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Character Anthems


aira
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(I saw a similar thread to this at the end of this board, but since it hasn't been updated since 2016, I thought it would be fun to "revive" the idea!)

 

I don't know about anyone else, but sometimes, when I hear a song, I IMMEDIATELY think of one of my characters!  It's to the point that I have a Spotify account completely devoted to character playlists- I think at one point I had well over 50 songs total for three characters?

 

I digress!  My point is- I wanted to know if 1) anyone else is the same, and 2) what those songs are and 3) why they fit your character!  It could be a song that YOU think would fit your character, a song you think your character would listen too; anything that has to do with your lovely character creations!  I'll start..

 

Not Dead Yet by Lord Huron fits my character Adrian Bell to a tee.  An ex-cop who just happens to be a werewolf, Adrian has been through a lot, but he refuses to give up hope (at least so far).  From losing his father weeks after his nineteenth birthday, to his best friend's disappearance fifteen years later, to a brutal injury that almost cost him his independence mere months ago, it's a wonder he's not dead yet.

(I'm editing this after less than a half hour, because browsing YouTube, I found another one!  This Sam Tsui and Kurt Hugo Schneider cover of Swedish House Mafia's song, Don't You Worry Child, really encapsulates Adrian's memories of his past.)

 

Edited by aira

Working on it... Check back soon!

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Music is a love of mine, so of course I'd devote several songs to an array of characters, a recent one being Rain Paris's cover of Montero for Evelyn (rich, talented, obsessive, and used by others - often knowingly, - for the thrill of it). Something about it just...fits. >.>;;;

 

Spoiler because mild cursing involved.

 

Spoiler

A sign of the times every time that I speak
A dime and a nine, it was mine every week
What a time, an incline, God was shinin' on me
Now I can't leave
And now I'm actin' hella elite
Never want the bitches that's in my league
I wanna fuck the ones I envy, I envy

- Montero (lyric snippet), Rain Paris

 

Edited by Hysteria
Lil edit for warning
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i love this! for my main bb nell, she has several themes and all of them are SAD. she's the kind of easy-breezy, nice to talk to character with deep secrets and a past that haunts her. a lot of the songs that make me think of her have to do with leaving and feeling far away, or of loneliness and disappointment.

 

nova scotia - the mountain goats always gives me this wistful feeling and even being short, it's probably THE theme song for her.
 

Spoiler

Coming in off Nova Scotia
Yellow sun in the blue sky
All those cattails in the wind
I got something in my eye

Listen, everything I love I will devour
And bury the bones down in the snow
Put me in a beat up el camino
Just let me go, just let me go

 

are you ten years ago? (demo) - tegan and sara - probably the one song i feel like perfectly captures a lot of her mindset and her struggle with depression.

 

Spoiler

Taken, I am yours
(If you go, you go)
I'm up and doing circles
I am taken, I am yours
(If you go, you go)
I'm up and doing circles
I am taken, I am yours
(If you go, you go)
I'm up and doing circles
I am taken, I am yours
(If you go, you go)
I'm up and doing circles

I collapse
I might stay out longer then
I left a light on for you then
If you show, you show
If you show, you show

When I feel like this
When I get so into myself
I lose track of where I'm going then
Lose track of how to get going again
I feel myself slowing down
Feel myself turning round
Is this taken?

When I feel like this
When I get so sick of myself
Where are you going then
Without me and not knowing then
That we're slowing down
You've got to turn right around
And tell me that I'm taken then
Tell me if I'm yours

You collapse
The pressure of this life is so
You can't be held accountable
If you go, you go
If you go, you go

When you act like this
When you get so sick of yourself
The whole world falls away and since
I feel like I have only missed
The feeling that I'm here again
The feeling that I'm clear again
I'm not taken

When you act like this
When you get so into yourself
I lose sight of common goals
And letting go, so I can be all alone
Feel myself going slow
Feel myself letting go
Not taken
Not feeling like I'm yours

I am taken, I am yours
(If you go, you go)
I'm up and doing circles
I am taken, I am yours
(If you go, you go)
I'm up and doing circles
I am taken, I am yours
(If you go, you go)
I'm up and doing circles
I am taken, I am yours
(If you go, you go)
I'm up and doing circles

I collapse
This life looks like a sentence
Though a constant game of falling short
If you know, you know
If you know, you know

When I feel like this
When I'm just so sick of feeling less than perfect
Isn't right for me
I never fight to see
If coming clean would get to me
I feel myself holding back
I feel the pressure, it's finally back
I'm taken

When you felt like this
When you saw it all come crashing down
Subtle but not underground
I was there, I saw the signs
I saw unfair and so
I write to you through other means
I let myself finally feel taken
Like I was yours

I am taken, I am yours
(I feel sick)
I'm up and doing circles
(I feel)
(x10)

I collapse
I collapse
I collapse

 

vienna - the fray after what, a decade? this is still the song that inspires me to write this character when i hear it. as someone who left home when she was very young to become a pokemon master only to have that dream ripped away, it has this other layer for the universe i write her in now.

 

Spoiler

The day's last one-way ticket train pulls in
We smile for the casual closure capturing
There goes the downpour
Here goes my fair thee well

There's really no way to reach me
There's really no way to reach me
There's really no way to reach me
'Cause I'm already gone

Only so many words that we can say
Spoken upon long-distance melody
This is my hello
This is my goodness

There's really no way to reach me
There's really no way to reach me
There's really no way to reach me
'Cause I'm already gone

Maybe in five or ten yours and mine will meet again
Straighten this whole thing out
Maybe then honesty need not be feared as a friend or an enemy
This is the distance
And this is my game face

There's really no way to reach me
There's really no way to reach me
Is there really no way to reach me?
Am I already gone?

