when fanfiction is life but not an instruction manual

Things that are way too unsettlingly true:

Entirely Covered In Your Invisible Name by wordstrings, Sherlock, Sherlock/John, which yes, this is a rec, but for the record, I just twitched through the second part on the second re-read having a moment of profound connection with an earworm of a song.

My worst one in memory--God, so strangely appropriate--was the chorus of Fallout Boy's "Sugar, We're Going Down"; just the chorus and two lyrics in the middle of the second part. Four hours. It did not fucking end. Hour one, I was interpreting it saying for me to kill my computer with my stapler, which is not exactly unreasonable all things considered; by hour four I had to sing the fucking thing straight through because listening to it wasn't enough to get rid of it and I no longer actually cared about dignity or, to be honest, the sanctity of human life.

I think that worked, if I remember correctly, but while reading the fic, all I could think was there is a pharmacy two blocks away, will this work? and being really hopeful because it's best to be prepared for these things; not like it can't happen again. As it turns out, no, shooting up liquid oxy, anti-psychotics, and LSD will not help, even a little, and sure, you could say, fanfic is not a manual on how to deal with impending psychosis via Fall Out boy, and ooh, how easy it must be for you when you don't carry the memory of I'll be your number one with a bullet; a loaded god complex, cock it and pull it until you wondered if that wasn't a metaphor but instructions from space or perhaps fruit juice boxes.

The really bemusing part is that I have no idea how to shoot up without stabbing the needle through my arm; when I get my blood drawn, it's a multistick production and sometimes requires a second person when the first goes to have a rage blackout in the bathroom (last checkup before surgery; really reassuring). I'm not saying that would have stopped me (I would have just held a pharmacy hostage in the name of Fall Out Boy after walking there in four inch heels--the apocalypse wouldn't have stopped me) but now I'm thinking, I should learn? Just in case.

...oh please, like you wouldn't. Four hours. Six hours, we'd have a new religion sweeping the nation right now with me trying to find a technical virgin for a workable messiah, or Wal-Mart for a very realistic looking facsimile thereof. Read the lyrics. It's in there.

Comments

[minim_calibre]

LSD does not mix well with song lyrics. I could have told Sherlock that.

They get too vivid.

(There are few things worse than an earworm while high.)

(I have had earworms that have lasted for days. Nothing would kill them. I wanted to cry and take a fork to my brain. Four days with the chorus of "Could've Been Me" by Billy Ray Cyrus running on an endless loop. Right in the middle of the worst of my anxiety/panic attack issues. FUN TIMES.)

[seperis]

...I want to hug you and like, mail huge blankets to you. I cannot deal with my brain doing that for pretty much longer than thirty minutes. The only thing that's worse is obsessive thought circles, but I use music to break those cycles when possible or get something to make me sleep hard when I can't.

*shudders* Combining that with a panic attack sounds like my personal hell. Ow.

[synecdochic]

For the past week, I have had about ten bars of the Lauridsen O Magnum Mysterium wedged so firmly in my head that it is actually playing even when I am actively listening to other music.

...at least my earworms are fairly highbrow?

[seperis]

Oh god, your earworms are classy. Mine wear questionable hoodies and pictures of their cock made the blogosphere. That's just insult to injury.

*sulks*

[out_there]

I just twitched through the second part on the second re-read having a moment of profound connection with an earworm of a song.

Hee. I'd read that as halfway through the first part, and then assumed missed the lyric reference. Then I got halfway through the second, and the song jumped into my mind as soon as I read the line.

Luckily, I'm not like that with earworms. I will get songs stuck in my head but I tend to sing a lot under my breath and listen to a lot of songs, so it very rarely gets stuck on one interminable loop. More often, it just floats to the surface every ten or twenty minutes, and I start humming a few lines and then get distracted by something else.

[nagasvoice]

Between the story and the comments here, it makes me wonder if that Sherlock gets into terrifically damaging OCD loops (as with the earworms on acid) and the effort of working on cases, especially brilliant breakthroughs, just break him free of some particularly tormenting sequence or other. That might be a little more of the Sherlock as a nutcase, and it's certainly not something I would think of from the book canon. (Fascinating, that it's an impression coming from a fair number of tv canon wfic writers.) I don't get the sense of narrowing down to a needle-like focus in the books, I have the impression there of more of an expansive seeing-all-details-at-once type of mind.

