…about which I feel slightly guilty, what with not finishing an actual game. But!
Two pseudonyms (Adalai Trammels, Litany Brisket); three songs (This Is Not A Game by Skunk Anansie; Rain and Snow by the Be Good Tanyas; Long Lankin by Steeleye Span).
…ditto about the guilt, but: Three songs (Paper Planes by M.I.A., Russian Roulette by Rihanna, I Am Crazy by Mekons).
Can you explain this thread for people who weren’t around for last year’s shufflecomp?
One song: “Vacant Night Sky” by Mecca Normal.
Songs and pseudonyms you submitted which were selected by authors as inspiration/names.
Maybe a little disappointed that no one chose SF Seals’ “Dock Ellis”. I might have to give that a try myself…
Two pseudonyms: Winston Ian Parrish, Taryn Quinn.
Two songs: “Real Emotional Girl” by Randy Newman, “Cyborgs Vs. Robots” by Ludo.
Four songs: Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap, Rosie by unknown, Super Mario Bros OST by Koji Kondo, and 4’33" by John Cage. (Was especially thrilled to see somebody take the bait and run with it on that last, I must say!)
Two of my songs were used: Janelle Monáe, “57821” and The Jimi Hendrix Experience, “1983…(A Merman I Should Turn To Be) / Moon, Turn the Tides…Gently Gently Away”. I am particularly glad these were both used because I added them as a result of thinking about maga’s post about the lack of diversity in the artists that were submitted last year. Which is not to say that these are affirmative-action songs that are only there to fulfill a quota: they are both awesome songs (Hendrix in particular is very dear to me) with very evocative story-world-ish lyrics, but I’m not sure they would have occurred to me if I hadn’t specifically thought “oh huh, what non-white artists do I know anyway?”
That said, I was slightly disappointed that they were both used as only one of many inspirations for the games they were in, and thus only contributed to a paragraph or two each. But, I did at least recognize and enjoy their parts in those games. So, thanks for that!
My submitted pseudonyms were all names of Lectroids taken from this list: figmentfly.com/bb/badguys3.html Alas, none of them were used, but it was mostly just a goof and laziness on my part.
Same story for me–I went for a list with more women and artists of color this year (the Mekons song is one of the ones Sally Timms sings, Sally Timms being pure awesome anyway). Also I was trying to be a bit less of a hipster this year, and in fact except for the Mekons song which was in a game that used its entire list (and wound up being pretty tangentially related to its paragraph), the two songs that got used are the biggest hits (maybe not counting the Motown ones I submitted).
Three pseudonyms were mine: Ayla Rose, Two-Bit Chip, and Wes Eas. Being that I wasn’t going to write a game, I didn’t submit any songs (although if I had, “Paper Planes” and “Rasputin” may have been among them, so I was happy to see other people send them in).
Neil
I’ve got one song (The Ballad of Barry Allen, by Jim’s Big Ego) and none of my pseudonyms. Guess I need to think up a better naming theme than characters and Stands from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure.
I got nothing in. (Except for one in maga’s aborted work.)
I also didn’t manage to finish, so I guess it’s only fair. I would have used Comrade Pro-Funk for my pseudonym had I entered.
Really?
We both submitted that song, then.
(I love that song.)
My submitted songs that got used:
“The Ballad of Barry Allen” by Jim’s Big Ego
“Tragic Kingdom” by No Doubt.
None of my pseudonyms were chosen, perhaps because half of them were obscure references to graphical video games.
My incomplete Shufflecomp game was going to be a heavily poetic Twine game titled “A Squirrel With Eyes of Candlelight and the Gap Between Two Branches”. (I have a couple screenshots and some notes about why I gave up in a post at Sibyl Moon.)
The inspirations were “All Things at Once” by Tired Pony and “Magic and Loss” by Lou Reed, and the pseudonym would have been Storyforger.
One song of mine was used: “What’cha Gonna Do” by Abigail Washburn and Bela Fleck.
A song I almost used for my own game: “Failure” by Kings of Convenience. I wrote about a quarter of a game about it.
A song I really liked but couldn’t figure out how to make a game with: “Static in the Heart” by Jukebox the Ghost.
I love that album! (And basically anything else either of them has done.)
Last year I submitted a number of female artists and was surprised to learn in maga’s analysis how male the lineup was, but that may be an idiosyncrasy of what I had available (I have a comparatively small music collection).
The other problem diversity-wise was that there are songs I have that I thought were pretty fantastic, but the lyrics aren’t in English and that didn’t seem fair to do to someone else. I don’t care–I don’t “hear” lyrics in English most of the time to begin with, so the experience isn’t that different to me–but from when I was a vidder I remember that the song/lyric-comprehension experience really made a difference for how a lot of people approached making vids.
(I suppose I could have tried to translate Bae Seul-Ki’s “Bi-ga o-deon nal,” but my Korean just isn’t up to it. Cursory search isn’t turning it up on Youtube anyway…should probably try Hangeul keyboard entry and see if that gets me hits.)
One of the songs I received (“Ya Nass” by Yasmine Hamdan) was utterly beautiful, but the lyrics are in Arabic (which I don’t speak) and I couldn’t find a translation anywhere. As a result, I was afraid that I’d write something that was somehow inappropriate or offensive when combined with the song’s actual meaning.
So I shelved this one from ShuffleComp, but I added it (and the rest of the Ya Nass album) to my Spotify. I’ve enjoyed listening to it several times since then.
That was my submission, so I’m glad someone enjoyed it. Because I am a despicable troll person, out of my eight submissions, three were not in English (I had a song in French, one in Portuguese, and one in Arabic).
Huh. Which was the Portuguese song?