#its what sufjan would have wanted

[lorephobic]

idk how to even like. put this pain into words and i would normally vent about this shit on twitter, but the person its about follows me on there so like. anybody have skills for coping with the crushing realization that the person u love most in this world and have built ur life around sees ur current situation together as a temporary hurdle that's preventing them from their truest and happiest self which. is separate from u entirely? anyone know how to deal with this?

[goldenfigtree]

Lipstick Smudges

Part 1 of 3

Summary: Leon attends your engagement party to support you despite his repressed feelings for you.

Pairing: Leon Kennedy x FemReader

Warning: fluff

A/N: Tried something a little different from my usual writing but I hope y’all enjoy lemme know what y’all think :)

Part two is right here: Part Two

The car radio made up for the silence in Leon’s jeep as his knuckles tightened around the steering wheel.

He couldn’t believe he was doing this. But then again, how could he not? You practically begged him to come, he was your closest friend after all.

Friend.

He hated when she used the word, yet couldn’t really blame her. It was technically his fault for not toughening up and confessing. Leon’s communication skills strike again and now here he was, driving to your engagement party in his best suit, his hair slicked back. He remembered you saying that you liked how it looked on him once. Your voice softly echoes in his brain as he recalls this memory,

“I like your hair like that, really brings out your eyes”

Your smile inks into his memory. What he would do to make you smile like that again. Like he was the only one in the world.

Somehow, these thoughts thread together like a spiderweb, at its center the sentence:

Maybe, just maybe there’s still hope.

It was impossible to forget that little twinkle in your eye when he walked into the room, the smile that outdid all the sunrises he witnessed in his lifetime, the laugh that made his heart flutter with every ripple of tone.

He tightens his grip on the steering wheel, knuckles white. Shaking his head, his pupils retreat to a smaller size. He knew he couldn’t do that to you. It would be unfair, selfish. But God, he wanted you all for himself. It’s barely the car ride there and he’s already wanting this engagement party to end.

Once he parked his car, he made his way to the ivy covered villa with windows projecting a yellow glow. He could already hear the cheerful congratulations and cheers to the happy couple, his stomach churned at the sound of them. He was only a second away from entering when a familiar face swung the door open and turned to him in a bit of surprise, car keys in hand,

“Hey stranger, you’re a bit late” it was Claire, red gown and all.

“And you’re leaving early” Leon acknowledges, eyes fixated on the car keys. He had to stop himself from asking if he could go with her. Come up with an excuse—that he got sick. He knew he was about to be sick soon, so it wouldn’t really be a lie, just a preparation. Claire blinked at him curiously and tilted her head down to see where he was looking,

“Oh! I’m just getting my present from my car” Claire assures nodding her head towards the car, her ponytail swinging from side to side from the motion, “I’m surprised you’re here”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” He asks defensively,

“Well, everyone knows you’ve had a thing for her since I don’t know how long” Claire responds with a shrug,

“That… was a long time ago” Leon mutters, his cheeks warm and his eyes fixated on the door, preparing himself to find what’s behind it. Placing a hand on his shoulder, Claire meets his eyes and gives him a reassuring grin,

“Hey, I’m sure she’ll be glad to see you. Ya know, I have to say, you’re a good guy for doing this despite.. ya know”

He certainly didn’t feel like that now, remembering the shimmering string of hope he dwelled on in the car ride. Not making eye contact with Claire, he merely nods his head and wraps his fingers around the golden doorknob,

“Right, see you in there”

Swinging the door open, voices swell the room and ring in his ears. The beautiful villa lit with large lit crystal chandeliers and the large amounts of people, made the whole place stuffy. Grimacing to himself, he subconsciously tried to find any trace of you as he pushed past the elegantly dressed guests.

Then there it was, your laughter. So loud, so unique, so unapologetically you. Turning his head he forgets how to breathe from the mere sight of you enjoying the conversation you were having. Champagne glass in your hand, the giant rock on your ring finger blinding anyone nearby and an elegant gown framing your figure, you don’t even realize Leon is halted there, mouth agape. Laughing and conversing cheerfully, you fan away the compliments and thank those who congratulate you while passing by. After finishing a conversation with one of the guests, you take a look around until your eyes are met with his. Time stopped and music deafened the moment your eyes locked on his. A joyful smile grows on your face as you shove your way through the people to get to him,

“You made it!” You exclaim so he can hear you over the boisterous chatter.

“Sorry I’m late” he greets with an apologetic smile.

“Don’t be, it’s not your type of scenery anyway” you insist, grabbing a champagne glass from one of the caterer’s trays and handing it to him,

“You know me too well”

“Come on, I know a much quieter place we can talk” you suggest, already walking through the crowd. Before he could even question this sudden suggestion, he almost loses sight of you and walks through the sea of people. He feels the warmth of a hand wrap around his wrist and tug him through, your giggle being the only distinct thing to make out that that hand was yours. Eventually, Leon finds himself outside in a garden. Bushes trimmed into elegant shapes and certain animals. Flowers of various colors in full bloom.

“So how’ve you been?” You begin to ask, both hands cradling the champagne glass, “I haven’t seen you in a while”

“I’ve been busier than usual” more like busier avoiding you and your fiancé, Will, at all costs. The sight of you two together made his heart shatter at the sight. The silence in response was enough for Leon to know you didn’t believe him, “I am busier” he insists.

“Alright” you respond with a shrug, a look of disbelief still remains on your face, “What do you think of Will?”

The both of you stop walking as he contemplates what he should say. He hated just looking at him for taking what he could’ve had. Looking at them, together, revived a battle of whether he should hate Will or himself for letting this happen.

“I don’t know Will” Leon decides to say, which was true. A sheepish giggle escapes your lips as you continue walking, “But as long as you’re happy”

“I guess that’s true” with your gown trailing behind, you sit at the edge of an extravagant fountain, placing your champagne glass on the cobblestone ground. The very top of the fountain had an eagle perched on a branch, the rest of it was ivy and smaller birds perched carved into the stone. The pad of your index finger strokes along the water. It was warm from being under the sun. Sitting on the edge of the fountain, facing you, he studied your face. Your eyes were much more solemn, your lips in a frown, a large contrast from a few minutes ago inside the villa.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” He asks gently, his hand instinctively reaching to lay atop of yours— he pulls it away.

“Leon, I wonder what you would think of me” You begin to say, your eyelashes flutter as you look ahead at the garden, biting your lip softly.

“I don’t know what you mean”

“What if, I didn’t marry William” there was that beam of hope in him, rising again. Guilt covering it shortly after,

“Why?”

“I just, don’t know if he’s the one you know?” You gingerly reply, eyes finally looking into his, “There’s just… this feeling I can’t shake away. But I’m not sure if it’s just me having cold feet or if it’s real”

He couldn’t believe what he was seeing, your eyes were set on his lips. He could hear his heartbeat patter in his ears as you leaned toward him, twinkling eyes and lips parted. Your breath against his skin sent a shiver down his spine. He could only remember one time the two of you were this close. His eyes gave into their hunger and watched as your lips moved closer and closer to his own. He couldn’t take it anymore, leaning forward, he closes the gap.

Trapped in the scent of your expensive perfume, the texture of your lips, he can feel goosebumps rise on his skin. Your lips follow this dance he’s leading, an excited breath shudders in the midst of it as his hands hold your face and keep you in place. Your heart was beating at an alarming speed from it all, but it only encouraged you to want more. Your senses were dulled by his lips, his presence, his scent, you didn’t want to stop. Your tongue meets his own, earning a sound from Leon that instantly makes you want to hear it again. That is, until you hear someone calling your name. You knew that voice, it was Will. Pulling away you look at Leon in horror. Everything that had happened setting in at once. Your lipstick smudged on Leon’s lips, his bright blue eyes looking at you like a deer in headlights as your future husband calls your name.

“I’m so sorry” you whisper, lifting up the skirt of your dress and running off to meet her fiancé. Leon sits there, paralyzed from everything, Will’s voice greeting you and breaking Leon in the process,

“There you are, I was looking everywhere for you”

“Well here I am” you say sheepishly as Will takes your hand in his.

Your lipstick smudged on his lips, his heart in turmoil, he drives home.

[14thgalerie]

25 — part 2

• pairing: james potter x reader

• now playing: it's a long way to happiness by alban claudin / visions of gideon by sufjan stevens

• word count: 4.7k. 

• genre: angst

  — this didn't really come out how i wanted it to and i haven't proofread this, so excuse me if it's all a jumbled mess of words. but anyways here's the ending that my angsty brain came up with.

edit: changed the other woman’s name to a random one as it felt wrong to somewhat villainise Lily in this story because i love her so much

part 1 part 3/alt. ending

“Do you love her, James?”

He quite clearly remembers that morning, how could he not when it played like a movie on his mind, making his chest tighten uncomfortably? It was your typical Sunday morning, he had the day off from the Order after a tiring long week of endless missions. He was just sitting by the dining table, switching his eyes from the window and back to watching you as you fixed up your lunch. 

His eyes were set outside when he heard you ask, a tight hold suddenly capturing his throat in its grasp, making him unable to breathe. You didn’t sound upset, your voice still as soft as if you had just asked your husband how his work had been. But hearing his name…he knew different. You had been his wife for the past four years— ten since he first called you his. Even before you had never called him by that, always by Love or some other endearment you came up with.

