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camwyn1. Ain't No Mountain High Enough. Have been listening to the chorus and one particular long enough that I no longer hear friendship or thwarted romance. No, when I listen to this song, what I hear is- well, Wayne Zhuang. All right, the courts had to let you go on that technicality, but I'm telling you right now- if you put so much as ONE TOE out of line, I will be there. There is NO mountain high enough, no valley low enough, no river wide enough in this ENTIRE GODDAMNED COUNTRY to keep me from getting to you. I don't care about jurisdiction. Watch your sorry ass, because I will find you.
2. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. I know perfectly sodding well that this is from / about the movie of the same name, but when you live inside my head, you view things through a weird-coloured filter. The line about 'from out of the East a stranger came, a lawbook in his hand' has spawned off an image of a divided North American continent in which most of the lands west of the Mississippi are subject to Asiatic (primarily Chinese) rules of magic and cosmology, and of a sheriff who had enough sense to get his butt down to San Francisco and pick up a partner who knew his stuff. It's worth noting that the surge of magic along the railroad lines has also simultaneously pleased and cheesed off the Native Americans, because in many areas their spirit medicine has greater power thanks to what the Chinese did- but in other areas everything's subject to the Chinese rules, and this is not something they're used to.
3. Like A Prayer, Madonna. In a Rome where the Silk Road was a little more easily traveled, a number of missionaries made it over the mountains that surrounded and pervaded their native lands and began talking up a peculiarly appealing philosophy to the peasants of the provinces. The legionnaires stationed in these far lands didn't think much of the ideas filtering through to them at first, but upon lengthy discussion (it got so damn boring in the provinces some nights) decided they rather liked what they were hearing. The art, the books, and the ideas started making their way back to Roma Mater. Eventually several of the mucketymucks of the Empire who had an interest in the silk trade insisted on hearing these ideas from the source- and thus did Mahayana Buddhism make its way to Rome before Christianity was so much as a gleam in the eye of Yeshua bin Miryam. Come the third century of the Common Era, and the Tibetans got into the game. Let's just say Julian the Apostate wasn't nearly as great of a disaster for the polytheists as he was in our world. . .
4. It's Raining Men, the Weathergirls. Can no longer listen to this song because it's all full of paratroopers now. Mind you, they're paratroopers from the universe![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cadhla spawned and I elaborated on- one where Atlantis remains above the waters but most of Asia was destroyed in an earthquake, and Wong Feihung invented the airplane- but still.
5. I'm With You, Avril Lavigne - No, I'm serious. Quit giggling. *sigh* I play the Feng Shui rpg, which is chock full of hittin' and kickin' and monkeys with guns, and one of its premises is that whatever group controls the most points of feng shui power has the ability to alter reality. Since it's possible to hop between certain points in time to accomplish this, someone who achieves control of enough sites can reset history if they like. There's loads of people who're totally screwed up because someone's temporary control of the right feng shui sites destroyed the timeline from which they came… anyway, this song relates to someone that the longtime readers of my LJ may or may not remember. I call him Poor Bastard. He was the abbot of a particularly isolated Tibetan monastery during what most of us would consider the Pulp Era, and he really wasn't happy with that fact- he simply wasn't prepared for it, but YOU try arguing with a predecessor like his. When the forces of several enemy factions came to his mountains looking to take the monastery and control its feng shui, he and the monks broke up as much of the geomantic power as they could, grabbed their artifacts, and ran like hell. About half the monks wound up blending into a yak-herding village to escape notice, but the rest (under Poor Bastard the Abbot) attempted to work their passage on a freighter to America, in the hopes of establishing a safe place somewhere over there. The guy who promised to get them there lied to them and there was nothing waiting when they arrived in Anchorage- but there was a Silver Dragon among the faculty of the University of Alaska's membership, and he knew what these guys were. And he knew that most immigration officials wouldn't know the difference between a Tibetan and an Eskimo if it bit them on the ass… The song basically comes in during the time between Poor Bastard finding out that he and the others had been cheated, and the arrival of the large animal biologist who would help them get safely inland.
2. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. I know perfectly sodding well that this is from / about the movie of the same name, but when you live inside my head, you view things through a weird-coloured filter. The line about 'from out of the East a stranger came, a lawbook in his hand' has spawned off an image of a divided North American continent in which most of the lands west of the Mississippi are subject to Asiatic (primarily Chinese) rules of magic and cosmology, and of a sheriff who had enough sense to get his butt down to San Francisco and pick up a partner who knew his stuff. It's worth noting that the surge of magic along the railroad lines has also simultaneously pleased and cheesed off the Native Americans, because in many areas their spirit medicine has greater power thanks to what the Chinese did- but in other areas everything's subject to the Chinese rules, and this is not something they're used to.
3. Like A Prayer, Madonna. In a Rome where the Silk Road was a little more easily traveled, a number of missionaries made it over the mountains that surrounded and pervaded their native lands and began talking up a peculiarly appealing philosophy to the peasants of the provinces. The legionnaires stationed in these far lands didn't think much of the ideas filtering through to them at first, but upon lengthy discussion (it got so damn boring in the provinces some nights) decided they rather liked what they were hearing. The art, the books, and the ideas started making their way back to Roma Mater. Eventually several of the mucketymucks of the Empire who had an interest in the silk trade insisted on hearing these ideas from the source- and thus did Mahayana Buddhism make its way to Rome before Christianity was so much as a gleam in the eye of Yeshua bin Miryam. Come the third century of the Common Era, and the Tibetans got into the game. Let's just say Julian the Apostate wasn't nearly as great of a disaster for the polytheists as he was in our world. . .
