skygiants

I would like to join the rest of the world in registering my joy over YULETIDE ASSIGNMENTS! I am writing a bit more out of my comfort zone this year and I am totally excited; the only bad thing about having my college roommate visiting this week (which is something otherwise awesome in all respects) is that I cannot get started immediately.

HOWEVER: I will admit that I felt kind of guilty about not offering or requesting the Dalemark Quartet this year for Yuletide (I love it so! But there are many requests for it already, and I wrote it last year, so it is off the roster for this year). So, to overcome these feelings of guilt, I decided to spam my flist with a very long Dalemark playlist!

DO NOT QUESTION MY LOGIC.

If you haven't read the series: massive spoilers within.

Book I: Cart and Cwidder

1. Beauty and the Mess, Nickel Creek (lyrics)

get it out again and play 'em one more song
it's all they really want and who's to say that's wrong
ain't that what you want them to know?
all they get of you is what they get out of the show

Betwen Clennen’s flamboyance, Lenina’s reserve, and the enormous issues that they manage to hide under a constant layer of expert performance at all times, you can really only classify Clennen and Lenina as MASSIVELY MESSED UP, however little their kids may be aware of it.

2. Gimme Shelter, The Rolling Stones (lyrics)

If I don’t get some shelter
I’m gonna fade away
War, children, it’s just a shot away

Kialan needs shelter! Very badly! Of course it takes Moril a little while to realize this. And just what the stakes are that are involved.

3. Center Stage, The Indigo Girls (lyrics)

Royal rebels discover you
trust? You turn there is no truth
and circle, circle why are you scared?
why a smile instead of tears?

This song is about the danger of losing yourself in a performance, but there’s a core of quiet pragmatism to it, too, that’s very Lenina to me. Even aside from all the stuff about rebels and jokers and thieves! (Hi, Clennen.)

4. Blackbird, Louisa John-Krol (lyrics)

Come blackbird and take the soul of me away
Who will listen into your lore?
Will the echo follow your call?

This song is pretty much the embodiment of Dagner’s ~~emo poetry~~ blackbird-heavy dreamy little songs. In fact, sometimes I find it hard to believe that Louisa John-Krol is not actually Dagner in disguise.

5. Proud, Tegan and Sarah (lyrics)

So we take our stand and fight for tomorrow
Finally we got something
something we can bring down the house with

Moril does not think much of Brid’s self-confidence and love of performance, because he is her little brother. Personally, I think it’s kind of awesome. You go, Brid!

6. The Show Must Go On, Queen (lyrics)

The show must go on
inside my heart is breaking
my make-up may be flaking
but my smile still stays on

It’s not easy for four kids to run an entire show by themselves, especially when their dad’s just died and their mom’s run off to marry an earl and things generally suck all over. But you gotta do what you gotta do, is the point.

7. Lullaby, Loreena McKenitt (lyrics)

O for a voice like thunder, and a tongue
to drown the throat of war!

So this song is basically a long lullaby, followed by a FURIOUS RANT about war and politics and oppression and how much they suck! If there is a song that better fits the way Moril uses his power at the end of Cart and Cwidder I am hard pressed to imagine it.

8. Into the Fire, Thirteen Senses (lyrics

As I turn and meet the power
This time, this time
Turning white and senses dire

You might think it would be awesome, having magical super cwidder of truth powers that bring mountains down on people’s heads . . . and yet, not so much. Because this is Diana Wynne Jones and things are not that easy.

Book II: Drowned Ammet

1. Country Life, Show of Hands (lyrics)

Landed gentry county snobs
Where were you when they lost their jobs

Farming in South Dalemark is not doing so well. Too bad for Milda and baby Mitt, who were doing pretty okay before the economic collapse destroyed their entire lifestyle.

2. O. . . Saya, Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack (lyrics)

Sweat shops have made me shifty
like a ninja with speed I'm nifty
I hope I live 'til I'm fifty
see my city go from gritty to pretty

Cue Mitt’s transformation into a resentful street urchin!

3. More for Me, Tegan and Sarah (lyrics)

Said I used to have a life once
He said I used to like your smile once

And Milda’s transformation into a bitter sweatshop worker who squanders money recklessly because it’s the only way she can bring a little joy into her life. Isn’t industrialization fun?

4. Rise, The Flobots (lyrics)

Don’t know how to be but angry
feel infected like we’ve got gangrene
please don’t let anybody try to change me

Okay, fair warning, I am trying to limit the number of angry revolution songs I put up here for Mitt, because the number COULD BE ENDLESS. But furious revolutionary rap about how THE PEOPLE WILL RISE UP is pretty much the ideal soundtrack for Mitt’s preteen years, so.

5. Runaway, Pink (lyrics)

it's hypocritical of you
do as you say not as you do
I'll never be your perfect girl
I've got to run away

Speaking of angry teenagers . . . hi, Hildy! I think it is kind of a shame that Pink was not really a Dalemarkian musical artist. Because you know Hildy would listen to her ALL THE TIME.

6. John Barleycorn, The Big Session (lyrics)

They've ploughed, they've sown, they've harrowed him in
Threw clods upon his head
And these three men made a solemn vow
John Barleycorn was dead

This is a song for Old Ammet! It’s a hard-knock life, for a harvest god. Mitt sympathizes.

7. Red, White and Black, Thea Gilmore (lyrics)

and we can all hear it coming
and we all know why
so gather up your children
and take the last train to the sky

Navis figures out very quickly after the assassination that patriotism is for idiots and it’s time to get out of South Dalemark. It’s a shame the ‘gathering up your children’ part doesn’t work out for him so well, considering they're already gone. But he does try!