He forced his eyes to catch your wavering eyes, unsure if he would be able to stand what he would see. Afraid that he would crumble beneath the ground if he saw what he always prayed he would never see in them, lest caused by him. 

You did well, hiding it from him. Though your eyes were trained upon his, they were blank, absentminded, as you played with the gold ring on your ring finger. The one that matched his, the one he shakingly placed promising forever four years ago, afraid to let it slip from his grasp and embarrass himself in front of you. The two sat in silence for what seemed like forever, before you dropped your head down to your chest. Allowing James to breathe a heavy exhale.

He was about to say something, to come up with whatever response his mouth could muster when you looked back up. Your cheeks glowed as you stared at him, tinted red, similar to the pair above. You were still the most beautiful sight even as tears lined your face, he could not say the same for himself.

“I understand. I’m fine.”

You offered him a smile, one that he couldn’t appreciate like the ones before because he knew it was all forced, not how he wanted it to be.

He knew you weren't fine, how could you be?

He had been painfully aware of this for several nights already, weeks even. How could he not when from the corner of his eyes, he sees you hesitatingly glance every time the phone rings? When you rush to wash your face in the washroom just by the living room and stay there for a minute or two. When he forgets to take a shower or spell the perfume away. 

How could he not when he feels the small rustle of the sheets as you move away from him ever so slightly until he wakes to find you almost about to fall from the bed, stains on your cheeks that he, himself, wipes away, pretending he doesn’t know the reason why. Trying to fool himself into believing that he would still have you in the end, refusing to accept that was the one thing you would never let pass.

He wonders often for how long you would entertain this play but never had he voiced it out because he was afraid. 

“You should go to her. I'll take care of all of it.”

“What are you going on about darling?” He finally spoke, though he still kept up that act of his, hoping that by some divine intervention, you were talking about something else. He remembered how the corners of your lips raised in faux amusement. He waited for you to respond. 

But you let him wait, had it been an hour since or had it only been seconds, he doesn’t know. You turned the gas stove off when you heard the whistle of the kettle. Leaning back on the counter table. You were quiet, so, so quiet, a stark contrast to how you normally were. He observed every minute movement, from the rise of your chest to the drumming of your fingers against your waist as you wrapped your arms around yourself.

He doesn’t understand. 

How could you appear so calm and collected? As if you weren’t telling him to choose the other, to leave you in your loneliness in this quaint, cosy house of yours. As if you hadn’t just told him that any day from now on, he would have to wait in apprehension for the papers.

“You know what I mean, love. Let’s not let this go on for any longer than it should be. With everything going on right now, I don’t want to add to the stress. Go to her, marry her even, nobody has an idea of what our tomorrow will be so I want you to spend it where you are happiest.”

He still remembers looking at you that day, only just then noting how fragile you had become. Your once so vibrant glow had diminished leaving you muted underneath one of the sweatshirts you’ve stolen from him. He was afraid that if he even hovered over your body, you would crumble and vanish from his sight.

“James.”

He didn’t realise that you moved from your place and now stood in front of him, staring down at him, still with that loving gaze of yours. He felt the soft, gentle glide of your fingers as it hovered over the curves of his face. He leaned and followed the movement, instinctively resting his face on your hands. Clutching your wrists in his, afraid that they would slip away to a place where he cannot reach.

Even now as he sits alone in the bed where he has spent his days, drowning in the consequences of his actions, he could still feel the ghost of your touch. The bed where he wallowed in grief after having followed your wish to leave but never to the other woman.

“I can’t.” He replies finally. “I won’t.”

“Why not?” You asked him with that patient tone of yours as you would whenever he broke down in tears to you.

“I belong here with you. Nowhere else.” He shakes his head.

“Then why does she call asking for you?” 

The raven-headed woman called just a few hours earlier, without his knowledge. She had gone straight to talking, expecting that the receiver had been your husband. You had dropped the call, unable to hear any more confirmation of your husband’s affair from the woman herself.

“I’m sorry.” He exhales, the words barely audible. Taking his arms and wrapped it around your body tightly, afraid that you would slip from him. Afraid that this would be the last he could hold you closely to him. 

As he tightly closed his eyes and burrowed his head against your stomach, he couldn’t help the flurry of emotions that waved over him. A memory for every night he found himself in the arms of another.

When you said yes to a date with him after countless teasing from his friends,

When you first said "I love you,"

When you first introduced him to your family,

When he proposed to you,

The day you married, and, of course, the beginning of it all,

When he rushed to save you when he was just a weak child.

“I-I’m sorry. I know it’s hard to believe, but it was all a mistake. I just…Don’t leave me alone please.”

Warm droplets escaped James' sunken eyes. “I’m sorry.” That was all he could do. Apologise. He couldn’t say he didn’t do it because that was a lie. Air could not enter his lungs as he felt suffocated by the amount of pain that drowned him. 

You leaned and hugged the hysterical man, rubbing his back in an attempt to comfort him despite the raging emotions that waved through you. Taking your hands, you pulled his head away from your body, much harder than it might have sounded as he was tight against you.

You stared at his red face for a second, his eyes were shut, before dipping your head and placing a kiss on his forehead. When he felt the soft flesh of your lips make contact on his skin, he couldn’t help the sobs that wracked over him. Feeling that no matter what he said now, this would be the last he would feel that same tenderness from the one he loves. The kiss lingered for a few moments, your thumb caressing his cheeks as you were both in the middle of your kitchen, the world outside, unaware of what was happening to the crazily in-love Potters.

“I love you.”

You spoke against his forehead, barely above a whisper but his ears still picked up the three words that he held so dearly. And forcibly, he felt his grip on you loosen as you pushed them away. The cold breeze from the open window seemed to mock him, that this warmth he craved would never protect him from the cold ever again.

The sight of you as you walked further and further away from him that night haunted him for days and weeks. For the rest of his days.

Amid the darkness lies James, his fingers gripping the sheets of the pillowcase against his face. He lies so still, anyone that would walk in would think the man has died in his sleep. There, James lies, taking deep breaths until his head whips around at the creak of the floorboard outside his room.

“Prongs? I saved you a plate from dinner on the table if you get hungry.” He hears Remus on the other side, washing away the light that briefly popped up in him.

“I gotta go on a mission, I’ll be gone for about two days. But Sirius and Frank will be free this week, I think. So, don’t miss me too much.”

James watches as Remus’ shadow lingers from the tiny space between the door and the floor. When he doesn’t respond, he sees the dark figure leave. He feels horrible, ignoring the boys. They had moved in to accompany him shortly after you had left, staying in the guest rooms that the both of you had prepared specifically for them to stay in. But he could not find it in him to even utter a reply or show any sign of life when he didn’t even feel alive.

When he hears the footsteps slowly fade, he rolls over to the side, staring at the tattered shirt that sits beside the pillow he had just dropped. 

He sat up, grabbing the two as he went. He pulls the shirt over the pillow before hugging it close to him. Shifting to sit comfortably on the edge of the bed, he could almost hear the steady beat of your heart and the low hum of an unfamiliar song that he always forgets the title of. It’s been a month already since that day. However, for him, it felt like years already, cliche as it may sound.

The house had been emptied of you, save for a few things that you’ve decided to leave behind like the shirt he’s pathetically hugging right now. His mind still reeling from the events that occurred, only after everything had he realised what just happened. Everything had seemed to play as if on slow-mo back then.

Now, time has slowed down and restrained all of his thoughts to only you. Trapping him in this endless void where only the painful hurt dominated every sensation in his body. Memories of the nights before that dreadful day flash before his eyes, leaving him in excruciating pain. That look of defeat in your eyes, he knew. He knew that even if he tried, even if he cried enough to fill the whole Pacific Ocean, even if he finally agreed to leave this world and live with you in peace by the countryside. You would always remember the damage he had done.

Your father had done the same to your mother, he remembers. You swore that if anyone ever would do the same to you, you would give them no second chance even if you loved them so deeply, you told James exactly that— he doesn’t know exactly why he still did it with that knowledge. But he knows that he’s given you tremendous pain that would forever be imprinted in your memories and the only way he could have fixed it was to suffer the same.

His rumination was interrupted by the heavy knocks that rained on the front door. He waited for someone in the house to answer the door, not in the mood to do it. For a minute, the knocks continued, until he got annoyed by the rattle of the door already and stood. 

“Alright, I’m coming! You don’t have to bash our door in, bloody hell!” He huffs, wondering where the others had gone. He thought only Remus had a mission that day.

Stomping down the stairs, he sighed in relief when he heard the incessant knocking finally stop. When he comes to the door, he finds nobody waiting and confusingly looks around before from the corner of his eyes, he sees a manila envelope on their porch. 

James feels a heavy weight block his throat, similar to the one he felt that Sunday morning. Without even picking it up, he already knew what kind of papers awaited him inside that envelope. Every part of him went on an agonising pause, his feet remaining rooted to the hardwood floors— paralyzed, unmoving. He knew that this day would somehow arrive, but he didn’t think that it would be this fast, nor throw him deeper into the darkness where the faint light slowly fades with every day.

