Dear Jukebox author

[robberbaroness]

 I love this exchange so much!  It seems to inspire amazing creativity every year.  I hope the songs I’ve requested spark that in you, and I hope you have a lot of fun coming up with stories!

General likes:  Fairy tales, gothic literature, film noir, revenge tragedies, bodice rippers, melodrama, dark comedy, heroine/villain/hero love triangles, heroine/villain dynamics, rescue romance, mythology, maledom (non and dubcon are fine), bdsm, bondage, character studies, what-if AUs, genre swapping AUs, vampires, folklore, knight and lady dynamics, epistolary fic,  interactive fiction, historical settings.

General dislikes:  Totally bleak endings (bittersweet is fine), a focus on bodily fluids/byproducts/functions in sex, non-gore grossout stuff.

The Magic Wood - Joan Baez (Song)

This song is so delightfully spooky!  Is the mysterious man the devil?  An evil fairy?  Something even stranger?  You could go into details about the nature of what happened, or what happens afterwards and whether the narrator ever encounters the man again, or has other magic encounters in the woods.  As with the song title, is the woods itself magic?  What is the source of the shining eyes, creeping feet and tiny cries?  What happens in the woods at night?

Jellon Grame - Broadside Electric (Song)

I vastly prefer versions of this ballad with a daughter, and Broadside Electric is what introduced me to it!  I love the daughter, and how she defies the usual tragic deaths of Child Ballad heroines by becoming a great hunter and avenging her mother.  What exactly happened with the curse the mother set so that the child “will be more mine than yours”?  Did Jellon Grame not care that his daughter grew at an unnatural rate?  Did she fade into nothingness after fulfilling her purpose, or did she go on to avenge other women in other Child Ballads?  (Possible hook- our great archer huntress is Maid Marian!)

Wicked Dickie - Rasputina (Song)

I’ve always felt there’s more to the story than what the song says on the surface.  Why did the death of his favorite cow cause Wicked Dickie himself to die?  Why was he called wicked, anyway?  The cow’s death might have been the start of a general reign of terror perpetrated against him (by enemies? By his neglected children whom he loved less than his cow?)  The theme of the Frustration Plantation album is southern gothic, so while you don’t have to run with that theme, this would be a good story for it.

Sam Jones - Richard Thompson (Song)

Here’s another song where I feel like there’s more going on under the surface.  Sam Jones’ job seems mundane if gross (here you can break my DNW about grossout stuff if that’s what you need to talk about his job), but I feel like there may be some magic involved.  Is he performing magic rituals with those bones he doesn’t turn into glue?  Is he the leader of a Sawney Bean or Texas Chainsaw Massacre-style clan that just doesn’t do the killing themselves?  Is he a psychopomp?  Is he a god of death?  Or is it all just as he says, and if so what kind of life is that to live?

Aristocrat - Poppy (Song)

I love the mix of happy dance and melancholy nostalgia in this song.  The narrator could be simply a low born mistress to the king or a nobleman in pre-revolutionary France, but you could also do a version where it’s a fantasy or science fiction kingdom.  What kind of history is she hiding from the court?  Was her rise a fluke, or did she work hard every step of the way to get to the top?  Is she happy where she is, or will she always miss the gutter?  And if a revolution does come, what’s going to happen to her?

Mary - American Murder Song (Song)

Poor Mary!  I always felt her inclusion in a series of albums about murder was a little unfair (she didn’t intentionally kill her father!) but that also means her song is especially haunting, inspite (or because) of its chipper tune.  It says that she faded into fog, but that doesn’t mean she died, just that no one from her hometown ever saw her again.  The music videos show that she made it to the 6 Mile Inn with Lavinia Fisher and the other murderers from the albums, along with a supernatural personification of America- you don’t have to use any of that, but it’s fun if you do.  If so, how does she interact with the rest of them, and does she escape the inn when it crumbles?  And if you don’t want to use any of that, where does she end up?  Even with a dark tone, cuteness involving the bulldog is a plus!