ExtraPenguin

29. A song you remember from your childhood



I didn't really get into music until my teens, but there were a few tapes for the car radio. The one that most stuck in mind was Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon. My mom didn't like the music (she is to this day more of a fan of classical), but when it was just dad, he'd sometimes put this on instead of the radio. And my favorite song from the tape was Eclipse, embedded above.

In my teens, I got into Rammstein and Within Temptation via the radio (I think the songs in question were Ich Tu Dir Weh – my dad went :o when he looked up the lyrics, but apparently it's fine to sing about BDSM as long as it's in German – and Faster, respectively) and thence meandered over to symphonic power metal.

27. A song that breaks your heart
There is and has ever been only one proper answer to this:

Battle Beast - I Wish. Presses every single one of my heartbreak buttons.

I wish you could see me now
I think you would be proud
You said one day I would understand
But I just want you to hold my hand

(As an aside, it also contains the very wonderful line of The future was still to come, which calls to be used in some fic, either text or title.)

WRT other music, I found Lord Huron - The Yawning Grave via Yuletide 2019 requests, and it's since cemented itself as a very Yu Ziyuan song, for some reason.

I also discovered Blackbriar, and can rec their I'd Rather Burn and Arms of the Ocean.

Blackbriar brought me on a Youtube suggested videos dive. I saved some links; with Motionless in White - Another Life I can see why I saved the link, but it's not really my thing. Frozen Crown - Neverending is one where they might develop into my thing with some practice. Jinjer - I Speak Astronomy isn't really my genre, either – too growly – but damn, that title! I did discover stuff I enjoyed, though: Temperance - The Last Hope in a World of Hopes and Temperance - My Demons Can't Sleep. (And then there was a steady stream of stuff I only watched to the end because I was transfixed by the frontwoman's cleavage. *g*) Let's see what this year's Jukebox brings forth! I usually find a few songs to listen to there.

Despite the transition to summer time and my inability to go sleep at a reasonable time fucking with me, I managed to bang out over 1k onto the WIP described here and here. It's now 27.5k from start onwards, with another 1k of scene I have yet to connect to, and approximately 8k's worth of [scene in which X] notes. So, end result will likely be 37k according to gedit (after I fill in a few [character: grumble grumble] -type things), and thus the longest thing I've ever written, even if not a novel. Estimated AO3 wordcount: 35k. I've been powering forth by power of no_detective's weilan playlist, which hits the sweet spot of writing background music for me, especially "The Night We Met" and "No Place". Inspired by that, Music Monday Meme!

25. A song by an artist no longer living

I'm being very very stereotypical and choosing Queen's The Show Must Go On. I first encountered it as a young penguin with no context re: Freddie Mercury, and liked it back then as a song that was just about playing one's part in the performance despite the hardships. Then, the more I've learned about the context, the more I've grown to like it: knowing that the hardship is incoming death makes it more actually deep and go further away from triteness, and knowing that Freddie Mercury, one of the great lionized singers whose fans number in the millions, was queer is... It's that feeling of "we've always been here". I am part of a category of people which includes Tove Jansson and Freddie Mercury.

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To go with David K. Jordan's page of China resources, I found that Robert Eno also has a page of China resources! Today's evening reading has been his annotated teaching translation of The Analects of Confucius. I am discovering a sudden affinity for Confucius:

Ji Wenzi always pondered thrice before acting. The Master heard of this and said, “Twice is enough.”

In general, based on this and other things, I should probably read more on the texts of Chinese (/East Asian) philosophers. I do genuinely enjoy reading about philosophy, for some bizarre reason. Perhaps someday I can read it in the original. (My #1 favorite philosopher is still Ernst Mach, though.)

Let's return to the long-lost but not forgotten Music Monday Meme! Because the world deserves music on days other than Mondays, I am not at all strict about posting on Mondays.

23. A song you think everybody should listen to
Walk the Moon - Shut Up And Dance is a wonderfully cheerful and upbeat song, and it has the best vid to it ever made:

None of the clips used were sped up or slowed down.

21. A favorite song with a person's name in the title
Within Temptation - Sinéad
(lyrics)

It's a surprisingly cheerful song about letting go and "taking the leap" of living one's best life. The singer has found that after a life of "drowning in sorrow" there's freedom on the other side of the chasm and wants Sinéad to join her there. There's a lot of talk about breaking away and setting things free. It's obviously (probably) about some sort of leap beyond society's norms; my personal interpretation is that it's about coming out/rejecting the shackles of compulsory heterosexuality and going to the queer side. Do not care for the thoughts of others, be yourself.

But first, a break from our regularly scheduled programming: holiday_wishes is a comm for posting wishlists of up to 10 items in the ~spirit of Christmas~ and maybe someone will fulfill one of them. Or maybe you'll find someone to make happy! Anything from the small to the big and the fandomy to the RL, though I don't think many people could put one in touch with a second-hand spaceship.

19. A song that makes you think about life
Amaranthe - Leave Everything Behind
(lyrics)
This song makes me think about me and society. In typical Amaranthe word salad way, it's not all that clear WTF is going on, but it reads as being on leaving behind society's ... restraints? modes of thinking. And wondering if there's a way to liberate oneself from all that and leave society's biases behind.

While procrastinating from the ongoing pants-on-fire that is my todo list, I accidentally read Martha Wells' All Systems Red. It's a nice novella, I'm glad I read it, and I read it just after FFA's SF vs Fantasy thread, so I'd been freshly reminded that I like science fiction for the fact it presents alternate consciousnesses not as lesser or needing to be made human, but as just ... different. (Also the one source of spergie rep that was not condescending if-only-I-were-cured shite.) Murderbot is a hilarious narrator, and I enjoy its asides, and the fact it's so obsessive about its TV series. <3 I'll def be getting the sequels in ... January I think. When I have time to read.

17. A song that you would sing as a duet on karaoke
Dreamstate - Evolution
(lyrics)

Most of my collection of songs is either one vocalist only stuff, or where it's one vocalist + backing growls, or Amaranthe's blend of three vocalists, so this was a bit hard. This is the closest thing I have to a duet.

But let's start with a PSA: My name is spelled ExtraPenguin, with both the E and P in capitals. All-lowercase variants are sometimes necessary due to limitations in eg URLs, but the proper version is ExtraPenguin. As far as shortened versions/nicknames go, EP and Penguin are fine.

15. A song that is a cover by another artist
Battle Beast - Push it to the Limit
(lyrics)
Originally by Paul Engemann, from the soundtrack of Scarface.

13. One of your favorite 70's songs
I don't actually listen to 70s stuff – my favorite subgenres are all produts of the 21st century, so it's rare that I encounter anything amazing that's not recent. However, I have discovered a recs thread for Mad Science music on FFA, so here's a thing from the 80s:
Oingo Boingo - Weird Science
lyrics

(Also, guess who'll be asking for a F/F interpretation of Skullcrusher Mountain next Jukebox?)

11. A song that you never get tired of
Within Temptation - Faster
(lyrics)

It's just so ... idk, uplifting? Enthusiastic? I'm proud of all my scars is a sentiment I want to get behind wholeheartedly. Also, throwing oneself into one's life and enjoying it in the moment.