He lets out a shaky exhale, before dropping to pick up the envelope. Absentmindedly ripping open the package as he sat down on the bench just beside the door. As he sees the white surface of the paper, he hesitates, not sure if he really should be doing this right now. Will he sign away your marriage without even a fight?

As he pulls them out, he finds a tiny folded paper fall on his lap, catching his attention. 

‘Hi Lo, 

Sorry this took quite a while, I had no idea the process would take that long. Well, to be honest, how would I know? Every documentation we had, you managed on your own. I really hate this type of thing, but oh well, I guess I had to learn somehow. Oh, blimey, I’m rambling again! Anyways, here’s everything that they told me to give you. Meetings regarding our properties and all will be arranged some day this week, but I’ve arranged to have it at our my house so less risk with the war still going on y’know. I’ll call you so let me know when you’re free.

Take care! 

Y/N Y/LN’

The paper crumbles under his trembling hands, falling once again to James’ lap as he pushes his palms against his eyes. 

Ten years later, he had ruined the dream he already had in his hands. 

“Darling?”

The sound made him cringe, it was the one word that he had been desperately wishing to hear but not with that annoying voice that scratched at his brain the wrong way. Only reminding him of his mistakes more, he thinks to himself, ‘How did that voice even appeal to me?’

“James?” It opens its mouth again, making him curl his fingers around his hair, clutching it in annoyance. “Are you alright?”

“Do I look alright to you?” He spits out.

The woman flinches with the harsh stare that he snaps at her, unexpecting that sort of treatment from the person who had willingly approached her then.

“I- No, not really.”

“So why then, are you asking such a stupid question?” He cuts her off before she can even let out a breath, “Hell, what are you even doing here?”

“You hadn’t called me back once, I’ve left you so many since the last time we met. I just got worried…” Jane hesitates, unsure if she should continue. “I also heard about what happened to you and Y/N.”

She waits for him to respond, to which he never grants.

“I heard she approved of us. I thought that maybe we could be official now?”

“No.”

“What?”

“I never wanted more from what we had, Bell.” Jane felt her heart crumble under her feet at how James went back to calling her by her last name. “Fucking hell, I don’t even know why I ever approached you then.”

If Jane thought that was the heartbreak she just felt then, this had just served numerous stabs into her beating heart.

“I don’t understand, you said that we would-“

“When did I ever say that?” He replies, still with that spiteful look in his eyes. “We did it then I left, that was it.”

“I-“

“I never loved anyone as I loved my wife. I have been stupid as a child, even now as I made the choice to hurt her. I made stupid decisions that as much as I didn’t want it to, hurt a lot of people. Right now, I know that this is hurting you but in all honesty, I could hardly care.”

Jane could only stare at him as the tears welled up in the corner of her eyes.

“I can’t find it in me to care about anything or anyone else after her. I loved her so much, I still do. I don’t think that will ever mellow in the years to come. I’m sorry that you became involved in this mess, I never wished this on you, you just happened to be there and-“

James lets out a shaky breath, only realising he had not taken one this whole time he laid out his heart to the woman he shared his fault with. 

“I hate myself.”

His eyes drift away from hers and towards the papers that now sit beside him.

“I hate how I’m this selfish bastard. I hate how even as my wife slowly breaks apart, she still puts me first and still makes the biggest decision because she wants me to be happy even though the one place I ever felt was with her.

I hate how you became involved, I just hope that you don’t blame yourself or anything because even if I say I don’t care for your feelings right now, I never blamed you. I made the decision to do this, I’m the only one to blame for the hurt I’ve caused my love.”

He pauses for a long while. Only the rustle of the leaves down the streets could be heard along with the harsh breeze of the wind.

“I’m sorry, Jane.”

James stands, turning in his heel to go back inside to wallow in his grief again.

“Mate, that’s enough.” Sirius could not believe that he would hear those words from his own mouth but with how his best friend has been, he could not let this continue. He attempts to take away the bottle that the bespectacled man stole from the kitchen. “You’re acting like a 16-year-old kid. Give that to me, I’m getting tired.”

Alcohol had become the only way for James to numb the pain that invaded him. It was the only remedy that his mind could muster to avoid the inevitable stress of the months to come. The burning feeling in his throat as the whiskey grazed down his throat felt like a thousand razor blades. 

“Well, the only person who could stop this child doesn’t want to do it anymore, so you’ve got no choice.” Sirius solemnly stares at the lazy, empty smile that his friend flashes at him. “Do you think she’ll be happy when she sees you like this? She’s just in the next room.”

James’ grip on the bottle tightens at the reminder of how close she is to him yet so far. A reminder of how he’s been dragging the process of signing the papers, still an inkling of hope in him that she would realise that he was truly sorry for his mistake.

“Pads..”

“Yes?”

“Do you think she’ll be happy?”

Sirius knew what he meant even as the question posed to be vague. He felt a punch in his gut for how fast the answer came to him, but he knew that the man needed to hear the words that bore no sake of protecting his feelings. He saw how your vibrant and colourful self withered into such a sad pathetic remembrance of how you once were. And how after you left James, slowly but progressively came back. 

It would never be the same as it was before, he knew that nothing ever brought you as much joy as James did. The two of you were undeniably destined for one another, a pair that you could never get tired of no matter how annoying they might get. But right now…

He also knew that for not only you but also James, to individually grow back to how you once were…

“Yes.”

It would have to go back to how it was in the beginning before you even knew the other existed.

“Thank you.” James knew that Sirius was right. Letting you go was only a small act for what pain and sacrifice he put you through for several weeks. 

“Hi.”

James hadn’t expected to see you as he escaped the festivities for a moment of silence. He hoped that the crashing gentle waves of the water and night light would be his only accompaniment but this was much better.

“Hey there, got tired of Sirius’ voice?” You joked, chuckling under your breath. In turn, James lets out an amused exhale before taking a seat beside you on the white sand.

“I think my ears are bleeding actually, can you check?” The sound of your laughter makes his heart tighten in a way that it hadn’t for the past three months. Now it felt somewhat nice, like he couldn’t get enough, and he was willing to drown himself in the cold waters if it meant he could hear it once more.

“Hmmm,” You check his ears, “You’re all good, Mr. Potter.”

You stare up at the sky. The night sky hangs overhead in hues of black and blue. You decide to keep your mouth shut, letting silence envelop the air surrounding the both of you. Keeping your eyes straightforward, flickering to the side every once in a while. After some time, you felt the feeling of being watched prickle on your skin. Only by moving your eyes, you catch the curly-haired eyes on you with a soft expression painted on his face. His eyes catch onto yours and hold them for a moment. 

You lean back on your arms, “It’s weird huh?”

“What is?”

“Moony and Pads finally getting married after so long.”

“Yeah, it feels nice to see how they ended up together in the end. God, I can’t even imagine how many times Moons denied his feelings. I was this close to ripping my hair off watching them wallow.” He reminisces

“Can’t believe how it only took that girl from the pub kissing Sirius for Remus to finally make a move.” You chuckle at the memory, “Now we’re here.”

James felt like the both of you were back to how you once were like everything that happened in the past three months was just a fever dream and you’re here to prove that. You kept on reminiscing about your memories with your two best friends. He remembered how Sirius almost passed out crying when they first saw Remus in the hospital wing. When the latter was the first to ask how Sirius was after he ran away from his house. The two of you laughed and giggled with every memory that came to mind.

At some point, a comfortable silence swept over you two. Only the sounds of the beach during the night and the chatter of the people inside the venue were heard until silence also ensued inside. His ears perked up, wondering why until he finally heard a slow song start to play and realised that the two must finally be having their dance.

“Can I ask you for something?” James breaks the silence, playing with the hem of his button-up polo. He continued with your nod, “Dance with me.”

He stands, extending his arms towards you. 

“One last dance, Mrs. Potter.”

You take his hands and press a gentle kiss to his knuckles, the cool metal of his gold ring grazing her cheeks as they cup her cheeks. James sucked in a shaky breath as you pressed your forehead against his, pulling it down to your level, breathing in your scent, locking it in his memory.

“Alright then, Mr. Potter.”

The next afternoon, arriving home after the lengthy travel from the wedding, did you only see the manila envelope that sits atop your clothes. It came with a small note written in familiar strokes that you would recognize even if your eyes were closed.

‘I’ve signed them already, I’ve postponed them for too long already. Thank you for letting me have that last dance tonight, darling. I’ll see you then.’

Time flew fast for James. One minute, he was still holding you in his arms as the grainy sand stuck to his feet, the next he was standing in front of 12 Grimmauld Place, minutes after Dumbledore had declared the end of your marriage. You had asked the man for a favour to help you process the lengthy and troublesome. Knowing that going to the court would give you the attraction that you would rather not have on the both of you now that you are all in hiding.

“James.” You call him. “Uhm, before you go, I just wanted to thank you… for letting me have this with no problem and also, of course, for letting me have the chance to love you and letting me experience the love that only James Potter can give.”

“Y/N.. I hardly think that was the greatest experience.” 

