#stvoy fic
So @mitch-pell asked people to share at least 5 songs they’ve either created a work from, plan to create a work from, or hope to create a work from. Consider yourself tagged if you’d like to play!
Well, first of all, I have written a ton of stories that have been inspired by some piece of music or other - sometimes the inspiration has come from a line or a couple of words, at other times a song has helped me find the mood I was looking for, or given me the inspiration for a title. So here’s but a sample, because otherwise we’d be here forever…
This is one of my very first fics, in the Star Trek:Voyager fandom, and my first attempt to write capital-P Plot - specifically, a B-grade, Western-infused adventure frolic. I’d become intrigued by Joan Baez’ cover of Dylan’s ballad, “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts” and its odd assortment of characters. And so I went about constructing a plot that didn’t follow that of the song, but drew on elements of it (”Lily was a princess…”; “Then everyone commenced to do what they were doin’ before he turned their heads;” “Rosemary… was lookin’ to do just one good deed before she died”, that sort of thing). I listened to the song for the several weeks it took me to construct and write the thing; it still conjures up the story when it pops up on my playlist.
This was going to be the sequel to one of my most popular fics, “Second Mouse”, an Avengers/007 crossover. I’d envisioned it as a totally hoaky caper thing (working title: “The Curse of the Elephant Star”), but this was just post-Captain America: Winter Soldier and I just couldn’t find the frivolous mood I needed. I was driving home from work when U-2′s “Rattle and Hum” came up on my iPod, with that line: “On the Locust Wind comes a rattle and hum…” And boom, everything changed. By the time I got home, I knew I had my title, a link to the emergence of Hydra from TWS like locusts about to devour the world, and most importantly, an underlying mood - of dread, and impending doom. I tossed what I’d already written (except for a couple of paragraphs I managed to repurpose, and started to write…
In some fannish exchange or other @bettybackintheday had suggested that John Mellencamp wrote “Clint-ish” music, and I agreed. Then we started to get the first teasers for Age of Ultron, and that mysterious farm was at the centre of everyone’s speculation. So based on the pretty dark and elegiac mood of “Rain on the Scarecrow”, I concocted my own ideas of what it might mean. Of course none of that came to pass - but I still maintain we’d have been better off if Marvel had used my version… :P
Another Joan Baez song, and something i KNEW would be a title for a fic some day! I love that image, but also how can you listen to these lines and NOT think of comics!Clint Barton and comics!Kate Bishop:
As I remember your eyes
Were bluer than robin’s eggs
“My poetry was lousy, ” you said
Where are you calling from?
A booth in the Midwest…
We both know what memories can bring
They bring diamonds and rust
Well you burst on the scene
Already a legend
The unwashed phenomenon
The original vagabond
…
Yes the girl on the half-shell
Could keep you unharmed
….
Now I see you standing
With brown leaves falling around
And snow in your hair…
So, yeah. Had to be done (as a tag to the Fraction series.)
Well, how could I listen to Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” screeching through Thor: Ragnarok, see that ship of Asgardians looking for a new home, and *not* think of what would happen to them if they were to land in the US under Trump’s immigration policies? Exactly. This is that story.
So that’s a short sampling of my musical inspirations. Feel free to shoot me an ask if you want to know more!