8. Sails of Silver, Steeleye Span (lyrics)

and I’ll set my sails of silver
and I’ll steer towards the sun

And they will sail the wind’s road, and so on – well, you know how the prophecy goes. Ynen, Hildy, Mitt and Navis break up with South Dalemark via boat. South Dalemark doesn’t know what it’s losing!

Book III: The Spellcoats

The Old Ways, Loreena McKennit (lyrics)

Your world was not mine, your eyes told me so
yet it was there I felt the crossroads of time
and I wondered why

This is a song that feels very much like the Undying to me, and since the Undying generate the story in The Spellcoats more than any of the other books, it seems fitting to kick off with them.

2. Ghost, Voxtrot (lyrics)

Down by the water’s edge, under the dying tree
I let my body slip, so dead inside of me

Gull went away to war and came back basically a dead man walking. His soul got caught in the river; his body went back to his family. It turns out this is not good for a person and is also exceedingly creepy.

3. Ghost, The Indigo Girls (lyrics)

I go follow to the river play your memory like a piper
and I feel it like a sickness how this love is killing me

. . . I did not mean to deliberately have two songs titled “Ghost” in a row! Anyway, this is for Robin and Tanamil and their consistently doomed love, filled with exciting issues like the fact that Robin is engaged and depressive, and Tanamil is a river and also a bound god and kind of bitter about the whole thing.

4. Eiderdown, Sheila Nicholls (lyrics)

his importance is so divine as I refuse and smile at him
I feed myself and I learn to swim to make it safe
so I won’t drown one more time in eiderdown

Tanaqui’s arc is all about leaving safety and bindings, and saying no to other people’s power, and learning how to use her own. Tanaqui is kind of awesome. Also, I like to mentally translate ‘eiderdown’ as ‘spellcoat’ in my head.

5. Two Tribes, Frankie Goes to Hollywood (lyrics)

when two tribes go to war
a point is all that you can score

The war between the King and Kars Adon is completely pointless and terrible for everybody. It’s a shame so many people have to die for everyone to figure that one out.

6. Shine, Vienna Teng (lyrics)

how we blossom and we cease
tell your story now
we have so much to know

At the end of Spellcoats, the conclusion of the story isn’t yet told – because Tanaqui is still in the process of telling it. We do know, however, that everyone is pretty much in the process of being awesome.

Book IV: The Crown of Dalemark

1. Dirty Second Hands, Switchfoot (lyrics)

You're not as tough as you think.
The dirty second hands, the dirty second hands.
Can't get nothing for free

This is pretty much my ultimate Mitt song right here - it has all of his issues about freedom and being used and whether he really has dug himself into the position of being a murderer for the rest of his life. (Keril and the Countess: the opposite of helpful.)

2. A Lonely Voice, October Project (lyrics)

Can you hear me calling
from a world away
a lonely voice behind a door

Wend has all these complicated plans for sending people BACK! to the FUTURE! and maybe some assassination and so forth, but basically what it comes down to is he is sad, and lonely, and easily manipulated, and misses his daughter. :(

3. Mole, The Mountain Goats (lyrics)

I came to see you up there in intensive care
out in the desert we'll live carefree

Speaking of daughters, and people who are easily manipulated by their love of them: Moril will never forgive Hestefan, but you can get where the guy is coming from.

4. The Riddle, Scarlet Pimpernel soundtrack (lyrics)

For we all are caught in the middle
of one long treacherous riddle
Can I trust you? Should you trust me too?

Mitt may have to kill Maewen, but a mysterious voice wants Maewen to kill Mitt, but aforementioned mysterious voice is a pretty untrustworthy fellow himself, and Moril doesn't trust Mitt or Navis at all, but Mitt and Moril are both crushing on Maewen anyway, who is pretending to be somebody else, and did we mention that Hestefan is a mole? Best road trip ever!

5. Raised by Wolves, Voxtrot (lyrics)

I'm a bitter man I know
but listen honey, you're no fun
I will never live like you
but you will probably die like me

Sadly, Mitt and Hildy are too different and too much alike in all the wrong ways to ever really work things out (massive class issues + enormous attitude problems on both sides, here we come!); this is a song for the OTP that Will Never Be.

6. Borrowed Time, A Fine Frenzy (lyrics)

Step, step right over the line
and onto borrowed time

And this is a song for the Once And Future OTP, Give Or Take a Few Centuries: all of Maewen's time in the past is borrowed, and it's a long wait ahead.

7. We Built a Monster, Thea Gilmore (lyrics)

The ship of a state can go under in minutes
you don’t know the flood is coming until you’re swimming in it

Hey, Keril and the Countess? Guess what: your schemes for Mitt ended up sending him straight to the top of the ARMY OF REVOLUTION and sinking all your plans in the process. Surprise!

8. Up the Wolves, The Mountain Goats (lyrics)

I'm gonna get myself in fighting trim
scope out every angle of unfair advantage
I'm going to bribe the officials, I'm going to kill all the judges

Meanwhile, after years of careful preparation, Hobin decides it's time to start butchering people en masse.

9. Politicians, Switchfoot (lyrics)

A pledge allegiance to a country without borders, without politicians
watching for my sky to get torn apart
we are broken, we are bitter
we're the problem, we're the politicians

Mitt chooses to become the King that will unite the country. . . despite loathing authority figures with a fiery passion. One suspects this is not going to help his many mountains of issues get any better.

10. Troubled Land, John Mellencamp (lyrics)

just know the truth is coming
to bring peace to this troubled land

. . . but it works out well for Dalemark, and it seems to make sense to end the playlist with a song for the whole struggling country that is, in a way, the most important character in the books.