“No, it wasn’t. We wouldn’t be here if it was. But, I would be the greatest liar on the face of the earth if I deny the fact that you were the greatest love that anyone could ever have, annoying as you might have been at times,” She giggles. “But, I’ve never felt more secure and sure of someone as I had with you, and to be honest with you? I thought of giving you a chance, as much as it contradicted what I told you back when we first started dating.”

His breath hitches at the confession, his mind going into a haze, wondering if he pushed more, then you might have given him that chance.

“Why didn’t you?” He asks. 

“I somewhat did. I waited for you to explain, to tell me yourself. I thought to myself, ‘If he tells me, I might think about forgiving him’, but I would have given you a hard time. But you didn’t, so I scratched that thought.”

“Y/N…” He trails off, “You just broke my heart even more. But well it’s all done now. It’s all been settled and we’re officially back to being single. It feels weird, it’s like for so long, you’ve been there next to me, and now you won’t be.”

“It does. James…?” 

“Hmm?”

“If ever you find someone to love again, promise me that you won’t make the same mistake again.’

“If only you promised me to find someone who would love you just as I did, minus the thing of course.” He replies.

You nod, making him smile a little. Even if it wasn’t by his side, he would be content with the idea that you were happy, in love or not. For the last time, he comes close to you and presses a kiss on your forehead and down to your lips. He could taste the salty tears that cascaded on not only his cheeks but yours also. 

For the last time, you murmur against his lips. “I love you, Prongs, always and forever.”

James was 25 when the person he loved walked away from him and he could do nothing but smile in hopes that they would find happiness wherever and whatever they do. Breaking his last promise to you as he knew that…

Even as you’re millions of miles away from him or just on the next block, he would hold a piece of you in that hole in his heart everywhere he goes, and in everything he will do.

masterlist

[sgtmickeyslaughter]

Weekly Tag Wednesdayyy

Hi @energievie @mmmichyyy @spookygingerr @lingy910y @jrooc and @mickeym4ndy !

name: gigi

your time zone: est

favorite food: ive truly never met a soup i didn't like, but my favorite is pho. the absolute artistry behind creating a piping hot soup designed for a warm climate that actually cools you down with the power of herbs alone? stunning

your eye color: brown + green

do you have curly, wavy, or straight hair? bone straight and very stubborn about it

coffee or tea? coffee

you can only listen to one album for the rest of your life. which album is it? im going to say illinoise by sufjan stevens, i saw the play version last month and i highly highly recommend it its so beautiful

how many countries have you visited? korea, india, japan, mexico and canada next week if the canucks make it to round 7 (fingers crossed)

favorite social media platform (other than tumblr): instagram? I guess? I used to like chatting on reddit but the vibes are less than ideal so i chat with people here :)

if you had to be reincarnated as an animal, what animal would you want to be? a tiny, colorful bird on an island. no predators, just flitting around a forest

relationship status: very recently single :,( really tragic circumstances but ultimately amicable so we will remain great friends. i have had some pretty ridiculous breakups tho so maybe ill work those into a fic someday

did you go to college? if so, what did you study? yes, I went to an arts institute which i adored and studied architecture and morphology

you’ve just made a letterboxd account. what are your top 4 films? bones and all, princess Mononoke, midsommar, and julie and julia

what’s one of your pet peeves? when people start walking onto the train before people get out, oh that grinds my gears, I take three trains to and from work so a lot of my pet peeves are pubic transit related (still couldn't catch me in a car tho)

what’s one of your guilty pleasures? im going to change this to creature comfort: I love love love cooking and eating homecooked meals

and finally, if you could learn any skill, what skill would you want to learn? any instrument. literally any. i've tried hard over and over with different instruments and the best i can get to is like barely passible not quite good or god forbid innovative.

tagging under the cut!

@heymrspatel @doshiart @sirrudo @mickittotheman @mybrainismelted

@iansw0rld @especially-fuk-u @mickeysgaymom @softmick

@blue-disco-lights @gallawitchxx @solitarycreaturesthey @deathclassic

[extraordinaryhistories]

#15 – 'Kill' (A Sun Came, 1998)

In 2016, a man named Marc Rebillet (yes, that Marc Rebillet) decided to search through a dumpster outside Sufjan’s studio in DUMBO, Brooklyn, which is a very mature and adult thing to do and reflects fantastically on Marc as a person, and certainly should have no consequences on his thriving music career. In that dumpster, he found an odd-looking CD – an unreleased album with a black-and-white cover titled Stalker, claiming to be performed by Sufjan Stevens. It had been recorded some time in the 1990s, and on a quick listen (the album was swiftly leaked online), it certainly sounded like early Sufjan, back when he did wild electric guitar freak-outs; his hushed but nasally vocal tone from that era is unmistakeable.

Everything seemed normal, except for the fact that the album was about tracking, sexually assaulting and then murdering people. It contained songs with titles like ‘I Know Where Your Kids Go to School’, ‘Baby Give Me a Feel’ and ‘U Kan Wrun But U Kan’t Hyde’. None of it was metaphorical. Sufjan recorded a noise rock album in the 90s that was quite literally about fucking stalking people. And then, not five years later, recorded ‘For the Widows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti’. It boggles the mind.

At the time that Stalker was released, a significant portion of the Sufjan fan community cast doubt on the veracity of the leak. One of the major concerns was that the subject matter was far too direct, far too gruesome, for a Sufjan song. He would never be so brutally direct. He would never. Right?

‘Kill’ is a song by Sufjan Stevens that features the following as its chorus: ‘I want to kill him / I want to cut his brain / And when it's over / I know I'll feel okay’. Ah. Case closed.

The third-last track on A Sun Came, ‘Kill’ is a knotty piece of songwriting that may be the most multi-layered lyrical construction in his early work. Even purely on inspection one can see this to be true – it is a song with a clear narrative, some clear themes, a roiling balance of light and dark within it, which is far more than can be said for much of this era. But then you get to the allusions this song pays to other literary and musical sources, and things only begin to complicate further. I, personally, have not quite made my mind up about ‘Kill’. It is a song loaded with possibility.

An initial reading of ‘Kill’ gives the strong suggestion of a relationship narrative, and I do think that this is what lies at the song’s core. The relationship in this song need not be romantic, but given the sheer depth and fury of the passion here, it seems highly probable. There is a narrator who exists in what is very much a lopsided power dynamic with another (male) figure; very rarely is the narrator an active subject in this song, instead being subject to the figure’s curation and exploitation. The figure ‘took the stable / Bred me to be a mare / Made the brethren able / Gave me a room’, all of which are ostensible acts of kindness that nevertheless confirm a ruler/ruled dynamic. 

We receive that same confirmation in the next verse. ‘I never asked him / I never meant to stay’, says the narrator, and very quickly the song sours. The narrator finds themselves being used and abused, ‘never [leaving] the stall’ while their partner readily leaves their side. Any sense of a romantic relationship in an ideal sense – two partners, ‘riding side by side / Into the frontier’, tackling the world’s challenges as a single, symbiotic unit – is long defunct. Only misery remains for the narrator, with hope long-dashed by a pattern of careless exploitation.

With this as our narrative foundation, we reach the song’s climax, one of the most striking and instantly memorable moments in his catalogue on account of how utterly depraved it is. We are left with no doubt that Sufjan’s narrator is in a state of abject misery up to this point. But misery in Sufjan songs is so often detached, poetic, dejected, somehow fundamentally stoic. Not in ‘Kill’. The narrator has no remaining emotional bandwidth for stoicism. All that’s left is a carnal desire to exact onto the narrator’s partner some fraction of the pain that the partner exacted onto the narrator, and the only way to do this is through murder. 

You will not find a gnarlier image in the Sufjan catalogue than ‘I want to kill him / I want to cut his brain’, and the reason it has so much guttural power is because it does not quite read as psychopathic or unstable. The narrator only wants to do this. They never will, and likely never even could – the verses of this song are in the past tense, and by the time we reach the present tense of the pre-chorus, the partner has left the narrator forever. ‘Kill’ is a logical conclusion, an exhausted final attempt to lash out in a situation where the narrator knows they have no power to do so. When the chorus finally breaks down at the end into a futile repeated ‘I want’, the song’s message is complete. It is violent, but the violence is less a horror tale, more a tragedy.

This is the interpretation that a direct reading of ‘Kill’ provides us, but there are all sorts of semantic curios in this one that complicate interpretation. I am, of course, referring to the extended horse metaphor that this song seems to be pushing. Both narrator and villain are referred to as mares in this song; there is talk of stalls, of stables, of riding into battle in a literal sense. It is rather late for me to mention that ‘Kill’ has a source text, but it seemingly does – Sufjan cites an obscure Sherwood Anderson short story named ‘The Man Who Became a Woman’ as the basis for this song, but has refused to elaborate further. The surface-level parallels are very clear given that ‘The Man Who Became a Woman’ is a story about a horse trainer, but from there the complications begin, because Anderson’s story is a) incredibly obtuse and b) seems to reckon far more with gender, and to a lesser extent race, than it does dysfunctional romance as a theme. The narrative in ‘Kill’ certainly does not retell that of its source material, at least not in a manner discernible to the listener. But the connections are there nonetheless.

