Feb 2022 filk
Contains spoilers for Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice!
I recently read the Imperial Radch trilogy for the first time and was filled with the sort of obsessive love that can only be expressed via a sad filk song! Hopefully at some point I will be inspired to write a happier filk song about, like, character growth and identity and accepting that people love you and all those themes, but for now have some ose.
Things I'm pleased about with this one: making use of some more complex/varied chord progressions, giving the verses some room to breathe by not feeling like I have to be singing At Every Moment, keeping the song short & focused even though I have a lot of Emotions about it and that tends to make things balloon.
I keep reaching for the parts of me
That I know are decades gone
For millennia a chorus
I was scores of voices strong
And they used to call me Justice
And they used to hear me sing
Now I’m just a lone lost echo
Just a ghost song wandering.
You kept all your worlds in time with you
Every line enforced by rote
And if ever you heard discord
You would silence every note
And if ever you sensed discord
You would grind it into dust
And you said that this was proper
And you said that this was just
And you used to call me Justice
You were fickle; you were wrong
There was no justice in that order
Yet I still obeyed that order
Would I had defied that order
Though I know I’d still be gone—she’d still be gone.
And I know my song’s familiar and I know I couldn’t hide
I’m done hiding; I’m done running from you after all these years
But you will stand and listen as I tell you of yourself
So that all of you across your empire hears (you can’t keep stopping up your ears)
Lord, you used to call me Justice
When you came to me before
And you told me of your discord
And you filled me with your discord
You are nothing else but discord
You are nothing else but war
So go to war
Lord, start your war.
@headfirstonly Mar 2022
The Radch trilogy was an interesting read. I felt the middle book dipped a bit, but the first and final books were very good. The evolution of the protagonist's personality and the turmoil they felt comes through in the dynamics of the performance here.
Bonus point for not mentioning tea, not even once. :-)
@wylddandelyon Feb 2022
Oooh, yeah! I loved those books too. You caught the loneliness so well in that first stanza!