Friday, May 12, 2017

On Music 1: I wrote a filk today, oh boy

So I've always been a little freaked out by Jonathon Coulton's music. I mean the songs he wrote for Portal are fantastic, but I didn't realize until I sang Still Alive for a friend as an undergrad that the lyrics are really friggin creepy. Other songs of his, I noticed right away, and decided to stay as far from them as possible. Like Re: Your Brains, a rousing anthem about a zombie apocalypse. I don't like zombies, I don't like zombies in media, and I am especially creeped out by media from the perspective of zombies trying to get someone to stop fighting and get eaten already.

At least that was me a few years ago. In the last year or so, I've warmed a little to the appeal, or at least the utility, of zombies, though I'm still majorly squicked out by any zombie media that highlights the gory aspects of fighting zombies or the societal collapse inevitable to nearly every bezombied fictional setting. The place where I've accepted the role of the horde in my life and my art is in the worlds of Magic: the Gathering, where a year ago I opened a Liliana, the Last Hope in an Eldritch Moon fat pack and set about constructing a Standard zombie deck. The release of Amonkhet, an ancient-Egypt-themed set, has added some new and interesting things to the possibility space of overwhelming your opponent with zombie tokens, and has gotten me thinking about them again.

And then I was discussing the villain-in-absentia of the set, Nicol Bolas, with somebody in a Magic-themed Discord channel, and they said "I think all he wants is to eat the plane." And then my brain did this.