Ah yes. Music!!! I draw a lot of inspiration for my writing from music, although initially never from the actual music but rather from the lyrics. And then it's usually a title. A word, a turn of phrase triggers a feeling, or a mood - and then I write a story around it. As far as I remember it's never gone the other way, where I've had a story idea and then found music to go with it.

Like, I had started on a MarvelBang and it was going to be a totally hoaky sequel to my first 007/Avengers crossover, and it was called "The Curse of the Elephant Star" (you know, mystical Hydra jewel and all that). And I drove home, and U2's "Rattle and Hum" came up on my play list, and the line "... on the locust wind comes a rattle and hum..." And those two words, "Locust Wind," gave me a sense of foreboding that was PERFECTLY in line with the resurgence of Hydra after decades of dormancy, and a title and a mood and a colour and ... I went into my document that day and trashed a lot of what I had written, and came up with a totally different story line, and tone, and everything.

So, yeah. Music matters!



(Image credit to the fabulous Inkvoices!

Edited 2018-03-23 05:02 pm (UTC)

oh my gosh, that's amazing that it turned to such a different fic because of a song. (Good song AND good fic, though! EXCELLENT, really. :))

WOW that's awesome! Plus that image is totally legit :)

Funny you ask about music this week, since I've been lured into writing more hockey au and have determined that all the fics are going to be named after songs from the Cutting Edge. Hence, lots of research into the soundtrack and the lyrics. :)

(Shameless plug: Baby Now I, a Pepper/Tony ficlet in that verse.)

I don't have any specific songs or playlists, but sometimes I'll hear something and be like... WAIT! THAT! That would totally be Nat and Clint doing XYZ and... then I get another WIP idea. *g*

I dragged the title "Diamonds and Rust" around with me for MONTHS because there are some lines in it that are SO Clint, that I just knew I had to turn it into a story (except it wasn't going to be about Clint and Natasha, because post-"LA Woman" Kate featured in those lines as well):


Well I'll be damned
Here comes your ghost again
But that's not unusual
It's just that the moon is full
And you happened to call
And here I sit
Hand on the telephone
Hearing a voice I'd known
A couple of light years ago
Heading straight for a fall

As I remember your eyes
Were bluer than robin's eggs
My poetry was lousy you said
Where are you calling from?
A booth in the midwest
...
We both know what memories can bring
They bring diamonds and rust

Well you burst on the scene
Already a legend
The unwashed phenomenon
The original vagabond
You strayed into my arms
And there you stayed
Temporarily lost at sea
The Madonna was yours for free
Yes the girl on the half-shell
Would keep you unharmed...

YES I love series with song title themes!! It just makes the music a part of the whole story's universe :)

And same, music is the perpetrator of so many random fic or title ideas I have floating around... :)

Very, very rarely, does an entire song remind me of anyone, but certain lines from songs? Oh yeah.

Early Clint/Nat (as in, post-Avengers) was always encapsulated by Kate Bush:
and if I only could
make a deal with god
and get him to swap our places

I've always like this for Natasha:
please don't say 'I love you' cause I might not say it back

This for Clint, from the National:
I never thought about love when I thought about home

I can't think of any more right now though.

Then I have some random headcanons about Clint and Nat and music. Namely, that Clint likes indie, indie rock, rock and country - though not the awful twangy stuff (and of course, me being me, that means The Civil Wars and Bon Iver and Fleetwood Mac and CCR and all the music I like.) Natasha, on the other hand, likes instrumental music, or music in languages she doesn't understand. So yes, classical, but also Sigur Ros, film soundtracks, really bizarre indie experimental stuff, music in Chinese and Pashto and Hausa. Neither of them are the type of people to listen to music with headphones in (situational awareness and all that) but they'll have something on around the house, or when writing reports or something.

I also have a headcanon that Clint likes jazz - Billie Holliday, Nina Simone, Chet Baker, Miles Davis etc - because his mum loved it.

I use music and lyrics for titles and fic ideas all the time, almost to the point of ridiculousness. For example, for reasons unknown to myself, all stories in my ot3 verse must take their names from Bon Iver lyrics. All. Of. Them. (So, you'll know where the title "When Your Eyes Are All Painted Sinatra Blue" comes from when that fic eventually gets posted.) OR Wide Awake, which was a name I gave to the snippet that eventually became that behemoth when I first posted it in the comments of the 2014 Valentine's Mini Promptathon. It was the song I was listening to at the time - or well, the songs called Road to Joy (WHICH OMG ACTUALLY FITS??? Why have I never thought about this?). It was never supposed to become the title. It was 100% a placeholder. And look at me now, 4 years (!) later.

