cool and unusual punishment

the sound of mewsic

Anyone have that one song that comes to mind the second you think of your story? Discuss below. 

You know, you're writing your book, and you play this song on repeat at critical scenes. Or maybe it got stuck in your head during development. Maybe it just fits one character but you can't stop thinking about how perfect it is for their arc. In fact, one of the songs I associate most with The Cities Have Fallen is Yeah Yeah Yeah by Jack Conte because Gale but I found it halfway through ninth grade. I have literally written out choreography for multiple PMVs I don't plan to make for that one song. Any time I'm scrolling my playlist and find it I click on it and feel the sudden itch to draw Gale again. This is why my art book has so much Gale in it.

Another big one would be My Time (bo en) and Natural Anthem (Postal Service) for the Amalgams, especially Red and Damien respectively. If you haven't listened to either of those, you need to. My Time has this bit where there's a gun click and the music goes W I L D and it gives me chills every time I listen, no matter how many times I come back to it.

at some point in development Red unlocked some of his powers by holding a loaded gun to his head and then I realized that 1) that was dark as fuck and 2) persona already did that

That said props to Persona for getting to a really badass idea before me. Side note for discussion? Anyone else have a great idea and you realize it's a thing and you're like "ffffffff why is this"

me 

I could keep going with song recs but I think I'll finish with a song I can no longer really recommend to anyone, which would be People Like Us by Kelly Clarkson. I don't think it's a bad song but if you're not a fan of early 2010s pop... it is early 2010s pop

However People Like Us was the song that spurred what I call "first third generation Chronaverse" which is an oxymoron I guess but it was the third "revision" of my entire multiverse and the first characters from that multiverse. I first heard this song when I was in the car with my best friend driving home from camp while I was first working on Refugees, the eight-page short story that you now know as a good portion of the middle of Double Rainbow. At the same time, I had been reading Nuzlocke comics all summer and had begun a run myself. I blared People Like Us while writing the first draft of Hearts of Gold and knocked out a solid six hours (!) of writing, a feat that had before seemed impossible to Tiny Chrona. Listening to the song, even though it no longer aligns with my current taste in music, reminds me of those stories and that time in my life, which I think is pretty powerful in its own right.