Then Will You Make A Grave

[masterofmidgets]

Okay, honestly, there is no justification for this post. At all. None. All I can say is that Final Fantasy does weird things to my brain - one moment I'm a (relatively) normal loser hanging out and watching silly dramas, and then someone mentions FF7 and the next thing I know it's three days later and I haven't slept because I've been too busy reading 250,000 word time travel fix-it romance fics. So yeah.

So, earlier in the week I was bingeing on The Decemberists, and I mentioned to colourofsaying that Yankee Bayonet was a really perfect song for Zack/Aerith in Final Fantasy VII. She mentioned another song that worked for the game, and after some back-and-forth we came to the conclusion that The Decemberists and FF7 just went really well together. Somehow this led to me going through iTunes and trying to match up every Decemberists song to a Final Fantasy character/pairing. And...I ended up with a lot. This is way too silly to be an actual fanmix, but I thought I'd post it here as a sort of...extended music post. Or at least evidence of my obvious derangement where FF7 is concered.

Final Fantasy VII (The All Decemberists All The Time Playlist)



1. The Legionnaire's Lament - SOLDIER

It's been a year or more
Since they shipped me to this foreign shore
Fighting in a foreign war
So far away from my home

I could try to make this map on to a particular character, but really I just think of it as a song for the whole SOLDIER program. Maybe in the Wutai War, when you've got all these kids shipped out away from their homes for the first time to fight.

2. The Bagman's Gambit - The Turks


And I recall that fall
I was working for the government
And in a bathroom stall off the National Mall
How we kissed so sweetly
How could I refuse a favor or two
For a trist in the greenery
I gave you documents and microfilm, too

I love the Turks. They're supposed to be the elite scary secret agent guys who can disappear you without a trace, but they are kind of terrible at it. And at not getting way too emotionally attached to their targets. Oops.

3. Shankill Butchers - Shinra Science Department

The Shankill butchers ride tonight
You better shut your windows tight
Theyre sharpening their cleavers and their knives
And taking all their whisky by the pint

On the other hand, Hojo and the rest of the science team at Shinra are incredibly good at what they do. Which is conduct horrible, torturous experiments on unwilling human subjects. Apparently Shinra doesn't believe in the IRB.

4. Odalisque - Lucrezia

They've come to find you, Odalisque
As the light dies horribly
On a fire escape you walk
All rare and resolved to drop

You can tell Hojo loves Lucrezia. Because he killed and experimented on her boyfriend, got her pregnant, injected her unborn baby with alien goo, and turned her into a monster when she tried to kill herself over what they had done. God, everything about Sephiroth's conception and birth is viscerally horrifying. Poor Lucrezia.

5. Summersong - Vincent/Lucrezia

My girl, linen and curls
Lips parting like a flag all unfurled
She's grand the bend of her hand
Digging deep into the sweep of the sand

Despite being a Turk, I picture Vincent as someone who was really young and innocent at the beginning of his story, and Lucrezia just wanted to practice science and learn more the Ancients. They really never stood a chance.

6. Of Angels and Angles - Sephiroth/Cloud

There are angels in your angles
There's a low moon caught in your tangles
There's a ticking at the sill
There's a purr of a pigeon to break the still of day

This is probably the closest this playlist is going to get to a happy song. I imagine that, as arrogant and self-assured as he was, pre-Neibelheim Sephiroth was more than a bit baffled by jailbait!Cloud's adoration.

7. O Valencia - Jenova/Sephiroth

So wait for the stone on your window, your window
Wait by the car and we'll go, we'll go
But oh Valencia
With your blood still warm on the ground
Valencia
And I swear to the stars
I'll burn this whole city down

I really squicked myself out when I realized this one, but...it totally fits as a Jenova song? Trying to sway Sephiroth over to her side. Too bad Sephiroth couldn't figure out that he was just a tool for her.

8. Culling of the Fold - Sephiroth

Cut him up, boy
You've got to cut him up, boy.
He's a wicked disgrace,
And he said it to your face
You better cut him up boy.

This is the song that is playing in the back of Sephiroth's mind in the library in Neibelheim, while he sits there for three days and goes crazy.

9. The Soldiering Life - Zack/Cloud

But I
I never felt so much life
Than tonight
Huddled in the trenches
Gazing on the battle field
Our rifles blaze away
We blaze away

Every once in a while, I stop in the middle of reading a story about Zack being awesome and getting into wacky drunken antics with Cloud and remember that this is a guy who was betrayed by everyone he looked up to before he was tortured, hunted down, executed, and left to rot because he refused to abandon his helpless and comatose friend. Final Fantasy - it's a fun game.

10. From My Own True Love - Aerith/Zack

Four score years
Living down in this rain swept town
Sea salt tears
Swimming round as the rain comes down
Mr Postman, do you have a letter for me?

There's something wonderfully tragic about the end of Zack and Aerith's relationship - she calls him in Neibelheim and he says he loves her and he'll call her back tomorrow...and then she never hears from him again. She doesn't even know for certain that he died, he's just gone. This would also work as a song for Cloud's mom, depending on what backstory you're going with.