Ooh! And I bookmarked some mixtapes I liked over on 8tracks before it became a ball ache. I'll link them here.

exhale--
A comics Clint fanmix

Team Car Crash
A Hawkeyes fanmix

because i know death so well
A Natasha fanmix

I'm kinda fussy about fanmixes though. My favourite are Winter Soldier mixes - not Bucky Barnes, Winter Soldier - because they're all full of uncomfortable instrumental pieces. :D

Ooh also I wrote We Together Make a City which was named after the Torch Team remix of the Delays song and was heavily inspired by this mix in tone despite being about a totally different type of music... That was unexpected. And then there was Move Dust Through the Light which was inspired by the tone of all Bon Iver songs ever even though the music in it felt more like Fleetwood Mac. Or the Civil Wars, if they were happy.

Edited 2018-03-23 06:47 pm (UTC)

"I also have a headcanon that Clint likes jazz - Billie Holliday, Nina Simone, Chet Baker, Miles Davis etc - because his mum loved it."

INSTANT HEAD CANON TRANSFERENCE ACHIEVED

I love that song for Natasha... slash have your prompt of it saved for the next time Inspiration shows up for me!

Also, I agree 100% with your music headcanons, especially Clint's. I've been on a serious Fleetwood Mac kick since Guardians 2 (whoops... that's a long time...) and it feels like every other song wants to fall into my playlist for him or for Clint and Natasha together.

OK, first things first: *whooping ecstatically*

*still whooping...*

*...*

*coughs* So, music. :D


I draw inspiration from anything really, but the first time I was truly inspired by one single song to write a whole story was in this year's Secret Santa, with Don't Go to Strangers by Amy Winehouse and Paul Weller (and this was the result). It was kind of a revelation, because the music seemed to set the pace for the whole narrative, and it also made it much easier to capture the tone of the voices as I wanted it. So I was hooked to the point that now I have a WIP that literally revolves around four or five specific songs, which I have playing in a loop when I'm writing.

I don't have any music streaming accounts, and YouTube playlists are like Russian roulette, but I frequent an amazing local website with mixtapes from virtually every music genre, and the dude has even sorted them by mood, activity, time of the day etc. So if, say, it's raining and you want to listen to something cozy and fluffy, someone's already set it up for you. It's like really good radio, but without the commercials. (If anyone wants the address, send me a message - not sure if it's against the rules to post the link here.) I'm a rather optimistic person, so it proves particularly useful when I want to dial up the angst!

For some unfathomable reason, I'm convinced that Clint likes country music and metal - the latest being a constant point of friction with Natasha, who for the life of her can't understand why anyone would subject themselves willingly to this kind of torture (alright, maybe I'm projecting a bit here). :D

The idea of Clint Barton liking metal really amuses me. :D

I have him listen to Springsteen, like, RELIGIOUSLY (see, inter alia, The Pool
), and also to John Mellencamp (this latter thing is entirely Betty's fault :P ).

I'M WORKING ON IT!! Slowly, but I'm officially on spring break for a week so hopefully some magic will happen :D

That music website sounds amazing! I love playlists for different times of day and moods and stuff like that, especially when writing! I used to have an app sort of like that (Songza) but they got absorbed by Google :\

So I absolutely love listening to music while I'm writing, especially if I'm really struggling to capture the right mood. Generally, it's a lot of acoustic guitar stuff where the lyrics are kind of secondary so that I can focus on the words I'm attempting to get on the page :)

I'm also a huge playlist/fanmix enthusiast because music nerdery is sort of my thing. My spotify account has playlists for Clint, Natasha Clint AND Natasha, Maria Hill, and Maria/Steve. Those are separate from the mixes I have based on specific works. Plus workout playlists, hanging around playlists... If anyone uses spotify and wants a link/to be my friend, let me know!

For music headcanons, my best friend made Clint's workout playlist for me because we believe that Clint works out to, like, Ke$ha and Britney Spears and Jason DeRulo, much to Natasha's everlasting chagrin. Plus, my longstanding commitment to Clint being a huge ABBA fan, as documented in... way too many of my fics :D

I can totally buy Clint listening to those things to work out. He is secret music trash.

i need links to these spotify playlists (or any other playlist accounts plsandthanks)

I tend to listen to music while I'm thinking of ideas to write, rather than while I'm writing. I prefer quiet when I'm actually writing.

