Discover Top Posts Tagged with #yearz fic

Title: 50.9193° N, 0.9653° E

Rating: Mature for themes

Pairing: Murdoc/2D

Summary:

Dungeness isn't the end of the world but it might as well be. It looks like the husk of a dead planet. It's the most earthly place you've ever seen. * A more realistic take on Plastic Beach. Please read the tags and message me if you want a more detailed content warning. Unbetaed.

#yearz fic #2doc #2doc fic #Studoc #Studoc fic

Sorry, the brain rot got me ladz

Title: Ascent, Descent Rating: teen at most Pairing: 2D/Murdoc Summary:

Stuart doesn't know which is worse, the climb or the descent, except he does and it's the descent.

A quick ficlet inspired by the Mystery Show. Unbetaed.

#2doc #yearz fic #Hope someone out there likes mountains #2doc fic

What can I say, The Mountain's all about death, so here's some thoughts I had about that. Please read the tags. Title: Dayz Rating: Teen Pairing: 2D/Murdoc Summary: A ficlet about music, death and what comes after. Unbetaed.

#2doc fic #stupot fic #yearz fic

Hey @dyk3cr4ft hope you don't mind me answering your question re: Plastic Beach here, it's just a bit waffly. TW this is all laced with mental illness and toxic codependency type stuff.

Given how I approached Yearz generally it's probably obvious that my least favourite parts of Rillaz lore for fic purposes are the really fantastical bits (which I get is p ridiculous). I'm a big fan of the humour and character dynamics but I'm just not interested in zombies and horsemen of the apocalypse and sea bacon etc outside of canon. It's also why I'm struggling with how to approach Phase 6 with all the portal stuff (though I could maybe come up with a kind of nostalgia trip approach there) and Phase 7 with the cult (no idea, I just don't care about cults).

I approached the rest of the fic fairly realistically so I sort of wish I'd gone with my first idea for Plastic Beach which was way more realistic but I thought it was too much of an ask of people because it strays so far from the source material.

Basically, I like (wrong word maybe) the idea that Murdoc just has a total breakdown and loses touch with reality due to an undiagnosed mental illness. Plastic Beach wouldn't have been a place so much as a state of mind, some run down studio he bought in the arse end of England rather than at the literal end of the world.

Rather than kidnap 2D I was more interested in the idea that Murdoc maybe made 2D feel like he had no choice but to stay with him because otherwise Murdoc would kill himself. I also thought maybe on some level, Murdoc was at least partly aware that that's what he was doing and was using the excuse of writing an album to keep 2D from leaving for good. The idea of them trying to work together when they're all the other one has and they're probably both in the worst mental health of their lives was just an interesting idea to me. It felt very heavy though and a bit of a tone shift from the rest of the fic so I went with a more classic Plastic Beach set up instead.

I hope that makes some sense and thanks for asking :)

#Yearz fic #There was a bit in the phase 2 chapters that was meant as a sort of forewarning about this original phase 3 idea #Where Murdoc starts spiralling and demands Stu never leave #That was meant to come back but worse in this version of PB basically #It'd help if I wrote your u/n correctly lmao sorry about that

(part 1 of 3) Hello! So, I've read Yearz about five times since last February. It's one of the best novel-length works I've ever read, and certainly one of the best fanfics; your grasp on the characters' personalities and trajectories is just phenomenal. But beyond all that, I'm intensely curious about what the music sounds like in your version of the story! (Forgive me if you've already addressed this somewhere and I just haven't seen it.)...

(part 2 of 3) Plastic Beach, for instance—obviously, within the fic, none of those music videos were ever made. Is there any element of collaboration with other artists at all? Maybe Murdoc could have incorporated a few existing samples (in Rhinestone Eyes, for instance), but between escaping the sinking island and releasing the album, there wouldn't have been time, let alone incentive, to record anything like White Flag that references the setting literally. So what fills those gaps?...

(part 3 of 3) I'm just as curious about the Yearz version of Humanz: whether it's as consistently political despite its in-universe hodgepodge composition; whether any of the contributors to the One-Stop Shop were artists featured on the real album; whether Saturnz Barz ever acquired its rap verses... I don't mean to demand another 100k of explanation from you, but I'd love to hear whatever you've thought out already!

