[filk commentary] Bad Uncle

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Link to the filk on Ao3.

This was written for the Filk Broken Telephone as part of pod_together 2020.

The previous work in the chain was He Came Back and Stole My Crown, which was set to You Should See Me in a Crown by Billie Eilish. I thought there were three possible prompts: something about when the song was released or its genre, post-canon, or point of view of villain. I combined all of these and came up with this filk.

To find the song to parody, I went and looked up You Should See Me in a Crown, because I'd honestly never heard it before, and saw it on a 2019 hit alternative songs list on Billboard. Scrolling through the list, I looked for things that could be relevant. The first thing I wrote was a parody of Panic! at the Disco's High Hopes from the point of view of Roy Mustang after the canon of Fullmetal Alchemist. Unfortunately it didn't have post-canon-y enough vibes so I nixed that idea and kept looking. Further down on the list, I came across Bad Liar and came up with the "bad uncle" substitution for it and just ran with that.

My guess for the actual theme is post-canon, so I tried to make references to the idea that this happened after the end of the series. The line "why bring up this old case again" dates it to at least the scene where Lin Shu confronts the Emperor. The last line "you've gone now" I wanted to mean (spoilers) past the death of Lin Shu at the end of the series.

For context (and posterity, since I had to sned it to the next person in the chain), here's a basic premise of the plot of Nirvana in Fire:

Ok so the drama is called Nirvana in Fire, and the basic premise of the plot is a Count of Monte Christo-esque hidden identity costume court drama. 

The lyrics are from the point of view of the emperor.

In old-timey fake China, some of the emperor's  advisors lie to him and tell him that his eldest son (the crown prince) is plotting a rebellion with one of his trusted generals. His son is killed for his betrayal and his trusted general and his army are slaughtered, with one of the few survivors being the general's son (who is the nephew referred to in the song). The nephew gets (magic handwave) a new face. Many years later, he shows up at the palace to avenge the ex-crown prince and restore honour to his family. He does this by playing court politics and elevating his childhood best friend and son of the king to the position of crown prince and forcing the emperor to review the case against his family. 

After all this is revealed to the emperor, he and the nephew have a chat in a room and basically the emperor is like, how could I know that they'd lie to me, what do you want from me, do you remember when we played together when you were a kid rah rah rah. The nephew is all like, oh but then you betrayed me and tried to have me killed, and is ordered by the emperor to leave and never return to the palace. 

This filk takes place (roughly) after that, which is essentially the final scene (there are a few other scenes that tie up other loose plot points)