Author: Eneasz

And we’re done!

One day before this was set to go live I decided that I wasn’t happy with the backing music I’d used. So there’s a version of this chapter on my hard drive that uses Mars by Gustav Holst for the Superman scene, and Etude No. 2 + For The Damaged Coda for the Lois scene. Mars was too intense throughout, rather than building, and didn’t end quite right. And For The Damaged Coda, while beautiful and exactly the mournful I wanted, was still waaaaaaay too recently popularized by Rick & Morty, making the whole scene just feel derivative due to the music choice. So I spent most of Tuesday freaking out and trying to fix that. Thankfully I was recently given a spotify playlist that had Nunc Dimittis on it (thanks Brienne!) and an ex-Catholic friend that pointed me not just at Requiem, but which parts in particular would work well (thanks Vivian!). So – whew! What a day!

The Full Book (at 7.5 hours) is also available at the main Metropolitan Man Table of Contents page.

I feel so unutterably torn about how Metropolitan Man ended. I was originally going to talk about that here, but I recently recorded the interview with Alexander Wales that’ll be airing in two weeks, and we talked about in that, so I’ll just let that wait until that comes out. :) Thank you again to everyone who helped contribute to this. Super-Extra Thanks to Alexander Wales for writing such an amazing story, and letting me podcast it (psst, you can read his other stuff here!). And thank you all for listening!

SFX: 1940’s Office; Forest Night; drawer; skid; wrecking ball

Music:
Intro/Outro – Handlebars, by Flobots
Luthor Manor w Superman – in order: Rex tremendae; (tiny bit of Confutatis); Agnus Dei; Dies Irae, all from Mozart’s Requiem
Luthor Manor w Lois – Nunc Dimittis, by Arvo Pärt

In the text version of Metropolitan Man one doesn’t realize that it’s Lex that has written the letter to Lois, until after it’s read. I thought the idea of recording that letter in Lex’s voice would be hilarious, but it didn’t occur to me until after I finished that I was giving away that part of the game. I considered redoing it in a neutral narration voice, but that would be weird, because I always have someone else do any voice that isn’t narrator/Lex. And it would feel a little bit like lying to use the neutral voice. Plus the lost opportunity for audio hi-jinks! Since it’s not really a spoiler, as it’s revealed to be Lex in the very next paragraph, well… I decided to keep what I first put down. :)

Turns out that Faust is a couple minutes too short for this part, and I really wanted to use Faust. That is when I discovered that dirty, shameful feeling when you end up vamping Wagner. I have vamped songs lots of times to make them fit the space needed for background, and it never felt wrong. I know that there isn’t anything intrinsically more respectable about classical music. In fact I find certain modern music to be far more moving, so if the metric was something like “has great emotional weight” or “is considered by Eneasz to be a masterpiece” then I should feel much worse about cutting up modern songs. So obviously that’s not the metric. As far as I can tell, the metric may very well be “my parents and teachers would give me very stern looks, and shake their heads sadly, if they found out.” But dammit, I did it anyway, because I have the power and power corrupts.

SFX: 1940’s Office

Music:
Intro/Outro – Handlebars, by Flobots
Luthor Manor – Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Wagner’s Faust
Jewelry Store – You Are My Lucky Star, by Don Bestor