A Sun Came is an album that brims with loving, albeit surface-level, tributes to Sufjan’s musical and literary influences, and ‘Kill’ is one such example. But Anderson isn’t the only reference point for ‘Kill’. It is highly probable that Sufjan is intentionally referencing Elliott Smith’s ‘Roman Candle’ in the chorus of this one. Sufjan sings ‘I want to kill him / I want to cut his brain’; years earlier, Smith sang ‘I want to hurt him / I want to give him pain’. And this is almost certainly intentional given Sufjan’s professed admiration for Smith and the various comparisons that have been made between the two songwriters over Sufjan’s career. (What makes things even more interesting is that ‘Roman Candle’ is a song about Smith’s violent step-father. The same systematic patterns of abuse are present in the lyrics of both songs, albeit expressed with more eloquence in Smith’s. Even if not Sufjan’s own stepfather – Lowell Brahms is by all accounts a beautiful, caring soul – one wonders if the subject of ‘Kill’ might have a real-life referent.)

One could spend days attempting to decode ‘Kill’, and this is fortuitous, because musically it does not offer much. The bulk of the song consists of a repeating guitar figure that has a sort of leaden weight to it, dragging it down into the muck. It is vaguely reminiscent of – and inferior to – the ‘Abraham’ ostinato that Sufjan would pen a few years later, but this one is played almost entirely on the lower strings and as a result lacks the same ethereal pop and spring that many Sufjan songs capitalise on. There is some double tracking, especially in the chorus and pre-chorus, but it doesn’t add anything substantial to the arrangement. Neither does Sufjan’s strained, upper-register vocal melody, but there is certainly a sort of confessional quality to it that suits the subject matter. 

All of this comes together to create a song that is resolutely, undeniably un-fun to listen to. It is most likely for this reason that Sufjan chose never to play this one live, unlike some of the other stripped-back folk ballads on A Sun Came. When Sufjan dips his toes in depravity – ‘John Wayne Gacy Jr.’! ‘Saturn’! – incredibly compelling, listenable, rich things tend to emerge, but at this early stage of his career, it seems that the pieces are just not quite in place yet. But there’s no denying that ‘Kill’ is a fascinating and in many ways remarkably compelling song, just one that does not feel as listenable as it could be. It’s fine. Early days yet. All of these songs helped create our modern concept of Sufjan Stevens.

[areyoudreaminof]

This Life and the Next: A Nessian Playlist

It's finally @nessianweek! And of course for Day 3 I had to make a playlist!

We love their banter, their angst, their passion, and their deep undying love for one another. To watch Cassian and Nesta find each other despite their own personal challenges was such a beautiful and satisfying love story. For this playlist, I tried to follow a somewhat narrative structure that fell in line with ACOSF. I wanted to represent these two people finding one another and lifting the other up. This playlist also has a fun little bonus track for your fun Nessian writing needs. LISTEN HERE and take a look at some lyrics behind the cut.

As The World Caves In-Matt Maltese

My feet are aching And your back is pretty tired And we've drunk a couple bottles, babe And set our grief aside And here it is, our final night alive And as the earth burns to the ground Oh, girl, it's you that I lie with As the atom bomb locks in Oh, it's you I watch TV with As the world, as the world caves in

Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene-Hozier

Feeling more human and hooked on her flesh, I Lay my heart down with the rest at her feet Fresh from the fields, all fetor and fertile It's bloody and raw, but I swear it is sweet

Lose My Cool-Amber Marks

I was so full of pain just stuck in my head There was no one that could get me out of it Yes I think the drinking was a bit excessive Just to be frank the drinking ain't what caused me to be aggressive My heart has been taken over Everyday I get colder to 'em I realize need to let go expression from the get go to 'em Feeling it like I just need to speak my brain

Banquet-Bloc Party

And if you feel A little left behind We will wait for you on the other side 'Cause I'm on fire 'Cause you know I'm on fire when you come

Homage-Mild High Club

Please just have a laugh with me 'Cause you know I'm borrowing by now These sounds, have already crowned Come on it's a silly dream Dreaming of the imagery unfound The view sits nice from that cloud

Make You Better-The Decemberists

I'll love you in springtime I lost you when summer came And when you pulled backwards I wanted to, I needed to Oh-oh, to make me better

Andromeda- Weyes Blood

Treat me right I'm still a good man's daughter Let me in if I break And be quiet if I shatter Gettin' tired of looking You know that I hate the game Don't wanna waste any more time You know I been holdin' out Love is calling It's time to give to you

Skulls-Bastille

I don't want to rest in peace I'd rather be the ghost that annoys you I hope you can make me laugh Six feet down when we're bored of each other A match is our only light

When our lives are over and all that remains Are our skulls and bones, let's take it to the grave And hold me in your arms, hold me in your arms I'll be buried here with you And I'll hold in these hands, all that remains

Leather-Tori Amos

Look, I'm standing naked before you Don't you want more than my sex? I can scream as loud as your last one But I can't claim innocence Oh God, could it be the weather? Oh God, why am I here? If love isn't forever And it's not the weather Hand me my leather

waves-Miguel & Kacey Musgraves

Put it out, I'm on fire, fire That’s what I’m about, take me higher, higher, tonight I'm gonna ride that wave

the last beautiful thing I saw..-Paris Paloma

And I looked up, and saw the sun It separated all the colors And the ice, into my eyes It fell and left me blind That was the last thing that I saw The fractured glass and its downpour I felt the blood mix with the water And I didn't see no more

Rut-The Killers

So I'm handing you a memory I hope you understand That steadily reminds you of who I really am

This city's always breathing, I wish that it would die The kickbacks and the bachelors, the fever for the velvet rope The money from my mother's men I'm not like her, you're not like them

Tell Me You Love Me-Sufjan Stevens

My love, I've lost my faith in everything Tell me you love me anyway, tell me you love me anyway My love, I feel myself unravelling Tell me you love me anyway, tell me you love me anyway My love, I feel the darkness on my back

Eternal Flame-Saint Sister

I believe it's meant to be, darling I watch you when you are sleeping You belong with me Do you feel the same? Or am I only dreaming? Is this burning an eternal flame?

Milk & Black Spiders-Foals

Oh, I hope you can hear me All those million miles away, you'd stay 'Cause I'd love you dearly All those billion miles away 'Cause I've been around two times And found that you're the only thing I need

BONUS TRACK: Smut-Tom Lehrer

Give me smut And nothing but! A dirty novel I can't shut If it's uncut And unsubt-tle

Taglist: @asnowfern @damedechance @foundress0fnothing @foreverinelysian @gaeleria @goddess-aelin @itsthedoodle @kataravimes-of-the-shire @krem-does-stuff @labellefleur-sauvage @moodymelanist @c-e-d-dreamer @nessianweek @octobers-veryown @popjunkie42-blog @reverie-tales @rosanna-writer @spell-cleavers @sassyhobbits @separatist-apologist @secret-third-thing @thesistersarcheron @the-lonelybarricade @ultadverb @vulpes-fennec @witchlingsandwyverns @xtaketwox @wilde-knight @witch-and-her-witcher @iftheshoef1tz @ofduskanddreams @talons-and-teeth

[squadxx4392]

Jegulus as angsty song lyrics (from previous list posted)

(If The World Was Ending by JP Saxe and Julia Michaels)

James : I know, you know, we know, you weren't down for forever and it's fine

Regulus : Think I figured out how, how to think about you without it ripping my heart out

(Rewrite the Stars by Zac Efron and Zendaya)

James : You know I want you, it's not a secret I tried to hide, I know you want me, so don't keep saying our hands are tied

Regulus : You know I want you, it's not a secret I tried to hide, but I can't have you, we're bound to break and my hands are tied

(when the party's over by Billie Eilish)

James : Tore my shirt to stop you bleedin', but nothin' ever stops you leavin', quiet when I'm comin' home and I'm on my own, I could lie, say I like it like that, like it like that, I could lie, say I like it like that, like it like that

Regulus : But nothin' is better sometimes, once we've both said our goodbyes, let's just let it go, let me let you go

(Daylight by David Kushner)

James : Oh, I love it and I hate it at the same time, you and I drink the poison from the same vine, oh, I love it and I hate it at the same time, hidin' all of our sins from the daylight

Regulus : Tellin' myself it's the last time, can you spare any mercy that you might find, if I'm down on my knees again? Deep down, way down, Lord, I try, try to follow your light, but it's night time, please, don't leave me in the end

(Astronomy by Conan Gray)

James : We've traveled the seas, we've ridden the stars, we've seen everything from Saturn to Mars, as much as it seems like you own my heart, it's astronomy, we're two worlds apart

Regulus : We're two worlds apart, stop trying to keep us alive, you're pointing at stars in the sky that already died, stop trying to keep us alive, you can't force the stars to align when they've already died

(Bubblegum by Clairo)

James : Sorry I didn't kiss you, but it's obvious I wanted to, bubble gum down my throat and it's a curse, but my luck couldn't get any worse

Regulus : You look so nice in your shirt, it's sad because it just hurts, I'd do anything for you, but would you do that for me, too?