I used to have a Clint/Natasha playlist that I would always listen to when planning out ideas, but it disappeared when I updated my iTunes. :(

iTunes is THE WORST! Losing playlists like that just really sucks :( Any hope of rebuilding it?

Music is so important to writing, especially fanfic.

-Do you listen to music while you're writing, and if so, what/what kind? I make sure it fits the scene. So if it is a party scene, I turn up the volume on the party music. If a song is playing in a scene, I just chain it over and over until I am done writing the scene.


-Is there music you listen to specifically when you write about our favorite assassins, or just a song that you think represents them? I tend to go with "Good Arms vs Bad Arms" by Frightened Rabbit for how they are in comics. Complicated, both not wanting to be with each other but unable to not be in love with the other person. I also tend to go with "Dolly Dagger" by Jimi Hendrix because that to me is a good song for falling in love with a femme fatale.

-Do you make fanmixes, or have a favorite bookmarked somewhere? (And can we hear them)? I actually do have a Clint/Natasha mix. Hrm, I need to find a way to upload it though.

-Also, if you have any music-related headcanons, throw those out there, too!

To me their music tastes generally go like this:
Natasha: lo-fi hip hop, dark gothic music, violins and classical music, but is willing to give anything a shot. She likes music with a lot of complexity, either lyrically or musically. Sometimes she also likes music that just helps her relax because relaxing is so damn hard for her. I also think she hates Russian music because of the dark history that place has for her.

Clint: Classic rock, country, indie rock. He has simple tastes and sometimes plays the guitar with some of the songs. He also tends to sometimes like some old timey circus music for the childhood nostalgia feeling.

Hi! I've been lurking forever but there's nothing like a good music themed post to drag me out of my shell.

-I do listen to music while writing! I'm trying to transition to more classical music while writing because I'm noticing more and more that music with words distracts me, but I have to have background noise.

-My favorite FAVORITE song for Clint and Natasha is "Be Your Shadow" by The Wombats. It contains such great feelsy lyrics as:
Just one more uptempo tune
The suits don't care if their feet aren't blue
Are you aware of whats going on
In my heart, my heart, my heart
Those machine gun eyes, fire crystals into me
You're such a violent high
And I'm such a loose cannon can't you see?

-I challenged myself circa 2014 to listen to all of the Clintasha playlists on 8tracks. I've only got 66 left! and 8tracks has instated longer listening times again so i might be able to make it through them. i've been meaning to make a fanmix for awhile but never have. Are links ok? If so I'll pop the link to my 8tracks likes in a comment.

-I'm mostly an AU writer so my music headcanons vary from canon to canon

YES YES YES "Be Your Shadow" is literally the first song in my playlist for them!!!

Also, what an ambitious and awesome project! Man, I bet you've found tons of great music that way :)

OK, I had never listened to "Be Your Shadow", and I'm listening to it now and... yes. <3

Wow am I late to this party. But, music is so totally my thing. So, since you asked, I had to add my two cents.

Most, if not all, of what I’ve written stems from a song title or lyric or a feeling/idea born from a riff. I can’t listen to the radio without thinking about Clint/Nat/Marvel characters (is that weird? I think it is, but I’m not willing to “find a cure”). And even though it starts in one direction, the characters take it over, toss my gps out the window, and the fic ends up somewhere totally different than expected. And I love it when that happens, but the starting point always involves music.

In my world, Clint is all 80s. Mostly rock and country, but knows more pop than he’s willing to admit (he knows he could jump in that zombie mix in the Thriller video and nail it). Natasha’s taste is ever-changing because she gets bored easily. If she’s not actively interested in a genre, she won’t listen to anything. She always lets Clint pick the music (it only took her two times through to nail the moves in the Thriller video).

If you’re interested, my most obviously overly musically influenced fic is titled “Sentimental Fools” on Ao3. There are his-and-hers playlists to accompany the fic on 8 tracks, but I’m happy to list the tracks here if you’d like.

Finally, I have a wip based on “Through the Ghost” by Shinedown (Speak of the devil, look who just walked into the room; The guilted and faded notion of someone I once knew;
All the perfect moments are wrong; All the precious pieces are gone; Everything that mattered is just a city of dust covering both of us). It will, of course, have a happy ending. And if it inspires anyone else — PLEASE take it and run with it.

Thanks for the opportunity to spew my love for music as related to Marvel. ;)

WIP! Finish your WIP! (There's not enough Clintasha fic out there anymore /// :( )

Also, YES to the 80s. But then, you knew that ... (Clint does occasionally make allowances for late Springsteen, but U2 is dead to him after Rattle and Hum.)