Theme Songs

[TennyoCeres84]

Grace Potter's The Divide makes me think of the days when Aspasia was wandering around the United States and elsewhere after her acquittal for roughly ten years. There's an ethereal quality to the melody that links to her wanting to reconnect to her Wyldfae side, and I figure the divide part relates to her days of questioning her past and finding her place that will eventually lead to Coach in the late 90s.

https://vimeo.com/53081935

[TennyoCeres84]

Here's one for Tom. I could see song being relevant during the 1950s/60s with Tom possessing a body. It makes me think of the way the incubi and succubi view love and sex as a game and have to have their fix. Yet, he's craving the actual thing, with the kiss being better than the sweet loving.

[IamLEAM1983]

That's pretty on-point, Ten, and a good counterpoint to what's been playing in my mind. 

I wondered how mainstream incubi and succubi would describe their existence, or their approach to blending in on Earth. Marilyn Manson's User Friendly is pretty much the antithesis to Love is Strange.



Use me when you want to come
I bled just to have it touched
When I'm in you I want to die

User friendly fucking dopestar obscene
Will you die when you're high
You'd never die just for me
She says,
"I'm not in love, but I'm gonna fuck you
'til somebody better comes along."

Use me like I was a whore
Relationships are such a bore
Delete the ones that you've fucked

User friendly fucking dopestar obscene
Will you die when you're high
You'd never die just for me
She says,
"I'm not in love, but I'm gonna fuck you
'til somebody better comes along."

[TennyoCeres84]

Definitely the antithesis of each other. :D

[IamLEAM1983]

And here's one that's not for one of my guys or Tenny's! How 'bout that, huh?

Nine Inch Nails' Satellite fits Preston pretty well. Reznor's revisited old feelings of paranoia feel like they'd apply pretty well to him - the sense that there's something watching at all times - usually technology-enabled to boot, that's being counteracted by just a smidgen of proactive hope and effort.



Data trails, like fingernails
Scratch across, the sky
Hard to know, figure out
Tell the truth, from lies
Everywhere, listening
Every word, you say
Think I found, a way around
Yeah, I think I found, a way

Well, come on (come on [repeats])

Satellite, I'm watching you
I'm one step, ahead
Satellite, I'm part of you
I'm inside, your head

Yes we can, yes we did
Eliminate, this dread
Better watch, what you think
What was that, you said?
Everywhere, and everything
And every word, you say
Think I found, a way around
Think I found, a way

Come on

Satellite, I'm watching you
I'm one step, ahead
Satellite, I'm part of you
I'm inside, your head
Satellite, I'm watching you
I'm one step, ahead
Satellite, I'm part of you
I'm inside, your head

Satellite
Satellite, I know you're up there somewhere
Satellite, I know you're up there somewhere
Satellite, (so very high)
I know you're up there somewhere
Satellite, (so very high)
I know you're up there somewhere
Satellite, (so very high)
I know you're up there somewhere
Satellite, (so very high)
I know you're up there somewhere
Satellite, (so very high)
I know you're up there somewhere
Satellite, (so very high)
I know you're up there somewhere
So very high
So very high

[IamLEAM1983]

This one's a little different. I see it as an auditory representation of mortalkind's greatest strength, as viewed from the outside. 

Long-lived or immortal individuals aren't driven to change social or technological paradigms in the span of a single lifetime - not when they have practically forever to spend improving their craft, lying in the rinks for thousands of years if need be, until they reach the right moment to land a precision strike of innovation or inventive genius. As useful as that might be, they have one one huge deterrent to contend with: mortals make up the mass, mortals are always breeding more of themselves, which means there's a higher statistical chance of innovators of geniuses starting out mortal in the first place - and that mortalkind never stops.

Immortals can stop and stand in the sidelines while disagreeable governments or kingdoms fall, or can wait as long as they need to for the right social or economic conditions to rise. Mortals, in the meantime, are always pushing forward. It informs the way some immortals perceive time, as if they were the only ones operating on a normal scale and we normies were hyperkinetic lemmings going through timelapse after timelapse of entire kingdoms, cities or social currents.