(Fourth of July by Sufjan Stevens)

James : The evil it spread like a fever ahead, it was night when you died, my firefly, what could I have said to raise you from the dead? Oh could I be the sky on the Fourth of July? Well you do enough talk, my little hawk, why do you cry? Tell me what did you learn from the Tillamook burn? Or the Fourth of July? We're all gonna die

Regulus : The hospital asked should the body be cast, before I say goodbye, my star in the sky, such a funny thought to wrap you up in cloth, do you find it all right, my dragonfly?, Shall we look at the moon, my little loon, why do you cry? Make the most of your life, while it is rife, while it is light, well you do enough talk, my little hawk, why do you cry? Tell me what did you learn from the Tillamook burn? Or the Fourth of July? We're all gonna die

(Heather by Conan Gray)

James : I still remember the third of December, me in your sweater, you said it looked better on me than it did you, only if you knew how much I liked you

Regulus : But I watch your eyes as she, walks by, what a sight for sore eyes, brighter than the blue sky, she's got you mesmerized while I die

(I Hear a Symphony by Cody Fry)

James : I used to hear a simple song, that was until you came along, now in its place is something new, I hear it when I look at you

Regulus : I used to hear a simple song, that was until you came along, you took my broken melody, and now I hear a symphony

(lovely by Billie Eilish and Khalid)

James : Oh, I hope some day I'll make it out of here, even if it takes all night or a hundred years, ned a place to hide, but I can't find one near, wanna feel alive, outside I can't fight my fear

Regulus : Isn't it lovely, all alone? Heart made of glass, my mind of stone, tear me to pieces, skin to bone, hello, welcome home

(Train Wreck by James Arthur)

James : Unbreak the broken, unsay these spoken words, find hope in the hopeless, pull me out of the train wreck

Regulus : Unburn the ashes, unchain the reactions now, not ready to die, not yet, pull me out the train wreck, pull me out, pull me out, pull me out, ah, pull me out, pull me out, pull me out

(Something in the Orange by Zach Bryan)

James : But I miss you in the mornings when I see the sun, something in the orange tells me we're not done

Regulus : To you I'm just a man, to me you're all I am, where the hell am I supposed to go? I poisoned myself again, something in the orange tells me you're never coming home

(Two Birds by Regina Spektor)

James : Two birds on a wire (oh-oh-oh), one says, "C'mon" and the other says, "I'm tired", the sky is overcast and I'm sorry (oh-oh-oh), one more or one less, nobody's worried

Regulus : Two birds on a wire, one tries to fly away, and the other watches him close from that wire, he says he wants to as well, but he is a liar

(Water Fountain by Alec Benjamin)

James : Now I'm grabbing her hips, and pulling her in, kissing her lips, and whispering in her ear, and I know that it's only a wish, and that we're not standing by the water fountain

Regulus : Now he's grabbing her hips, and pulling her in, kissing her lips, and whispering in her ear, and she knows that she shouldn't listen, and that she should be with me by the water fountain

[hannahssimblr]

Chapter Three (Part 3)

When Marnie takes me back to the booth, there are even more people there than before. A crowd of hipsters have joined us, all looking like members of Vampire Weekend, and I scoot in next to one of them; a mousy haired boy with glasses called Stephen, who asks me what I want to drink, and then has no issue with ordering one of the lewdly named cocktails for me. 

“So you’re also an artist?” He wants to know. 

“Yeah I’m doing art and design. Hoping to get a bachelors in Illustration.”

“Illustration like books?”

“Yeah kinda. Sometimes.” My drink arrives with a flourish, the waiter making a big show of presenting it to me by lifting a glass dome from the top of it, letting a cloud of dry ice waft onto the table. It’s all very over dramatic and frankly embarrassing, and everyone makes noises like they’re dead impressed, but I just snatch it up and take a mouthful. I’m still feeling so rattled from seeing Jen that even my eyes are having a hard time focusing. 

Stephen is talking about the illustrations in some book from his childhood, but as he’s talking to me I kind of zone out and chew on the end of my straw, trying to decide whether or not there’s actually something wrong with me. I make a mental note to anxiety-google my symptoms later, wondering whether a churning stomach and palpitating heart are normal responses to talking to someone you used to know. Jen and I can’t be friends again, I decide. Being around her would up my chances of colliding with Jude Turner tenfold, and I don’t think my body could physically handle the stress of that encounter. 

I realise Stephen is waiting for me to say something, and I shake myself back to life. “What?”

“Oh, sorry, I know it’s loud in here. I was just asking what music you’ve been into lately.”

“Oh, like Sufjan Stevens.” I say immediately, surprising myself, “And I’m getting really into Alabama Shakes”

“You know Alabama Shakes?” He says, impressed, not knowing that I only said that because Shane left his iPod on the coffee table a few days before and when I scrolled through, theirs was one of the names that stuck in my memory. 

“Yes.” I say. “The sound is super unique. I’m drawn to the lyrics, actually I think I’ll try to get tickets to the next gig if they ever come to Dublin.” I sit back and take another drink, watching his face and wondering when on earth I became someone who could bullshit. I’m sure that someone who knew all about the who’s who of music would be able to see right through me, but Stephen doesn’t. He tells me that I seem like a pretty cool girl, and I smile, wishing it was true. 

He tells me that he’s in second year, studying social sciences in some small technology institute outside of town, and then we spend some time discussing that, and him, and where he lives and where he comes from, all things that kind of shape him into a person, rather than some hipster who buys me drinks. Stephen is nice, I decide, in an everyman kind of way. Nothing to get excited about, but there’s nothing especially off-putting about him, save his skinny jeans that are just a tiny bit too skinny. We share three drinks together, and then he asks me if i’ll go out to the smoking area, because he needs a cigarette. 

I’m usually not someone who smokes very much, and even when I do I try to limit it to just one, because I hate just about everything about it except for the social element of continuing the conversation outside with everyone else who’s smoking too. I never understood the appeal of the actual cigarettes though. Especially in a day and age where we know everything there is to know about the harm they do, the myriad of painful, excruciating ways that they’re killing us. Even now, after its ban indoors, the hikes in prices and the horrible, gruesome images on the sides of the packets, it feels like every single college student in this city has a cigarette between their lips as a fashion accessory. I’ve seen people put stickers over the warning labels, and even listened to them have in depth discussions about their favourite ones, Marnie was saying recently that hers is the picture of the man with the hole in his neck. 

I try very hard not to think about the man with the hole in his neck when Stephen is handing me my second cigarette of the night. He’s not smoking what Jen was smoking, and it’s much stronger and much more unpleasant, so much so that I have to stifle a wince while he tells me a story about the time he went to New York on a J1 visa. 

When I stand next to him and look up into his face, I think again about how alright he is. He’s friendly, he’s tall, his outfit is mostly nice, and now that I’ve had three strong cocktails and all of those awful, anxious feelings I had earlier have floated away with the breeze, I start thinking that maybe I could try out some light flirtation on him. 

“Have you got a girlfriend?” Is what comes spilling out of me though, and I wish I could stuff it right back into me. It must be the least graceful or subtle attempt at flirting there ever was. My face immediately burns up. 

“Um. No.” He says with bewilderment. I realise I have cut him off mid sentence. “Why?”

“Oh, nothing. Just wondering.” I’m so embarrassed of myself that I can’t meet his eyes anymore.

“Ehm. Well, do you have a boyfriend?”

“Oh, absolutely not.” I laugh too loudly and then cover up my mouth. 

When my eyes drift back to him, he’s giving me an amused smile. “Is it funny? Like, the idea of you having a boyfriend or something?”

“Maybe.” I say. “Kind of. Yes.”

“Why’s that?”

“Oh, like, I dunno I just don’t really have boyfriends.”

“You’re exploring your options.” He says with a conclusive nod, even though that’s not at all what it is. In fact, I’ve been doing whatever exactly the opposite of exploring my options is; Avoiding all romantic prospects. Wallowing in my room. Fleeing in terror from any and all single men who might want my phone number.

“That’s what college is for anyway.” He goes on. “Like, just seeing who’s available and having fun.” He gives me a suggestive little smile that makes my stomach coil nervously even through my tipsy haze, because he seems to think I’m the queen of sex now. 

“Yeah completely.” Is all I manage. 

“You have lovely eyes.” He says. “They’re a real emerald kind of colour.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, let me have a closer look at them.” He leans down until we’re eyeball to eyeball and he gazes right at me. I can see my own silhouette reflected in his glasses, and think that I look kind of messy, and not in a purposeful, Alexa Chung kind of way at all. More in a three-cocktails, two cigarettes and a resurfacing of a past trauma kind of way.  I smooth down my hair with sweaty palms. 

“You’re extremely pretty.” He tells me.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

He surges suddenly towards me and pecks me on the lips. It startles me and I jolt backwards. 

“Sorry.” He says with wide panicked eyes. 

“It’s okay.”

“Maybe I was misreading the signals.”

“No it’s fine, I don’t mind.”

“I don’t want to be one of those weird men.”

“You’re not.” I feel tetchy for some reason. “You can just… you can do it if you want. You can kiss me, I don’t care.”

“That’s romantic.” He says, dripping with sarcasm. 

“Sorry, I just don’t know how to be.”

“It’s fine, we can um… we can just chill out if you want.”

I don’t know why he’s insisting on prolonging the awkwardness when it’s clear to me that neither of us is going to leave the smoking area until we kiss. 