So this is your maverick
This is Vienna

 

the ocean is a good place to think of the future - los campesinos! since my character has a connection with the ocean, this just always makes me think of her. and the "a thousand lines in perfect symmetry" always gets me, considering she had a twin she lost at a young age.

 

Spoiler



I grabbed hold of her wrist and my hand closed from tip to tip
I said, you've taken the diet too far, you've got to let it slip
But she's not eating again, she's not eating again
She's not eating again, she's not eating again
I ask her to speak French and then I need her to translate
I get the feeling she makes the meaning more significant
She was always far too pretty for me
To believe in a single word she said, believe a word she said
At fourteen her mother died in a routine operation
From allergic reaction to a general anesthetic
Spent the rest of her teens experimenting with prescriptions
In a futile attempt to know more than the doctors
She said, one day to leave her
Sand up to her shoulders waiting for the tide
To drag her to the ocean, to another sea's shore
This thing hurts like hell but what did you expect
And all you can hear is the sound of your own heart
And all you can feel is your lungs flood and the blood course
But oh I can see five hundred years dead set ahead of me
Five hundred behind, a thousand years in perfect symmetry
Best known left wrist right finger through all the southern states
On every video games machine they call her triple A
There were racists on the radio trying to give up smoking
The chat show host, he joked
You have to wait for the government program
You talk about your politics
And I wonder if you could be one of them
But you could never kiss a Tory boy
Without wanting to cut off your tongue again
A good place to look to the future is
When you are sat at the sea
With the salt up to your ankles
And a view of the end of the pier
You may look down at your model's feet
And wish that you'd just float away
And the weather here is overcast
And the sea is the same shade of gray
So the landscape before you looks just like the edge of the world
But to the left side and the right side
Either way is a crazy golf course
The sea is a good place to think of the future
And all you can hear is the sound of your own heart
And all you can feel is your lungs flood and the blood course
But oh I can see five hundred years dead set ahead of me
Five hundred behind, a thousand years in perfect symmetry
A thousand years no getting rid of me
A thousand years in perfect symmetry


 

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Glitter and Gold by Barns Courtney screams to be the anthem for my bitcher lion... not really sure why but every time I hear it I think of her.

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  • 2 months later...

The song "Bad Things" by Rayland Baxter just screams my character, Kaiden, to me!

❤️

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Oh I absolutely love doing this! I usually have a writing playlist for each of my characters that I just throw any song that makes me think of them into. But lately I've been having fun trying to distill those lists (which get REALLY long, over 100 tracks usually) into "best of" playlists that are about an hour long. The hour is arbitrary, but it seemed a good length of something I could inflict on someone. I get really into it, so it's hard to whittle it down lower than that... (I was aiming for 10 songs originally, but a top 10 is SO hard.)

 

But as far as top tracks for each of my current active characters go...

 

For Aurelie, I think it's got to be Steamboat by Adrianne Lenker. Not just the lyrics but Lenker's voice and delivery on this one are just such the right vibe for her.  Particularly relevant lyrics:

Spoiler

I guess I am human, but sometimes I feel
Like I'm only a ghost, like I'm only a wall

....

Oh, I wish I was better at being alone
Still every night, I call you on the phone
Oh, I wish I was more than my skin and my bone

 

For Charlie, that's actually a little harder... I think it's probably Thursday Girl by Mitski, or Life of the Party by Allie X. Thursday girl has that kind of fragility/self-destructiveness that I think is really key to his character, but Life of the Party has more of the denial/attention-seeking aspect which is also important. (The boy is a mess.)

Spoiler

Thursday Girl:

Glory, glory, glory to the night
It shows me what I am (Glory)
I'm not happy or sad, just up or down
And always bad

 

Life of the Party:

I made so many friends last night
They all wanted to know me
I can't say they were polite
But I know they really got me
And we told a lot of jokes
So clever when I'm tipsy
Even when I nodded out
I was center of the action

 

And finally, my mean scrappy teen Cerise... Her anthem is actually instrumental, I think! Wildcat by Ratatat is the one I think of as being firmly the Cerise Anthem. (The breakdown at 2:00 is like really good... Just such a good Vibe.) It's harder for me to pick One Song with lyrics that I think is really the Cerise Image Song. I think if I had to pick one, it would be Seashore by the Regrettes. (Strong/explicit language in the lyrics on that one.) The chorus in particular is just perfect.

Spoiler

I'm like nobody else, so you can just go fuck yourself
I do a lot of stupid stuff but don't act like you're so tough

 

As you can see... I get super into it!! Hahaha.

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  • 1 month later...

You and me by Yelawolf.

 

There's a line in there that fits her so well. "To get everything I wanted in this lifetime, I had to put my beliefs on the front line."

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  • 1 month later...

I'm not sure so much about anthems, but there are definitely songs that remind me of certain parts of my characters. I wouldn't say any have an overarching, defining song. I think the closest I have would be Fly by Nicki Minaj ft Rihanna for my character Sayed. He always feels like he's the underdog of his story and people want to just bring him down, but he's just going to keep fighting them back and try to survive. The unfortunate thing is that he often causes problems to happen to him lol

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Only one of mine has an anthem and every time I hear it on my playlist I think of them. 

Song: Happy by Young Rising Sons (please check it out. It's awesome!)

 

Character: A quiet, grumpy type with a bad past who is generally a good person. They don't like themselves but I'm taking them on a journey of self-discovery

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  • 7 months later...

For my character Jaime, who's a very old man (800s and still going!), who's also embitterened by a lot of things that happened to him, it would definitely be Wilderness by Joy Division.

 

Especially the first verses:

 

I travelled far and wide through many different times
What did you see there?
I saw the saints with their toys
What did you see there?
I saw all knowledge destroyed

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