Susan - A Playlist

Art by Jorie (Kitty on Lakeshore)

As we continue to celebrate Many Realms' first birthday, Jillian brings you the third playlist for her own character - Susan the Hunter. (Spoilers for episodes 4-12)
Listen: https://spoti.fi/30F2BpX

Roman: https://www.patreon.com/posts/36789709
Kitty: https://www.patreon.com/posts/37207787

A playlist about risk, resistance, and redemption(?). It was the first playlist I made out of the four before I even conceptualized this project. I made this playlist for myself to help get into character or imagine what a narrative arc for Susan might look like.  I gravitated towards songs with a dark edge because Urban Shadows characters gain power through corruption. So while Susan isn’t the baddest bitch in Lakeshore yet, it doesn’t mean she won’t get there with a little help from the tempting darkness. But is there also hope for redemption after hurting those she cares about? Who knows!

1. Risk - Metric

There's another way to leave the Garden of Eden

And I'm inclined to try

Find some daylight

Open my eyes

High energy start (which you know I love!)! Susan is a risk taker (see episode 4 where she jumped off the balcony of the Hardware) and is always ready to bounce back from every blow. This song for me is about everything spinning out of control but still clinging on to the idea of finding light, the happy ending, as if it were a real possibility. After all the scrapes and wounds and the suffocating web of Lakeshore, is there a happy ending? Maybe surviving is enough for the risk to be worth it?

2. Live Through the Night - Dear Rouge

Now I wanna

Live through the night

Come out alive

Hold your fire

Why don't you let me go?

Oh look, the perfect segue! Susan’s got that fighting spirit and while there are still demons roaming around Lakeshore, there is still life to live. She won’t go down without bringing every evil with her.

3. Demons - Hayley Kiyoko

Please forgive me, I've got demons in my head

I feel like I can't breathe

I feel like I can't sleep

While this song is about metaphorical demons like depression, I love the literal twist for the Hunter. She’s got demons on the brain all the time. And she has the metaphorical kind too, which we got a glimpse of in Episode 12 as she told Roman why she hates demons so much. Just know that she has been chasing demons a long time.

4. You Don’t Get Me High Anymore - Phantogram

Walk with me to the end

Stare with me into the abyss

Do you feel like letting go?

I wonder how far down it is

How far down does this rabbit hole of demons and politics go? Nothing is fun anymore! Not even sunshine when it almost kills your friend (Episode 9). I picked this song not just because Susan/Simon is entangled in the dealings of drugs but because I had a feeling there would come a point in the story where nothing would take the edge off anymore. The plot just gets thicker.

5. Half a Week Before the Winter - Vanessa Carlton

I carry on, I carry all the weight of empty promise

As I stand swallowed by the light

Flickering above the highway

I hold my head and know the streets are mine tonight

Back months and months ago, I was reading up on Vanessa Carlton’s sexuality after seeing tweets about it and then I fell into her work which I was largely unfamiliar with. I found this song about unicorns and vampires and put a pin in it for later. Then we started playing Urban Shadows and it seemed a good fit. This song is about desire, violence, perseverance. Camera pans up on Susan in an empty street, breathing heavy, bloody, victorious?

6. Church - Aly & AJ

Too many nights and there's no end

I'm hellbent, the reckless one

Too many nights I justified

All my casualties of love

Aly & AJ certainly intend this in a sexy way, but I think if we come back to the top of the playlist where we were talking risk, there’s a fine line between risk and recklessness. As Susan is pushed by new discoveries, I think the line dissolves into recklessness (which we saw in episode 9 where Simon takes corruption for the first time). The other side of this is seeking forgiveness for the hurt she’s caused. The Hunter’s corruption move is “take corruption every time you injure a mortal in pursuit of the supernatural”. People are going to get hurt!

7. Over Yet - Hayley Williams

If there's resistance

It makes you stronger

Make it your friend

I got a Hayley Williams song on three out of four playlists because the album is just so good (hope you like it too!). So much of it is about personal growth and healing, but for Susan I’ve twisted the meaning of this song. I set Susan up at the beginning to be obsessive over demons, preoccupied to a fault. As we learn more and more about who the demons are and the shape their power takes, I look forward to using that resistance to fuel her obsession. 

8. Cruel World - Phantogram

I used to see beauty in people

But now I see muscle and bones

You know I never wanted to hurt you

But I'm sorry, my friend, this is the end

A dark note to end on. A hypothetical path, prophetic maybe, as per the Hunter class. I don’t think it’ll come to this extreme, but I like keeping that idea in focus when I’m playing so I make bolder, riskier choices. In episode 10, I bamboozle Ben and then threaten him with violence and Jesse said he didn’t think I would do it! But I did! As the Hunter grows more powerful they kind of turn into Edgelord Batman “I work alone” etc etc. Not really what I’m going for; however, I’ve planted some seeds that Susan finds her new friends “useful” over forming meaningful connections with them as people because ultimately she needs them and their gifts to ever accomplish her goals. There is still time and space for real friendship, love, redemption and all those good things, but Urban Shadows always asks, “At what cost?”