“Kiss me, please.” I say flatly, and his mouth does that porny quirk again. “You’re a woman who knows what she wants.” He says in a voice that makes my hands clench, just as he comes at me and puts his mouth over mine. 

It’s a strange sensation, kissing another person after so much time, and I’ve completely forgotten what it felt like to do it. It’s more real than I remember it being, I’m more aware than I used to be of the way his tongue feels and the sounds our mouths are making. It’s a little bit visceral, but not totally unpleasant. Despite the strong taste of cigarettes on his breath, Stephen’s kissing is fine, there’s nothing wrong with it, but still, it makes me feel almost nothing inside. I hold onto the front of his jumper anyway and I kiss him back, because it feels like he’s helping me to sever the very last connection I have with Jude. He no longer gets to be the last boy who kissed me. Now it’s Stephen. Just plain old Stephen, the social studies student whose surname I don’t even know, and it’s like all in that moment I’m freed. 

“You’re pretty.” He tells me again, gently as he pulls away from me. “Has anyone ever told you that before?”

“I dunno.” I say vaguely. Men are obsessed with being the very first ones to tell women that they’re attractive, like it’s some gift that they are privileged to bestow upon us. We’re floundering, lost in the world, completely blind to ourselves until some man comes along and lets us know what he thinks about us. I can’t agree with him, say that I know, or I’ve heard it all before, because then he’ll think I’m up myself. It always feels like a trap. And besides, he’s not really saying it because he believes it, it’s just a device to get into my knickers. 

“What are you up to later on?” He wants to know.

“I suppose I’ll just go home.” I say, my heart jumping a little in my chest. 

“Where’s home?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.” I say, and he grins at me like he thinks I’m just being coy. “I would.” Maybe he really isn’t that bad looking at all. 

“If I tell you where I live then you might show up at my front door.”

“I might, who knows. And would you invite me in?”

I laugh awkwardly, feeling the vibe shifting rapidly into a realm I’m not comfortable with. “Probably not, no.”

“Ah, you art school girls, sure you’re always playing hard to get.”

“I like to stay mysterious.” I step away from him and make moves towards the door. “I’m pretty cold.” I tell him. “Maybe we can go back inside?” 

“Yeah, okay.” He stubs out the butt of the cigarette that he was holding onto the whole time, and we head through the doors. I’m just thinking about how maybe he’s not so bad, and maybe if we spent some time together I could get to like him, when the hot air from the bar hits his glasses and they immediately fog up, and the effect on me is so immediate that I almost have to flinch away from him. The sight of him with fogged up specs is so dorky that I’m instantly repulsed. I watch in horror as he takes them off and wipes them on his jumper. There’s nothing at all attractive about him. What was I thinking?

“Well, it was nice to meet you,” I say robotically. “But I actually have to leave now.”

“Oh, right now?”

“Yeah. I didn’t realise how late it was, my housemate wanted me to come back and help her with something.” I start walking away immediately, the thought of his kissing me causing a shudder through my entire being.

“Wait, uh, can I have your phone number?”

“Um. I don’t know.”

“Really?”

“I don’t really give it out to people.”

His face falls. “Oh.”

“I’m just really not in the place for… this right now. It’s not personal.”

“It’s okay. I get it.” He doesn’t get it. He looks downtrodden, and I feel horrible, but I can’t stand there looking at him anymore, so I turn towards the cloakroom and try to collect my things. 

“Hang on.” He calls after me. “Will I ever see you again?” 

Does he think we’re in a romcom? That I’m the Meg Ryan to his Billy Crystal? I have to try really hard not to roll my eyes in front of him as I pass my token over to the cloakroom attendant, my breath shuddering. “No.” I say over my shoulder. “You probably won’t, sorry.” I don’t add the bit about how I was just using him to get over the memory of another person, because that’d make me the bad guy here. 

“Damn. Okay Ellie. Nice to meet you.”

“Right. See you.”

I pull my coat on and walk right out the door into the freezing cold night.

Prev // Next

[pillowspace]

Pillow talk about Silas more please

I have a little OC daydream world where immortals and almost-immortals (those with abnormal living situations) group together to try and find a way to get rid of their immortality, like a reversal on stories where people try to find how to become immortal

So far, there's Luca and Carmen, siblings who are immortal through a reincarnation curse. Luca doesn't remember the lives, but Carmen does. There's Belinda who's a ghost that won't move on. There's Micah who got turned into a vampire and became a hitman. There's Nicole who physically ages a year every 100 years. There's Ajani who is the child of a death god and must compete with his other dozens of half-siblings to work with their father. Aaaand then there's Silas, who was revived after death into the guardian of a forest.

Silas was based off of the songs Fourth of July by Sufjan Stevens and Rises the Moon actually! I looped them both all night and came up with him. He is, in terms of how long they've lived for, the youngest. I think he died in the 1930s, 1940s maybe. I forget exactly

Growing up as a small child, he found himself visiting the forest frequently. At this point in time, his name was Caileigh. He still likes the name, it's just not his anymore. And the forest he visited had a god. The god was entirely formless, and more felt like it was the forest itself. As Caileigh kept going again and again, the god began to love this child, and saw him as its own. Then one day, year later, Caileigh stumbled into the forest bleeding out. He was dying, but he refused to die outside of the forest, and dropped right onto the path. It was the middle of new years, and Caileigh just watched the fireworks light up the sky. The god felt accepting of this, and comforted him throughout it, until the god began to understand... loss, for the very first time. The acceptance faded, replaced with a want for its son back. The god reduced its own power to breathe life into Caileigh, and months later, Caileigh finally arose. He was tired, but he was immortal, and now the guardian of his god's forest, perfectly in tune with it.

In gratitude, he offered his own name to the unnamed god. And in return, the god, now named Caileigh, blessed him with the name Silas. Their forest is now referred to as Caileigh Forest

Silas is a healer and can technically bend earth, water, and wind, but those powers are quite weak and hard to control. He's also extremely scared of fireworks. He is one of the few people in the immortals group to actually want to keep their immortality, he just made the deal to be their healer so long as they keep paying their respects to Caileigh Forest.

He loves Ajani, the child of a death god. Ajani tricked his way into the group by pretending that he could solve their problems, just because he wanted to escape his toxic environment, and didn't understand that they would have just... let him come with them regardless. Ajani didn't understand what it's like to not have to be the best in order to survive, and so he constantly tried to outshine Silas in a one-sided rivalry that honestly just got on everyone's nerves. They warmed up to each other though, so yay, love wins

That's my OC Silas

[ww2yaoi]

i have read all your mota fics on ao3 and i just wanna say THANK YOU !!! they were all so good and well written. i just wanna ask, do you have songs that you strongly associate with buck and bucky? ( mine is i'm your man by mitski. there is an edit with it on tiktok and it destroys me. (also lilac wine by jeff buckly for john's pov. i think about it a lot.)) thank you in advance!

thank you so much!! I'm glad you enjoyed!

I do! I have a whole playlist and funnily enough those two songs are on it lmao

I really like thunder by lana del rey for gale's pov of bucky - "you're like fucking mr. bright side when you're with all your friends, but I know what you're like when the party ends" it's soooo them

cowboy like me by taylor swift is always a classic ship song - "I've got some tricks up my sleeve, takes one to know one" rings very true to me about them

john my beloved by sufjan stevens, which the title alone... "so can we pretend sweetly, before the mystery ends?, I am a man with a heart that offends, with its lonely and greedy demands" can be read from gale's pov, how he's always in control of his temptations but in his heart he's wanting and that's an offense to him

those are just a few! I could probably explain the whole playlist but that would be a beast

thanks for the ask!

[c0mbatchameleon]

~

journal entry so ignore if u feel so inclined. it’s for me it’s for the records the files the digital footprint that simply won’t quit

ok I can’t stop listening to these songs and I think they will forever be entangled with the sounds and smells and introspections I found in rome and the south of Italy after ummm let’s just say losing my mind a little bit in prior destinations

this but specifically ‘wind doesn’t blow baby just cuz I want it to’ ! hell yeah it doesn’t!

this but in rome on the bus when I once again was reminded tjat my 15 yr old self is still warm and alive and kicking and thrashing somewhere beneath my ribs and that’s ok and if I just reach inside myself I can hold her hand sometimes.

this just this. just this.

picked up giovanni’s room after resding 30 pages and forgetting abt it forever ago and I think I just wasn’t ready for it then the writing has my jaw on the floor it’s visceral I’m in tears. but I’m also just a slut for a character so deeply drenched in shame that he’s sagging with it, bleeding it out onto everyone around him. like yasss keep hating urself it’s so devastating to witness I want more of it. u are so in love and it is the worst thing that has ever happened to u and u can’t look at urself because of it. yeesh!

