Streets of Hope

This is something I could see Archie playing if he's feeling particularly jaunty, especially since I keep thinking he naturally took to Ragtime music and paired it with his first life's thorough exposure to Classical music.

I'm, of course, referring to Beethoven's Für Elise redone as a Ragtime piece.

I know I posted a video to another song that reminded me of Meris's singing voice, but I thought this one fill as well. It could easily fit with when she sang to Nereus or is putting a lot of focus into a particular spell.

It'll still be a bit before Nami's going to be hired as Shield's pilot, but I think this song fits rather well for a future flying scene. :)

I'd say the entirety of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag's soundtrack fits Captain Sam, but The High Seas works particularly well. It starts out as a fittingly piratical romp, with a ton of folksy fiddlework that immediately conjures up images of a brig slicing across waters with all sails unfurled, and then things get a mite more intense. It's easy for me to imagine cannons being brought up and the Dutchman being locked in a slow dance with a Spanish or English war vessel, during the Carribbean's Golden Age of Piracy, Sam barking orders left and right. I can also see them fighting off some sort of giant sea monster, off in Faerie's distant waters.

It's just piratey as all fuck - and the second half of the soundtrack is nothing but pirate shanties.

I've started playing The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, and the series' roots in Slavic, Celtic and Greek folklore are pretty well established by now. The bestiary pulls from pretty much every myth or legend across Europe, from kelpies, selkies and brook horses to Baba Yaga and boilerplate dragons - and so does the music. I'd even go so far as to say that the music selection dips into the Near East with a few Gypsy-inspired combat sequence songs that have pretty solid Moorish undertones.

One of them, Silver for Monsters, really makes me think of Lilith. In terms of personal ordeals, she's kind of a precursor to Meris, having been on the run since the dawn of the written word in Mesopotamia. As a result, she's picked from about a hundred or so different cultures across the ages, from her own Middle-Eastern roots to her Celtic travels or her time spent researching her former lover and jailer's people, deep in Central Europe. Anywhere where vampires took root, she's naturally visited.

That demands a selection worthy of a modern Gypsy or wandering woman, so the track fits.

I ran across this song by accidentally, but I thought it really fits Aspasia during the Battle of Hope. I figure it works with the her striving against her programming, losing comrades to either suicide or just becoming casualties. I imagine some of the lyrics also fit with the burgeoning relationship between Coach and her, which would really get her thinking about who she is and why she's fighting.

I figure Tom's going to have a few scrapes or bad calls as an early club owner, especially one that's freely accessible to every pissed-off demon and self-righteous angel. He'll get better quickly, pressure being what it is, but I can still see some visiting demons crashing a summertime Cuban or Latin-themed soirée with an unfortunate, if still uncomfortably fitting impromptu performance...

Rammstein's ¡Te quiero, puta! would be a good fit, considering. For the Spanish-challenged, this is pretty much a typically Rammstein-worthy, jolly and joyously offensive take on a love song. "Love", in this case, being a very generous term.



Hey, amigos
Adelante, amigos.
Vamos, vamos mi amor,
Me gusta mucho tu sabor.
No, no, no, no tu corazón,
Mucho, mucho tu limón.
Dame de tu fruta,
Vamos mi amor.
¡Te quiero, puta!
¡Te quiero, puta!
¡Ay, que rico!

Ay que rico, un, dos, tres.
Sí te deseo otra vez,
Pero no, no, no tu corazón.
Más, más, más de tu limón.
Querido
Dame de tu fruta,
Dame de tu fruta,
Vamos mi amor.
¡Te quiero, puta!
¡Te quiero, puta!
¡Ay, que rico!

Entre tus piernas voy a llorar,
Feliz y triste voy a estar,
Feliz y triste voy a estar.

Más, más, más por favor,
Más, más, más, sí, sí señor.
Más, más, más, por favor,
Más, más, más, sí, sí señor.
No me tengas miedo,
No te voy a comer.
Más, más, más, por favor,
Más, más, más, sí, sí señor.
Sí, sí, señor.