4. It's Raining Men, the Weathergirls. Can no longer listen to this song because it's all full of paratroopers now. Mind you, they're paratroopers from the universe
cadhla spawned and I elaborated on- one where Atlantis remains above the waters but most of Asia was destroyed in an earthquake, and Wong Feihung invented the airplane- but still.5. I'm With You, Avril Lavigne - No, I'm serious. Quit giggling. *sigh* I play the Feng Shui rpg, which is chock full of hittin' and kickin' and monkeys with guns, and one of its premises is that whatever group controls the most points of feng shui power has the ability to alter reality. Since it's possible to hop between certain points in time to accomplish this, someone who achieves control of enough sites can reset history if they like. There's loads of people who're totally screwed up because someone's temporary control of the right feng shui sites destroyed the timeline from which they came… anyway, this song relates to someone that the longtime readers of my LJ may or may not remember. I call him Poor Bastard. He was the abbot of a particularly isolated Tibetan monastery during what most of us would consider the Pulp Era, and he really wasn't happy with that fact- he simply wasn't prepared for it, but YOU try arguing with a predecessor like his. When the forces of several enemy factions came to his mountains looking to take the monastery and control its feng shui, he and the monks broke up as much of the geomantic power as they could, grabbed their artifacts, and ran like hell. About half the monks wound up blending into a yak-herding village to escape notice, but the rest (under Poor Bastard the Abbot) attempted to work their passage on a freighter to America, in the hopes of establishing a safe place somewhere over there. The guy who promised to get them there lied to them and there was nothing waiting when they arrived in Anchorage- but there was a Silver Dragon among the faculty of the University of Alaska's membership, and he knew what these guys were. And he knew that most immigration officials wouldn't know the difference between a Tibetan and an Eskimo if it bit them on the ass… The song basically comes in during the time between Poor Bastard finding out that he and the others had been cheated, and the arrival of the large animal biologist who would help them get safely inland.
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your take on The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
Date: 2004-05-10 08:00 am (UTC)In the meantime, for your reading pleasure, the It Came From Beneath the EETS (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/005174.html#005174) thread at Making Light requires careful study.
Re: your take on The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
Date: 2004-05-10 08:07 am (UTC)I've got the notes for that universe somewhere. It was all originally arranged by a particularly wary Chinese emperor's minister- let's just say that if you're going to work your railroad coolies to death you had better expect there to be magical consequences...
In the meantime, for your reading pleasure, the It Came From Beneath the EETS thread at Making Light requires careful study.
*snerrrrk*
Re: your take on The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
Date: 2004-05-10 08:12 am (UTC)Look for those notes, chile. Unleash that imagination.
Ah, found the notes.
Date: 2004-05-10 09:05 am (UTC)"Qianlong emperor (maybe later - must check books - could be the one after him) had screaming nightmare that could not be clearly remembered, let alone interpreted by his advisors or by visiting foreigners. 3 nights in a row. Third time around heads were starting to roll when someone suggested a nice cup of something before bed. Dream involved being squeezed tighter & tighter until he collapsed/exploded & someone else picked up pieces & announced themselves Emperor. !trusting anyone else among advisors, emperor turned to person who had suggested the tea and gave HIM a title, told him to figure out what it meant, etc. End result: small group (5 ppl) of highly trustworthy indivs. to be sent to outside world to investigate what they could find, report back only to this man & to Emperor. The 5 Elements went out into world, came back some years later, gave report. Nervous advisor presented to Emperor. Emperor got hissy about it, emperors always do, but opted not to execute anybody. Advisor made suggestions involving Western learning. Central premise thereof:
O Son of Heaven, the Middle Kingdom has been the center of Earthly affairs since the beginning of time. We have maintained our people and our ways through superiority of virtue and ability alike, and no nation stands any closer to Heaven's heart than our own. The ways of the barbarians are clever, although not wise - but remember the example of the Monkey King and know that cleverness has often disturbed the serenity of Heaven without any wisdom behind it. To counter such things we must understand them. To understand them we must join with them. To join with them, however, means to change what we are, and we must not do that, for 'When the center cannot hold, all things fall apart'. Therefore let Your Majesty instead find for his people a place where such joining may be accomplished in safety, at a great remove from the Middle Kingdom. As the wolf-cub raised among dogs thinks itself a dog, but in all things remains a true wolf, so let those of our people Your Majesty sees fit be to the barbarians of the West. . .
Emperor ADORES idea & puts nervous advisor & his Five Elements in charge of implementation. Nervous advisor eventually dies of chronic stress from sheer magnitude of plan, but the Elements carry on w/o him, picking successors as well. Later emperors *never actually told* about plan - ooops. (Earliest known instance of deliberate plausible deniability.) The Elements make deals for labor and land in western U.S., providing unprecedented numbers of immigrant laborers in exchange for influence over railroad routes. Elemental Conspiracy plan involves invoking VERY OLD magic long since faded from world & reviving it via Western learning/tech - using barbarian cleverness against themselves. Those who discover it believe it nothing more than crackpot religious weirdoes, not even especially dangerous ones. Discovery comes too late as President Grant drives the golden spike..."
Re: Ah, found the notes.
Date: 2004-05-10 09:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-10 10:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-10 11:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-10 06:34 pm (UTC)Have trouble taking "I'm With You" seriously ever since they used it for an extremely contrived Romantic Moment on Smallville, though.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-10 06:38 pm (UTC)Re: Ah, found the notes.
Date: 2004-05-10 06:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-11 12:46 am (UTC)When I hear this, I think of Alex Van Helsing in his Para days.
... either that or Vivianne Smith (Smith to everyone except me because I'm her writer) and her. Um. Informant-shutting-up technique. (guy, window, out.)
- Mel
no subject
Date: 2004-05-11 06:49 am (UTC)