[green_grrl]

My all-time cure for earworms (and, oh god, would somebody please do cool covers of all Billy Joel songs so at least when they get stuck in my head they're not fucking Billy Joel!!!) is to start singing in my head Tom Jones' If I Only Knew—because I don't care if that gets stuck in my head. Though oddly enough, it actually doesn't; I get some happy Tom Jones action going on for a while, and then it all fades away.

[thepouncer.livejournal.com]

My favorite is listening to other songs. The ones I find really catchy, and love.

But LSD is always an option!

[seperis.livejournal.com]

That's worked before, but I usually have to change genres hard--like heavy metal replacing pop, and not know the song well so I have to concentrate on the lyrics.

I'm not altogether dismissing a psychotropic cocktail quite yet as a possibility either.

[andnightsgrow.livejournal.com]

you haven't heard a fall out boy earworm until you've seen the lyric misinterpretation videos. three years later, and i still sing ALSO EVIL ALSO INTO CAAAAAATS at least twice a week ;____;

[seperis.livejournal.com]

...there has got to be a way to block that from myself at youtube. I don't want ot start a new religion. I don't even want to like, get out of bed.

[vickita.livejournal.com]

I have music playing in my head 24/7/365. It's there when I wake up in the morning, and it's there when I go to sleep at night. (Appropriately, right now the song is Fullbright's "I Only Pray at Night.")

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I have a soundtrack, but mostly I can turn it off when I need to, and it's like, running in variety by whatever gets my attention.

..I cannot imagine with it day in and day out. God.

[vickita.livejournal.com]

*g* Occupational hazard. It fades into the background when I'm concentrating on, say, coding, but I can still feel it right there on the edge of my awareness.

One of my musicians swears that you can get any song out of your head by singing any song from the musical, "Oklahoma!" all the way through, but then you've got "Oh What a Beautiful Morning" stuck in your head, and I'm not sure that's any better.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

You know, it just occurred to me I can't think of any musical that gets even a mild earworm for me. Maybe it's the combination visual stimulus.

Yes, now I want to theorize on this. I have no idea how this happened.

[ladysorka]

My general technique to get a song out of my head is to learn all of the words to it. Of course, then I'm wasting valuable brain space with all the words to, I don't know, Poker Face, but at least the damn thing isn't on a constant loop in my head anymore.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I have two kinds of lyric memorization, the conscious and whatever the hell stores them in my brain that pops out only when the song is on and I'm not thinking too hard about it.

That area at this point shouldn't still fit in my skull.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

When I get an earworm, it sticks around for about a week; generally I have to acquire the song and listen to it on loop until it becomes background noise.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Okay, everyone here is making me vaguely question my mental stability.

I'm totally taking the pharmacy in fandom's name now. AND I WILL LIST YOU ALL BY NAME. Well, LJ name. And I still don't know how to shoot up.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

I would be more inclined to question the mental stability of the rest of us, actually. (No, really, it's everyone else that's crazy!)

I think I'm honored. Yay!

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

Also, I do have an earworm cure that works for most earworms, as long as I apply it quickly enough: They Might Be Giants - Whistling in the Dark (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyhGtKAkNTo)*. Why does this work? Hell if I know! It's the powerful ones that get past the cure that last for days.

*This song is repetitive and strange. You have been warned.

[droolfangrrl.livejournal.com]

Holy Bleep. thanks ever so for the rec.

[mremre.livejournal.com]

I'm almost ashamed to reveal this, but when I get an earworm (we called it Last Song Syndrome or LSS =) I just have to mentally sing a Spice Girls song. I think it somehow takes over the loop and then fades away. I blame my sophomore year 1 semester Thursday carpool mate because that album was on loop EVERY DAY.

Yay for solution that works for me! Not so sure about 'Two Become One' saving my sanity though...

[ariadne83]

I do like Fallout Boy but dear god, the lyrics to that song X-(

*resists the overwhelming urge to quote them back at you and set off another earworm*

Generally I find that an earworm sticks around longer if I only remember part of the lyrics. It's almost like my brain is repeating the few lines I know in a futile attempt to remember what the rest of the words are. And yeah, either singing the song all the way through or listening to it all the way through and finally learning the rest of the lyrics are the only ways to get rid of earworms of that ilk.

thanks for the earworm

[mustangsally78.livejournal.com]