11. Eli the Barrow Boy - Zack/Aerith

Eli, the barrowboy, you're the old town
Sells coal and marigolds and he cries out all down the day
Below the tamarac she is crying
Corn cobs and candlewax for the buying, all down the day

In my mind, Eli is Aerith, not Zack. Zack is the dead girlfriend. Obviously.

12. Yankee Bayonet - Zack/Aerith

Look for me when the sun-bright swallow
Sings upon the birch bough high
But you are in the ground with the voles and the weevils
All a'chew upon your bones so dry

IT IS PERFECT. END OF STORY. Ha, no, seriously, it is. It has Zack's death and Aerith's grief and the horrors of war and the claustrophobia of the Midgar slums. It's amazing.

13. Rox in the Box - Barrett

Put the rocks in the box
Get the water right down to your socks
This bulkhead's built of fallen brethren bones
We all do what we can
We endure our fellow man
And we sing our songs to the headframe's creaks and moans

There's never really a good time to be a miner, but being a miner under Shinra, who won't hesitate to burn down your village and kill your family if they think you screwed up their reactor, seems more dire than usual. Oh Barrett.

14. Sons and Daughters - Barrett+Marlene

When we arrive
Sons & daughters
We'll make our homes on the water
We'll build our walls aluminum
We'll fill our lives with cinnamon now

This is a song about Barrett wanting to get Marlene out of the ruins of Corel to somewhere safe, and about wanting to get revenge on Shinra, and just generally trying to give her a world where the planet isn't dying and people aren't being killed for Shinra's profit margin. He tries his best to be a good daddy, he really does.

15. July, July - Tifa

There is a road that meets the road
That goes to my house
And how the green grows there
And we've got special boots
To beat the path to my house
And it's careful and it's careful when I'm there

I like how subtly things go wrong in this song, right from the start. It's a good mirror for Tifa, and especially Tifa's relationship to Neibelheim - that mix of nostalgic memories and false memories and horrific, mind-numbing grief and horror.

16. You'll Not Feel The Drowning - Sephiroth+Aerith

I will dress your eyelids
With dimes upon your eyes
Lay you close to water
Green your grave will rise
Go to sleep little ugly
Go to sleep you little fool
Forty-winking in the belfry
You'll not feel the drowning

Unnervingly tender, for a Sephiroth POV song about killing Aerith in the City of the Ancients.

17. Grace Cathedral Hill - Cloud/Aerith

Grace Cathedral hill
All wrapped in bones of setting sun
All dust and stone and moribund
I paid twenty-five cents to light
A little white candle

I don't really like Cloud/Aerith as a pairing - slash aside it just reads as more maternal to me - but this doesn't have to a romantic song. Mostly it's just sad, and he doesn't have to have been in love with her like that for her death to break what was left of his heart.

18. Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect - Cloud

And I am nothing of a builder
But here I dreamt I was an architect
And I built this balustrade
To keep you home, to keep you safe
From the outside world

Oh Cloud. You are more than a little messed up in the head, poor thing.

19. After the Bombs - Cloud/Tifa

And after the bombs subside
And this long, low campaign
Calls it good for the night
We meet in the streets
Will we meet in the bar's cold light?
We grip at our hands
We hold just a little tight

That night on the airship, right before the last showdown with Sephiroth at the Crater. I don't think Cloud and Tifa could ever have much of a healthy, functional relationship, or at least, not for longer than we've seen in canon so far, but this is kind of a song about that - about clinging to someone else who's been through what you have, and making due with less than love because you need them there.

20. We Both Go Down Together - Sephiroth/Cloud

Here on these cliffs of Dover
So high you can't see over
And while your head is spinning
Hold tight, it's just beginning

Sephiroth's perception of what their relationship is does not actually have that much to do with reality. I think somewhere deep down, some part of Sephiroth still thinks that this is romantic, even as he's trying to kill Cloud, that this is a way for them to be together in the way that he wants. My obvious and tremendous foeyay kink, let me show it to you.

21. The Crane Wife 3 - Sephiroth/Cloud

Each feather it fell from skin
Till threadbare while she grew thin
How were my eyes so blinded?
Each feather it fell from skin

Conversely, a Cloud POV on their relationship by the end of the game and the last fight. For all his talk about vengeance, he doesn't seem very happy to have killed Sephiroth by the end. In my mind, even then he still loves Sephiroth, but there has to come a point where he accepts that there is no fixing this anymore.

22. When the War Came - Midgar

A terrible autonomy
Is grafted onto you and me
Our trust put in the government
They told their lies are heaven sent
'Til the war came

Man, it sucks to live in Midgar. If the reactors aren't killing you and Shinra isn't dropping the plate on your heads, then WEAPON and Meteor are tearing things up. And then after the Lifestream rises everyone gets geostigma. Thanks, planet.

23. This Is Why We Fight - Team Cloud

When we die
We will die
With our arms unbound

And this is why
This is why
Why we fight
Come hell

I wanted to end the playlist on a high note. Such as it is for Final Fantasy.