We're still a long way from City being anywhere near to published, or even publicised at this point, but it is the point of considering what that publicity will look like. I mean heck, the darn thing needs a title first, but my brain's primary fixation recently has been on the playlist.
I always have a writing playlist for each story which is around four hours long. It typically starts as a few full albums which have very different vibes from each other but cover everything I feel for the story at the time, which very quickly is trimmed of the songs I don't enjoy as much, and then has more specific songs added, one or two at a time, over the entire time I'm writing for it. The end result is something that can fade into the background while I write but which keeps me in the headspace of the story or characters.
This is different to the official playlist for the novel, which are the ones I post on here, such as in the Sylvestus playlist deep dive I wrote; those are curated to around 1.5 hours from the larger ones, and tend to be more specific to the story and characters.
I'm pretty sure this isn't the first time I've mentioned - it's challenging going from one PoV character to five. It changes the pace, but it also changes the tone of the story, how they see the world. This is reflected for sure in the playlist; I wouldn't say that it has the most diverse genres of any of my writing playlists, but there are definitely some songs which have a vibe or theme very specific to one character, or several, or all except one, or were intended for one but now fit another, while others remain more neutral to the setting or the tone of the story itself. I've already decided that it's going to be one "official" playlist for the novel, rather than one per character - easier to promote, and also leaves some mystery and room for interpretation. And, although it's still a long way away, I'm already planning every time I listen which ones are going to make it.
Oh, there'll be edit upon edit and late additions and sudden cuts, but it's an exciting process, to highlight what absolutely must be used to represent this character, or recognise how key a tone-setter a particular artist was early on.
There's a need to justify, to exhibit, when it's the official playlist. I never claim to have good taste in music (I now disclaim to anyone I'm giving a lift to that as the driver, I get to choose the music, and I make no apology for what crap may come) but the official playlist is saying: this is the headspace I was in when writing. This is what I want you to feel when you read. This is what this story is, who these characters are. In many ways, it's more insightful than a blurb.
In contrast, I was listening to my Sylv writing playlist the other day. It largely consists of Halsey, Sia, and Fall Out Boy - in contrast, the official playlist has one Halsey song, no Sia, and no FOB. Almost every Florence + the Machine and Rag'n'Bone Man and Cage the Elephant song on the writing playlist made it onto the official one, because they were specific and key to the writing - but it was Halsey, Sia, and FOB which made the majority of my background listening while writing, which set the tone of the early days.
Right now, the City writing playlist is six and a half hours long, made about 50% up of Lorde, Melanie Martinez, Halsey again, and Twenty-One Pilots. How many of those will make it onto the official playlist? I imagine at least one or two of each, but I doubt much more.
There was, to be fair, a conundrum I faced when finalising the official Sylvestus playlist around the publication of Vol II.
Sia, as I mentioned, makes up a large chunk of the writing playlist, and her music was very important from the start for the headspace of Sylv. She writes a lot about sexual trauma and family and lashing out from it, and those are very Sylv things. There isn't exactly the same market right now of male songs about those subjects. And right before the publication of Sylv Vol II, she came out saying some pretty shitty things about autistic people.
Problematic and cancelled and performative activism are so ugh right now, and have been for a few years, which is why I didn't even touch it at the time. I kept Sia songs on the playlist until the last possible minute, because they were so important for Sylv to me, and then I took them off shortly before the Deep Dive post because at the time I worked in support for children with learning disabilities, and I have many autistic friends, and it felt like directly shitting on them to be like "lol nah f*ck u tho, still gonna promote her music cos i like it xox". Similarly, if someone shamelessly pulls out Harry Potter stuff and shoves it at me, I immediately am on edge and do not trust that person. I, a trans person of Jewish heritage, do not personally believe that you should burn all of your old HP merch and never re-watch the movies or read the books if you enjoy them, but I also do not trust someone who proudly declares that they support and adore an antisemitic, anti-abortion, racist transphobe and her works.
But as soon as I decide, Okay, someone's music can be excluded from this playlist because of a shitty thing they said - well, now we're in a whole new territory.
Twenty-One Pilots haven't (to my knowledge) ever been explicitly homophobic, but they refuse to disavow the homophobia of the church they were raised in. Melanie Martinez and Halsey have both been accused of sexual assault. Kesha wrote a transphobic song many years ago. Brendan Urie of Panic! at the Disco is a bit of a dick. Frank Iero from My Chemical Romance frequently said fetishistic things about Asian women on their 2007 tour. P!nk did a collab with Eminem even though he's been accused of domestic violence. And all of those still feature on my writing or official playlists and I still enjoy listening to all of their music. And I'm not exactly out here running background checks of every single artist I've ever listened to!
So, where's the line? Maybe it's short-sighted, but for me it's in direct hurt.
Me listening to Sia, as a few tracks on a five hour playlist, by myself while driving or writing, makes her about 0.000001p per stream and provides a negative impact for precisely no-one. Me putting her on a playlist a few weeks after she says horrible things about autistic people and then shoving it in the faces of my autistic friends who have expressed hurt over what she said? That's hurtful. It's not me hiding things or giving into peer pressure; it's me saying, I care about you, so I am not going to subject you to this right now.
A friend watching a DVD of their favourite Harry Potter movie to comfort themselves after a bad day? That's... not doing any harm. People happily and without critical thought paying obscene amounts of money for a new Harry Potter game which explicitly promotes antisemitism and provides a platform for someone who openly uses that money to campaign against trans rights in the UK? That is directly harming me.
I don't know where the line is. I doubt there is one. It's a river, shifting back and forth with the seasons, changing over time and sometimes making a weird little Oxbow lake.
Everything is problematic. Everything has an effect on the world. Both are true. Make your impact something good, eh?