Hi there! Thank you for such kind messages.

This is a really interesting question. I'm going to split this answer roughly into music and lyrics.

Music

Honestly, my approach to Yearz!Gorillaz's music is largely due to my discomfort with including real people in fanfiction. It personally feels weird to me, to be reading about the characters and then have Snoop Dogg or Jamie or someone turn up. I get that the characters do interact with the collaborators in this way in interviews but it feels strange to include them in semi serious fanfiction.

That being said, I think there's also the issue for me that Yearz!Murdoc isn't Damon Albarn. Unlike Damon, Murdoc hasn't previously been in a world famous band and had the opportunity to build up a rolodex of famous musical contacts. No matter how notorious or zeitgeisty Murdoc's music becomes over a relatively short period of time, it didn't feel plausible to me that he'd have as many famous friends (especially given his personality…).

I'm sadly not musical enough to really imagine the music sounding different in Yearz but I definitely imagine Murdoc's approach to writing music to be polar opposite. I imagine it to be a more isolated affair, especially on PB. Essentially I imagine Murdoc to be a musical magpie. He has an encyclopedic, obsessive, Special Interest level of music knowledge and uses tons of samples (implausible as that is in reality).

As you say, I see Humanz a little differently. By that point in their career, it's more likely that a band of their fame and reputation would be able to attract famous collaborators. I definitely imagine that Stu's website attracted high calibre submissions because people wanted to be involved in what seemed destined to become a Gorillaz's album.

The way Yearz!Gorillaz writes music is definitely different - and worse - than how Actual Gorillaz writes music. It's a more insular writing process in Yearz. That's largely because Murdoc uses music writing as a way of understanding and communicating with the world and with Stu like those are different. It's obsessive, oftentimes unhealthy and verges on being a barrier to him just sharing his thoughts and emotions in, you know, an actual conversation with Stu. Actual Gorillaz, on the other hand, is clearly more collaborative in nature.

I think Yearz!Gorillaz and Actual Gorillaz's writing styles converge more in the final chapters. Murdoc and Stu's conversation about what Gorillaz is and what it should be is obviously just me, in a thinly veiled way, considering that question. Personally I think, as time goes by, Gorillaz feels less like a band and more like a project, with Damo acting as a whacky producer or compere of sorts. The creation of Song Machine seems to confirm this: it's less of a traditional approach to being in a band (album, tour, album, tour) and more of a creative, collaborative mish mash.

Lyrics

Much like with the music itself, I can't honestly say I imagine different lyrics to those that are actually in the songs because I'm not creative enough for that. I guess I just try and focus things through a prism of telling a semi-serious story. So, lyrics about Plastic Beach being a great, war free place, I would explain in a slopey shouldered way by saying Murdoc had a very tenuous relationship with reality at that point in time.

The political lyrics depends on their nature for me: if they're about racism in America, I definitely chalk that up to Murdoc using collaborators' input. My own take on his political bent, as influenced by his canonically saying he voted for the Greens, is kind of similar to my own: working class Midlander, no nonsense, sceptical, "anyone except these bastards" mentality. I think Yearz!Murdoc is more inclined to write cryptic, emotionally constipated but somehow also oddly sincere and honest lyrics as opposed to political stuff. I imagine Yearz!Murdoc writing We've Got The Power on 2016 election night but I don't know that he'd comment about the politics of it beyond saying Trump is a [insert expletive of choice].

Thanks again for such an interesting question and hope this explains!

#I'm fevery rn so hopefully this makes some sense #Yearz fic

In case anyone wondered what the daily Margate walk "Martin" and "Stewart" went on looks like, this is a typical view. Eerie, concrete, endless sky and sea. If there's a vaguely Plastic Beach vibe, be assured that was intentional.

#Yearz fic #Yearz locations

And this is the pub where Martin explains why he can't eat sweet foods (ie the dinner lady incident). It is an absurdly fancy pub to say it's a Spoons.