like the corporate badassery, which is better seen from far, far away. I like the changes in personalities. I like the personalities.
The Rolling Stones remixed sounds a lot like the Turks to me. You Can't Always Get What You Want, redone so that it keeps the spirit of the song but layers on the sounds of the city, a city, any city. When they're not wondering whether they're very bad people or very good people, I imagine that the Turks can kick back and just appreciate being good at what they do, and getting what they can get out of the shitty eventuality that is life in a hard town. If you pull one song from this post, pull this one!
Then there are times that the words switch off. Drove Through Ghosts To Get Here, by 65daysofstatic, is completely instrumental and completely fitting for a trawl through Midgar.
And because they don't care what's wrong or right as long as they survive, Turks would listen to Fall Out Boy covering Michael Jackson's Beat It. I must have looped this to death writing Empery, because anachronism is fun!
Disillusion is also fun. MGMT - Time To Pretend.
This is our decision to live fast and die young
We've got the vision, now let's have some fun
Yeah it's overwhelming, but what else can we do?
Get jobs in offices and wake up for the morning commute?
Gratuitous lack of apologetics and roughshod unintellectual music while going very, very fast on a very, very dangerous vehicle. Rihanna - Shut Up and Drive. Don't look at me, I'm artist blind sometimes!
Baccano!; kickass semi-historical demi-awesome mafia anime
I pity Luck, sometimes, because I don't know how the boy lives with himself. He doesn't seem too good at juggling the conscientious versus very-adept-mafioso parts of his personality. But I love him anyway. ♥
The Killers - All These Things I've Done. I don't think I've liked a song of this... sort so much before. Singing! Drums! Guitars! Powerful lyrics! Personality!
I wanna stand up, I wanna let go
You know, you know - no you don't, you don't
I wanna shine on in the hearts of men
I want a meaning from the back of my broken hand
Another head aches, another heart breaks
I am so much older than I can take
And my affection, well it comes and goes
I need direction to perfection, no no no no
Help me out
Yeah, you know you got to help me out
Yeah, oh don't you put me on the backburner
You know you got to help me out, yeah
American Gods; the only novel to mash every culture's mythos with the mythos of the current zeitgeist and get away not only laughing, but giving us the finger at the same time
American Gods can be sombre and serious and mythical; but it's set in America, and in our time, and who knows what Shadow might have been listening to on the radio on his trips to and fro from nowhere to somewhere and back again?
Kaizer Chiefs - Ruby
Ruby Ruby Ruby Ruby
Do ya Do ya Do ya Do ya
And what you're doing, do it to me
Ruby Ruby Ruby Ruby
Could it be, Could it be
That your joking with me
And you don't really
See you with me
And I must have recommended Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds five thousand times as is, but Save Me creeps under the skin of the novel and settles in. Probably breeds, too.
Ah, comin' through the desert, I met a man
Who told me of his crazy plan
He'd been walking there for 20 days
He was gonna walk on for 20 more
Said, How 'bout a drink or a bite to eat?
I said, No, my faith is all I need
Sit and save me
Save me, Mr. Walking Man
If you can
You don't need to prove a thing to me
Just gimme faith, make me believe
There are a couple of fandoms out there that have had a profound impact on me and my lifestyle (eg, how often I sleep; when I sleep; why my fingers are bent at a funny angle from hitting and holding the shift key too often; how I look at people; how I look at myself; which way the world turns); and very often when writing for them or leafing through the material again I am hit by the urge to supplement them with music.
Under the cut are a couple of the fandoms (obscure or not) which have augmented my worldview and triggered massive music trawling over the last few years. :D Sometimes I talk about the fandom, other times I just talk about the music; sometimes I'm lucky enough to be able to blabber on about both.
*points down* And, music aside, if anyone wants a copy of The Left Hand of Darkness, clicky the cut.
The Left Hand of Darkness; novel, Ursula K Le Guin
Because no one I know online seems to have heard of this, I feel the need to wax lyrical on its behalf. The Left Hand of Darkness could be called a sci-fi book, since it's won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, but to call it a sci-fi book, or "sci-fi", or "fantasy", or "extrapolative" or "speculative" or any other recombination of any words typically associated with the genre would be to do it a grave disservice. Estraven - one of the main characters of the book - tells it more eloquently than I ever will: Names won't do, they must have labels, and say the kind before they can see the thing.
The Left Hand of Darkness, summarised, is a novel about patriotism and expansion, about humanity, about gender, about loyalty, about what it is to be human, about the condition of being human, about politics, about one author putting into 300 very concise pages a lifetime, or maybe two lifetimes. The writing is not convoluted, lofty or excessively literary. It is, like much of Le Guin's work, frank, forthright, and profoundly complex in the way that only straightforward writing can be. I can't summarise things worth a damn, so I'll snitch the real blurb off one of my copies of the book:
Praised as a groundbreaking work of science fiction, The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of a lone human emissary's mission to Winter, an unknown alien world whose inhabitants can choose - and change - their gender. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilisation. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the completely dissimilar culture that he encounters. Completely embracing the aspects of psychology, society and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.
