magicaddict | Entries tagged with music: character themes

...and while he was by no means the most popular of my characters, the most optimised or the most playable, there was one characteristic that defined Vaexarius Firestorm more than any other.

He was one wild ride. And when he died, there was only one way he was going.

Watch on YouTube

ACDC's Highway to Hell epitomised everything about Vaexarius. It was loud, proud, bombastic, utterly in your face and entirely proud of it. Playing him was a completely different experience to anything I had experienced before or since (though Mindstalker got close on a couple of occasions). I got to completely and totally let go of all semblance of normalcy, and play something so utterly different. It was exhilarating, mind-blowing, and lasted far too short a time. He only ever played nine games.

His theme song is the same - uncaring, unbridled shouting the devil. Bon Scott never had a particularly melodic voice, and this was no different - screamed and almost atonal, it's the sentiment behind the words far more than the melody here, backed up by a heavy duty, punching guitar and drum accompaniment. ACDC have been doing this for years - you know exactly what you're getting when you listen to them - and in this one, you got the words of someone who genuinely gave absolutely zero fucks: I am evil, I am badass, I know where I'm going, and I sure hope they're ready for me.

It's not me in any way shape or form, and that was what made the character such a blast to play - I don't think I could ever go this crazy again.

Shine on, you crazy diamond.

...was always going to be the title of the album released containing all of my character themes, on the day I was crowned the greatest live roleplayer in the history of the world. Possibly not an appropriate (or accurate) title, all things considered, but albums have been named a lot worse.

I have been trawling through Youtube trying to find a good live video of the my first of these, but the only really good quality one I can find is from the 3 Bats Tour, in which Meat was, shall we say, a little tired.

So, in lieu of that, I give you this:

Watch on YouTube

This is the 1998 remix of Life Is A Lemon (And I Want My Money Back), originally released on Bat Out Of Hell II in 1993. Written by Jim Steinman, and scorched up by Meatloaf. Is is the theme song of my first ever LARP character - Daenaram Fearsbane.

Daenaram was many things (a bigot, an arsehole, a terrible scout and one single life point away from permdeathing on his campaign 36hr), but mainly, he was one angry bastard, and this song summed it up beautifully. There was nothing good, nothing acceptable in his life whatsoever - not even the love of his life managed to change his outlook. Everything is defective. Nothing isn't broken. Grr. Arg. Raeg.

Jim Steinman writes angry teen wangst like pretty much no-one else (Bat Out Of Hell was about motorcycle crashes, Paradise By The Dashboard Light was about sex in a car, Rebel Without A Clue was..well, eponymous...I could go on. Steinman has a back catalogue that reads like a teenage boy's secret diary), but this was right out of his top drawer, and the remix was actually better than the original. It's a little harder than the 1993 version, the levels have been changed to bring the lead and backing vocals higher up in the mix and clearer as a result, and there is a cut and drop from about 4:42 in the video that actually made me Hell Yeah out loud when I first heard it. It's very, very good.

The sheer amount of rage against...well, pretty much everything, in this song rang very true when I was thinking him up. I wanted to play a character who fought back, and didn't really care what he was fighting back against. It backfired horribly, he was none of the badass that I wanted him to be, he died long before most of the society met him, and given how much of a colossal penis he was, that's probably for the best. However, he was my first character, and as such, he has a special place in my memories.