¡Te quiero, puta!
¡Te quiero, puta!
Dámelo, dámelo.
¡Te quiero, puta!

Maybe that'll be an appropriate song for when Littlest turns out to be a double agent. :p

I've been trying to find something that fits Gabriel and that would fit his ethos, what kept him from following Lucifer and the Fallen's path, and also from losing focus and turning into something like Uriel - an unthinking zealot.

I figure he started out in the Skeptics Club and initially agreed with Lucifer, back when Creation wasn't much more than a few hundred billion amino acid soups spread across the cosmos. The early dragons, strangely enough, didn't really capture his attention either. He saw them as interesting byproducts of God messing with magic, but that made them predictable to him. It seemed obvious they'd attain sapience quickly and develop their own forms of civilization.

Evolution, though, threw him a curveball of epic proportions. I think he had a Kairos of his own after interacting meaningfully with an early anthropoid. From his perspective, human civilization bloomed almost overnight and caught him completely off-guard. Our developing tools already was a blow to his ego, but Mesopotamia taking shape at the hands of glorified apes out of Africa sold God's project to him. It took him a long time to use Angel Time to cheat his way to seeing what we'd eventually be able to do. Not because he couldn't, but because he didn't want to spoil something that was already beautiful, natural and organic for himself.

When he did, though, and hopped from Ramses II's reign to 1900's Paris World Fair, he was blown away. He was already a believer, but now considered himself fully invested in what he still openly refers to as "Mortalkind's Glory". He's refused to jump ahead too often, as adamant as he is that we'll eventually stand at equality with angels - and that we'll get there on our own time. Of course, going back to live through what he'd skipped across only solidified his resolve. He's slipped in-between seconds in Leonardo Da Vinci's workshop in Venice and showed some of his aeroplane plans to the Throne of Air, and felt obligated to slip in as an observer to Orville and Wilbur Wright's first flight aboard the Flyer, in 1903.

Actually, starting from his encounter with Da Vinci and onwards, the idea of seeing humans flying autonomously - excluding those with flight-related superpowers - fascinated him. While his incessant military campaigns left him a little dour, he always kept a secretly childlike wonder towards airplanes. Other forms of emancipation eventually concerned him as well, from slavery's abolition to gene editing and cybernetics, technologies related to commercial low-orbit shuttles and off-planet colonies. Anything that furthers Mankind's ability to grasp its own destiny by the horns, he openly favors - with the noted exceptions of racial exclusion and Eugenics. If a technology or social construct divides Mankind further, he's almost certainly against it.

Today, it'd be fair to consider Gabe a more lucid take on Lucifer, someone for whom transgression matters less than curiosity and the relentless pursuit of a better tomorrow for all mortals. As could be expected, though, these ideals are things he's ready to fight tooth and claw for, even if it means doing things he himself would admit to run contrary to his beliefs. He'd tinker with the world's armies a thousand times over and lead to the creation of dozens more people like Aidan Drake or Charles Jenkins, if that were what's needed to push the Others away for good.

At the heart of even his darkest of deeds in the name of continued existence, there's still that vibrant, noble and joyous notion that mortals are, will be, and are forever becoming everything that they're meant to be. It's a long and hard road, but every sacrifice we make makes our triumphs all the more radiant in the Archangel's eyes.

Considering, Christopher Tin's Sogno di Volare is a perfect fit.

Back to Tom and Club Ishtar... I figure he's the type to appreciate the darker ends of the Synthwave genre for how it accommodates the Warlock-worthy penchant for oppressive atmospheres and in some cases, a sense of palpable evil. There's that, and he also likes his cheesy eighties' horror movies with tons of synthesizer-based tracks.

Considering, I can see Magnus hosting something special for any fellow forward-thinking and conscientious Infernalists out there on Walpurgisnacht, as well as something darker than the Fae's usual Samhain fare. That might require something along the lines of lots of red LED lighting, and Carpenter Brut's Escape from Midwich Valley.