Jukebox 2025 Letter

[trefoil_underscore]

You may disregard my usual preferences for this exchange, as songs are very different from the fandoms I usually request. I’m interested to see what your interpretation of the song is—if you’ve got an idea, write it, and I’d love to read it! That said, if you would like some more direction than that I’ll give some possible ideas below.

Likes: 

• character studies
• mental illness/PTSD
• injury/disability
• dark humor
• hurt/comfort (or hurt/no comfort, whump)
• weird west
• horror
• ghosts/undead
• darkfic, fluff, smut, gen, anything in between.
• Characters with very intense hard to define relationships.

DNW: 

• AI generated content
• unrequested genre-change AUs
• explicit under 16 sex
• unrequested trans headcanons or "real-world" gender dysphoria (a/b/o fantasy angst fine)
• scat/watersports
• punishment/discipline kink
• pregnancy
• ejaculating on face
• focus on nipple or spit stuff
• repeated/immersion-breaking consent check-ins esp. between characters it would be out of character for
• feminizing the character who's bottoming (ex. describing them as significantly shorter or more delicate than they are in canon)
• fingore/detailed descriptions of finger or toe injuries (unless it's about a canon injury or how a Lee Van Cleef character lost his fingertip)
• body parts freezing and breaking off
• characters suddenly "getting over" a canon long term disability or character tic

A' phiuthrag 'sa phiuthar - Julie Fowlis (Music Video)
Youtube
The way this music video portrays the fae is fascinating, the pulsing light flowing through the trees and the strange owl-people. The relationship between the two sisters is compelling, and I wonder how to interpret the lyrics in this version--the sister in captivity is usually meant to be the one taken by the fae, I think, but it could also be the one left alone, confused and in poverty, ceaselessly looking for a sister that's off somewhere dancing with the fae.

Easy to Be Around - Diane Cluck (Song)
"You're so easy to be around, it's like I'm not even walking beside you"
Youtube
I have so many thoughts and questions about this song and I'd just really like to hear someone else's thoughts on it! Here are some of mine.
Is it a song about not having a personality? (Clear when held up to the light/you’re so easy to be around, it’s like I’m not even walking beside you/forgetting what our name is) Is it about two similar people (I see them both as women whose backgrounds have led them to be self-effacingly people-pleasing) recognizing this kind of invisibility in each other and finding a kind of mutual comfort in understanding each other, falling in love maybe (one shadow made of mercury/dance as the sun goes down). Idk I feel like it’s got some funky identity and general like, consciousness issues going on. It haunts me. What do you think? What’s going on with the symbolism of the discarded diamonds, admired but ultimately cast aside for the open air outside? What does it mean to be clear, to not belong to anyone? Is it a conscious choice? Is it positive or negative, or is it just the way things are? 
Or, are the two people facets of the same person? Is it a fractured personality situation? Different forms of the personality at different times? Inner consciousness and the mask they wear, or the idea projected onto them?

Ground Don't Want Me - Josh Ritter (Song)
Youtube
Love when there's some kind of cursed undead cowboy.

Lovegod - Sarah Kinsley (Music Video)
Youtube
Giant blue faceless furry thing as a personification of ideal lover/the abstract desire to be loved/sublimated aversion to conventional romance with strong desire for intimacy/???? Is so good. Did she create this thing, and it came to life somehow (but only for set periods of time, judging by the glance at the clock and disappearance? Like a cross between Cinderella, Pygmalion and Frankenstein….) Did she see it in a vision and was compelled to create it and bring it to life, or was it something she created all on her own? What drove her—does she even know?
The lyrics are fascinating also, there’s this (in my opinion) unhealthy obsession with finding love, an idea that it will cure everything, yet also resistance to it and disgust at the options offered. But also just. The sweet relationship between a slightly deranged woman and her giant faux fur creation.
If you want to make it an aromantic-asexual-spectrum thing you can do that too (non-threatening non-human furry lover for cuddles and warm fuzzy feelings with no Social Implications or expectation of marriage, etc). However there are many ways to interpret it. Also if you want to write blue creature/woman smut I would like to see it. Dream sex?

Murder at the Bingo Hall - Amigo the Devil (Song)
Youtube
I don’t even know what to prompt for this one! How do you interpret this song? Is it an old-timey gambling hall? (Keno, a close relative of bingo, was evidently very popular, and there’s a story of a drunk gambler in a western boom town firing a bullet through the ball-tumbler thing after becoming convinced it was rigged—he offered to purchase the owner a different one in the hopes his luck would improve. Keno is generally a game that strongly favors the house.) This contradicts some of the song details but I’m not opposed to some delicious anachronism stew, an AU, time travel or what have you. Or is it really just average Wednesday night bingo, which the town maniac reigns over with an iron fist? Is he terrorizing the old folks from the retirement home? Or is it some dark fantasy version of bingo night where lives and magic are on the line? What on earth is at stake for this game? A tea cozy? Water rights to the whole valley? Who’s the singer? Is there indeed a murder at the bingo hall, or is it just, as the singer says, “someone should call the cops, cause I’m KILLING IT!” Both?!

sever the blight - hemlocke springs (Music Video)
Youtube
This music video is gorgeous and trippy and has a whole storyline. What’s going on with the two women? Do they know each other? Are they old friends/lovers? Or did the new wife only just recently find out about the wife in the basement, and decide to rescue her? Art would be amazing here--I love the basement woman's makeup and dramatic Kate Bush-esque dancing and the other's serene, enigmatic expressions.

The Shrine / An Argument - Fleet Foxes (Music Video)
Youtube
What is going on in this music video. It haunts me. I can’t listen to the last 2 minutes of it bc it’s so dissonant.
Thoughts (questions?): 
are the creatures around the fire controlling various animals in the storyline (the wolf and the dragon both have similar black-and-white patterns to the creatures’s clothes)? Is the creature that escapes from the deer-thing’s body at the end literal, or a metaphor, perhaps to indicate that it, too, has been controlled this whole time? Is the two-headed dragon fighting itself a symbol of this war between opposing factions? Who was the dead rider at the beginning? Does the start of the plucked string music symbolize the start of the deer-thing’s enthrallment? Why does it go where it goes? Did it reach the ocean—was that its plan all along? Why is it carnivorous? Give me anything fleshing out the worldbuilding in this video and I’ll love it.

Surrender - The Birthday Massacre (Song)
"They're coming for you. Let me in and I'll explain"
Youtube
Who is the singer here? Are they being honest about the danger the person they're addressing is in? Why do they watch at the window, and say they're the same--is the other person undergoing some sort of transformation? Are they family? What history do they have? Feel free to play up the horror elements if you want!