Truth be told, the guy who wrote that blurb can't seem to write worth a damn, either. Winter is a planet that is ambisexual - they are androgynes 5/6ths of the time: genderless, not opting one way or another, just genderless. The story unravels from a myriad number of perspectives, with unreliable narrators and third person reports and a mythology that is at once both epic and utterly approachable. We track Genly Ai, an emissary representing a greater intergalactic body attempting to unite worlds, and Therem Harth rem ir Estraven, Prime Minister of Karhide, exile, traitor and who knows what else - in their journeys through Winter- but it is not the politics of space that the novels centre around, but of the personal loyalties to country, to lovers, to brothers and to self, and of the question of duality, gender and how one other must treat another - again, the book speaks better:
The First Mobile, if one is sent, must be warned that unless he is very self-assured, or senile, his pride will suffer. A man wants his virility regarded, a woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation. On Winter they will not exist. One is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience.
I'll leave it at that, because I tend to blabber when I try to describe things I think are beyond words. Let's just say this - I'll gladly buy and ship a second-hand copy of this book out to anyone in the damned world if it means that it is read by one more person, one more time. If you want a copy, drop me a comment and I swear, I will express ship it or something. I can think of no book or film or song or play or poem more worthy of the expense, which is less expense in my eyes and more due service.
No music for this one, except maybe Dani California from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers - which is in itself less ambient music, totally non-applicable, but in its own way tribute to the journeys and -- blabbering again. I'll post music for this if/when I find people who know what the hell I'm going on about to begin with. *laughs*
Final Fantasy VII; massive videogame/anime/book/everything empire
Needs no real introduction. I came, I played, I watched, I fell in love with Rufus and the Turks, and I've never really turned back.
I don't know how different my interpretation of the Turks - and of Tseng in particular - is from fandom's interpretation, but I think I must be kind of funny in the head about them: for one, I can't seem to write porn about them. *laughs* Which makes me an oddity in itself; but the Turks deal with sex and blood and morality and a lot of kicking shit around, in my head, and all of those things are implicit and need very little explication, as much as I'd like to manage it.
I like the kickass. I like the confidence. I like the blurring of lines between good and bad, the questioning of whether that line exists at all. I like the corporate badassery, which is better seen from far, far away. I like the changes in personalities. I like the personalities.
The Rolling Stones remixed sounds a lot like the Turks to me. You Can't Always Get What You Want, redone so that it keeps the spirit of the song but layers on the sounds of the city, a city, any city. When they're not wondering whether they're very bad people or very good people, I imagine that the Turks can kick back and just appreciate being good at what they do, and getting what they can get out of the shitty eventuality that is life in a hard town. If you pull one song from this post, pull this one!
Then there are times that the words switch off. Drove Through Ghosts To Get Here, by 65daysofstatic, is completely instrumental and completely fitting for a trawl through Midgar.
And because they don't care what's wrong or right as long as they survive, Turks would listen to Fall Out Boy covering Michael Jackson's Beat It. I must have looped this to death writing Empery, because anachronism is fun!
Disillusion is also fun. MGMT - Time To Pretend.
This is our decision to live fast and die young
We've got the vision, now let's have some fun
Yeah it's overwhelming, but what else can we do?
Get jobs in offices and wake up for the morning commute?
Gratuitous lack of apologetics and roughshod unintellectual music while going very, very fast on a very, very dangerous vehicle. Rihanna - Shut Up and Drive. Don't look at me, I'm artist blind sometimes!
Baccano!; kickass semi-historical demi-awesome mafia anime
I pity Luck, sometimes, because I don't know how the boy lives with himself. He doesn't seem too good at juggling the conscientious versus very-adept-mafioso parts of his personality. But I love him anyway. ♥
The Killers - All These Things I've Done. I don't think I've liked a song of this... sort so much before. Singing! Drums! Guitars! Powerful lyrics! Personality!
I wanna stand up, I wanna let go
You know, you know - no you don't, you don't
I wanna shine on in the hearts of men
I want a meaning from the back of my broken hand
Another head aches, another heart breaks
I am so much older than I can take
And my affection, well it comes and goes
I need direction to perfection, no no no no
Help me out
Yeah, you know you got to help me out
Yeah, oh don't you put me on the backburner
You know you got to help me out, yeah
American Gods; the only novel to mash every culture's mythos with the mythos of the current zeitgeist and get away not only laughing, but giving us the finger at the same time
American Gods can be sombre and serious and mythical; but it's set in America, and in our time, and who knows what Shadow might have been listening to on the radio on his trips to and fro from nowhere to somewhere and back again?
Kaizer Chiefs - Ruby
Ruby Ruby Ruby Ruby
Do ya Do ya Do ya Do ya
And what you're doing, do it to me
Ruby Ruby Ruby Ruby
Could it be, Could it be
That your joking with me
And you don't really
See you with me
And I must have recommended Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds five thousand times as is, but Save Me creeps under the skin of the novel and settles in. Probably breeds, too.
Ah, comin' through the desert, I met a man
Who told me of his crazy plan
He'd been walking there for 20 days
He was gonna walk on for 20 more
Said, How 'bout a drink or a bite to eat?
I said, No, my faith is all I need
Sit and save me
Save me, Mr. Walking Man
If you can
You don't need to prove a thing to me
Just gimme faith, make me believe