Mortals build. Mortals move. Mortals change. Immortals, statistically speaking, do that a lot less.

This orchestration of System Shock 2's Engineering trades the original piece's Cyberpunk Horror feels for what I like to imagine as the irrepressible, constant and generally positive march of Progress as a mortal construct. It's a dizzying force from the outside, especially if you're someone who's seen things like the Enlightenment, the Industrial Era and Clanks, equality movements and feminism, the merging of Terran and alien tech, cybernetics and the early discussions related to artificial intelligence in a single lifetime. There's immortals out in the world who remember us building shacks out of mud and hay, and that are now seeing people in Hope curing diseases believed to be supernatural or incurable. There's people who saw the abacus come to light and saw it grow ever more complex, until modern computers stood in front of them.

Mortals built all of that, in what probably feels like a constant, reckless, energetic, joyful and optimistic whirlwind of hope for the Future that's sometimes too much to handle.

So, yeah. I see the following as Mortals: The Soundtrack. Engineering orchestrated in major keys feels fitting, seeing as the mortal races are technically exactly that. They're the modern world's engineers, no matter if you're referring to actual engineers or teachers, researchers, scientists, poets or peacekeepers.

[IamLEAM1983]

This one fits Mary's slice of Hong Kong pretty well, in my humble opinion. Then again, a lot of LaserHawk's Skull and Shark gets my brain percolating.



And this one reminds me a lot of Hannibal, as I somehow imagine him as a bit of a retrogamer, someone who would've fixated on the Castlevania soundtracks as auditive references to all things Being a Kickass Vampire Assassin.

[IamLEAM1983]

Hope's Viscount Evergloam might honestly require a lyrical version of Greensleeves as a theme, but Percy's decidedly martial outlook on life consistently reminds me of the Warcraft universe's Alliance, and especially of the humans. WarCraft II has a bombastic, stolid, pompous and positive fanfare to serve as background for most campaigns involving Azeroth's human kingdoms, and it really fits the local Gruff head honcho. All it's missing is a bunch of Gruffs sticking lyrics to it on the fly while performing back-breaking work or doing their rounds on the beat like Hope is some sort of Medieval fiefdom.



And now I'm stuck with the image of Gruff footmen reporting to Percy with fists thumped to their chests and variations on "Ready to serve!" and "Yes, milord!"

You must construct additional Pyl- wait, wrong Blizzard strategy game.

[IamLEAM1983]

This one suits Paradise itself, I'd say. It's a pretty colorful place despite its aged state, and carefree lawlessness permeates everything. If you're looking for thrills the likes of which even Dubai or Monaco can't provide, Earth's cousin south of Gliese's got you covered. Of course, there's a thin veneer of authority and enough social prescriptions to keep the tissue functional, but there's still a lot of ways to have fun there. Zero-G nightclubs, hardware stores for Clanks looking for exotic pleasures, all kinds of alien food that tickles the average Terran's palate in new and interesting ways, vehicles you won't find on Earth, and people of both sexes that are just aching to break your mundane and terrestrial expectations...

It's a great place to unplug - with just a hint of danger for those who know where to look.

[IamLEAM1983]

And this one's for Mr. Volker, the anthro wolf-slash-incubus.

I keep thinking his take on seeking pleasure and feeding from it stemmed out of causing as much pain and suffering as possible to the other Pitspawn that oppressed him and his siblings. He has no interest in harming mortals or angels, or even Pandemonium's demons - but give him access to another native of the Pit and if that fellow native happens to be remorseless or just plain freaking insane, he'll, well, "rip and tear huge guts", to quote the godawful one-shot Doom comic book.

I figure he'll be something of a throwback for Jenkins, who might remember his own days of senseless carnage, seeing as he's the type to have way too much fun while tearing a swath through his enemies.

Considering, his personal theme would be Metal as fuck, as brutal as possible, and really, really loud. Doom 2016's soundtrack has a few choice cuts, including this one.