Jukebox Nominations!

[alias_sqbr]

jukebox_fest is an exchange where you write fic, record podfic, or draw art based on a song (woo for them having art this year!). I did a treat last year and it was great fun. Nominations are open until April 4 so if you're interested in getting involved make sure there's some songs you find inspiring! The list of nominated songs looks promising.

I nominated:
Isobel by Bjork Youtube lyrics
Blinding Florence + the Machine Youtube lyrics
Girl With One Eye Florence + the Machine Youtube lyrics
Seamstress Dessa Youtube lyrics

I was about to nominate The Mercy Seat by Nick Cave but watching the video made me realise it's about an execution not about becoming some sort of doomed judge-King (yes it only took me 27 years shush). I could prompt for my interpretation anyway I guess but am feeling less enthused.

I am going to have trouble coming up with any prompts that aren't about doomed femslashy robots. Also I'm going to have to think carefully about what to offer, because my art style tends to suit happy humour, not the kind of weird angst my music taste tends towards.

Comments

[lea_hazel]

I think I will do this thing. This seems like a good choice for now.

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah it's an interesting change from the usual. Note that I got the address of the comm wrong, I've fixed it now.

[kerravonsen]

Ah, looks like the name of the com is jukebox_fest rather than jukebox.

Cunning plan to call it "jukebox" rather than "songfic" since songfic as a genre has a bad name. Which is a great pity, because I find songs to be great for inspiration, and I ran a few "lyric" fests myself in the past.

[alias_sqbr]

Oops, thanks! Doesn't "song fic" usually refer to fanfic of tv shows etc that just uses songs for theme/mood/quotes?

[kerravonsen]

Isn't that what this is doing? I mean, apart from being fanfic of a particular tv show etc.

[alias_sqbr]

I feel like it's similar but not quite the same. The jukebox stories last year often didn't directly quote from the original song much if at all, they just told an original story which used the plot/imagery of the song as inspiration. The story was ABOUT the song, not USING the song. So for example last year I wrote a story based on "The Man Who Sold The World" about a man who literaly sold the world to a demon. The events of the story roughly followed those of the song lyrics, but not word for word, and the title was entirely original.

As I understand it, a songfic to "The Man Who Sold the World" would be, say, a story about Fury and Pierce from Captain America: the Winter Soldier, which used lines like "He said he was my friend" in italics between scenes with related themes, almost as if the song was playing as a soundtrack to the story.

There could be stories which fit both definitions, for sure, but on the whole they have different styles and goals. (And then there's the fanart, but I have definitely seen people use song lyrics in fanart in a similar way to songfics)

[kerravonsen]

I'm not sure if that's too narrow a definition of songfic... problem is, if one doesn't use the word "songfic" to describe a story which is heavily inspired by a song without heavily quoting its lyrics... then what does one call it?

Thing is, all the "song-related-fic" that I've written, and the ficathons I've organized, would lean more towards the latter than the former. I tried to make it part of the rules of the "lyric wheel" ficathons that I organized (named after the original Highlander Lyric Wheel) that one could not just quote huge chunks of the song as scene separators or as something that was playing in the background of a scene... which is the kind of thing that is typical of the more loathed definition of "songfic". I say *tried* to make it part of the rules, but some people completely ignored that rule and wrote dreaded-songfic anyway. Okay, one person did.

So what does one call song-fic that isn't songfic?

[alias_sqbr]

Oh ok! I didn't realise people used "song fic" in such a broad way, sorry. Then yeah I guess jukebox fics are a subset of songfics. Still, it's a very specific kind, if they called themselves "songfic exchange" they'd get a lot of people wanting to write more traditional songfic about other canons, not just fic about songs. But the general fannish bias against "song fics" may well have also influenced the comm name.

[kerravonsen]

I didn't realise people used "song fic" in such a broad way, sorry.

But I could very well be wrong. It's just that I would like to have a word that I can use for fic-based-on-songs in the broad sense.

And does it exclude fic based on more traditional fannish canons, though? Because if it does, then I need to remove all the fic I listed as "available for podficcing" in the Podfic Permission Post post.

In fact, I've just deleted said comment.

Blah. What a bummer.

[alias_sqbr]

Ah, yeah, sucks it wasn't what you were after.