I think traveling has made me appreciate art MORE and myself LESS. but that’s ok I had a big head to begin with—she needed to be knocked down a few pegs I FEAR

i also think what I like abt religious art is the way the divine are depicted as human and what that says about worship. if I were an artist I bet the sculpture I made to honor Venus would look a lot like a woman I loved or maybe even myself and alsoooo I bet I’d devote my whole life to doing it justice, conveying its beauty and divinity in the name of my belief too. i like the way that something centuries, even millennia old still conveys a devotion so vivid and tangible, undying and unweathered despite the physical decay, that i can’t help but be compelled to honor the subject too. I can’t help but think— well this must be worth worshipping.

oh I also like the Roman sculptures cuz sometimes they have my nose and I am full of myself. also they look so human I wanna reach out and touch them and isn’t that worship too and isn’t that what we’re meant to feel is that the whole point? and has worship and love always looked like this then? felt like this? or is the melatonin just kicking in?,

anyways I’m ready to go home I have big plans to eat chipotle somewhere near the airport when we land in a few days and then go home and sleep and sleep some more and shower and take an edible and sleep some more and take a bath and sleep and think abt that fictional character and spin them around in my mind with my eyes closed for 12 hrs straight. ok gn chat

[relnicht]

Sufjan on Predatory Wasp of the Palisades, at Austin City Limits 2006:

''So when I was a kid we used to go to summer camp every year. My parents would send me and my siblings away and one time at summer camp I met this one kid and uh we became best friends and we started hanging out all the time. When we go swimming, we were swimming buddies, and we go sailing, we’re sailing buddies and we go canoeing, we’re canoeing buddies. And then we went on a long camping trip and we had to stay in tents and hike for a few days and climb up these cliffs and do all this adventuring outdoors. And one time we got a little bit lost and we wandered off and uh saw this huge thing in the sky. We couldn’t really tell what it was and it looked that like maybe it was a uh spaceship or UFO so we were really excited. And it was coming closer and closer and it was making this kinda whirling, buzzing noise, and when we saw that it was really close it actually had wings and it had claws and it looked like a giant hawk or uh a big eagle or a dragon or something. And then- But then it also had a stinger and it was buzzing. And its wings were kinda transparent. So we thought: well it’s definitely a wasp. And- But it was so big. It was like the size of a good [???]. This is totally true. And we were running and running and running away from it cause it was chasing us and it was buzzing and flapping its wings and cawing like a bird. And- like a crow. And then uh we just got away from it just in time before it swooped down and we hid out in a cave for several days eating snickers bars and Charleston chews that we had stashed away in our pockets. Etcetera. Then we got away. We went back to the camp -oh no- and everyone was like ‘where are you guys- where were you guys?’ We said ‘nevermind’ but- We didn’t want to tell anyone uh and anyway the rest of the week at camp everything we said that was like flapping around in the sky that was a mosquito or a kite or a plastic bag or a helium balloon, we were afraid of it. So. This- maybe this is one of our theme songs for this tour cause that’s why we all have wings on. It’s sort of to overcome my fear of flying things, so. So this song is- sort of takes some of those memories from summer camp, put it into a song about the predatory wasp that was out to get us.'

[sgtmickeyslaughter]

✨Tag Game Wednesday ✨

hi @energievie and @jrooc

Name: gigi

What is the most listened to artist in your music app of choice this month? chappell roan yall already knew

What song do you know all the lyrics to? A lot of songs honestly, i use songs to memorize things bc anything set to music embeds itself so deep in my brain - but my go to dark horse karaoke song is

What song do you pretend to know all the lyrics to and sing along to even though you don't?

bc its so catchy but i do not speak german but boy do i think i can when this comes on

or anything from kate bush bc i love her but idk what the hell she’s saying

If you were to be crowned Queen/King/Royalty of listening to a band or artist, who would that be? 

honestly this one is too tough, however if it was still 2016 the answer would unequivocally be lana del rey and i don’t want to hear a thing about it

What band/artist surprises you the most on your frequently listened to artists?

sometimes when i write or work i listen to hours and hours of lofi playlists so whenever a song from that sneaks on to my spotify stats im always very confused

Favourite line from a song (or one you have been thinking about lately?

I think these lyrics are very clever and poignant

Guilty pleasure band or song?

college drop out/ graduation and grimes 😬 i don’t think i listen to any bad/cringe music but some artists are pretty shit people

Okay let's talk fandom music:

Fave band or song you've discovered from a Fan Fic?

years and years and years ago i listened to sufjan stevens for the first time bc of a destiel fic

Fave Fanfic Playlist?

I’ll be honest i can’t really think of one, but i have one for myself since all my fics are named after songs, its linked here but hopefully it will grow a little

Fave Gallavich song?

pink and white was insane work for the prison reunion scene but at last brought the wedding to another level of grace and i loved that pick

Do you listen to music recommended by the writer or an included playlist?

sometimes! i try really really hard to but it’s difficult to travel to a secondary internet location for a fic playlist

What song do you think is Gallavich coded?

*sigh*

What’s a bop you want to share with your mutuals today? 

I listen to a lot of older gen hip hop on my ride home from work bc it helps me feel relaxed so i’ll leave you with that

i was also tagged for the 5 songs from your favorite playlists game, so ill drop those as well

and the last one is bam bam by sister nancy but tumblr has an audio limit

tagging @iansw0rld @lingy910y @creepkinginc @doshiart @mmmichyyy @mickeym4ndy @em-harlsnow @mickittotheman @mickeysgaymom @softmick @spookygingerr @atthedugouts @deathclassic @solitarycreaturesthey @hazeisblue @blue-disco-lights @metalheadmickey

[extraordinaryhistories]

#20 - 'Joy! Joy! Joy!' (A Sun Came bonus track, 2004)

Here’s the scoop, kids: there is no personal heaven. Jesus died to redeem you, but he also died to redeem everyone; in the eyes of the Lord, all are equal. That means that everyone on Earth has equal responsibility to pray, to worship, to love, to show mercy, to show grace unto their brothers just as they would have it be done to them. Issue is, some people need a little more of a nudge towards their God than others. How’re we gonna do that, then? How do we bring all the peoples of all the nations towards peace and a divine understanding?

Answer: we do it via synthesisers, drum machines, and a million vibrant flecks of technicolour.

And in this way, the annoyingly-punctuated ‘Joy! Joy! Joy!’ is a real sea change, quite unlike anything on the album it’s appended to – or anything that Sufjan was trying at the time, really. Don’t let its status as a bonus track on A Sun Came mislead you: ‘Joy! Joy! Joy’ was recorded in 2001, right around the recording of the Steve Reich-meets-Kraftwerk sophomore release Enjoy Your Rabbit. Its deeply electronic stylings make a lot more sense when considered in that context. And yet they don’t, because ‘Joy! Joy! Joy’ is something that every song on Enjoy Your Rabbit decidedly is not: a structured, melodic, vocally-driven conventional song, with lyrics and chords and a lot of synths. Not at all a shock for Sufjan to write a song like this, but certainly a shock for him to write it at this period in his development - this could pass as a Silver and Gold song, or even an Age of Adz b-side, produced some nine years before his most iconic bloopfest was released. It bears repeating that that’s the beautiful thing about this era of his music. Sufjan’s unyielding experimental drive is the very reason he has become who he is today, and you can see his fledgling brilliance in these early off-cuts, nicked and scuffed though they may be. More simply: to get to an ‘Impossible Soul’, Sufjan first had to write a ‘Joy! Joy! Joy!’.

There is no doubt that ‘Joy! Joy! Joy!’ is a fascinating curio, but to leave its appraisal there would be to patronise what is a genuinely endearing, adorable, good-natured bit of songwriting and production. Age of Adz is a very crowded album, with detritus seeping out of every corner of nearly every song, but ‘Joy! Joy! Joy!’ is ‘I Want to Be Well’ on various exotic varieties of crack cocaine. At its peak it is absolutely frantic and brickwalled to high heaven – one gets the distinct impression a lot of time was spent on this one, because holy fuck is there an abundance of stuff going on here. Warbling synths release bubbles; computers glitch; vibraphones execute code; guitars scream; layers upon layers upon layers of drum machines attack the song’s pulse. When it all piles up, the sound is frenzied. I suppose this is the song’s weakest feature – there’s no single instrumental element that stands out from the sludge of the production, and it all gets a bit tiring – but there are far more egregious sins committed on songs around this time.

The surprising thing about ‘Joy! Joy! Joy!’ is that it doesn’t feel tokenistic. We can say this in retrospect far more easily, of course, now that we have a wealth of Sufjan electronica to pull from (and that one of those pieces of Sufjan electronica is considered by many to be his absolute finest work.) But short of the too much-ness of the production, this one actually feels complex and lived-in, and each individual element feels like the work of someone with far more experience in synth-based music than 2001-era Sufjan. That’s just emblematic of something mysterious that happened to the young songwriter around the turn of the millennium – a sudden, dramatic leap in songwriting prowess, as if all the relentless trial and error forced a switch to flip somewhere in him. The Sufjan of 1998 would have almost certainly made a mess of this song.

The Sufjan of 1998 would have also failed in another crucial way: he would not have been able to nail the song’s emotional thrust as well as he ended up doing. No prizes for guessing it – ‘Joy! Joy! Joy!’ is an ecstatically hopeful piece of music. Glee seeps out of every corner here, from the idiosyncratic computer glitches that fill the void between each drum hit at the song’s outset (a very well-done element reminiscent of classic Autechre) to the insistently major key chord progression. This is also true for the vocal melody. The verses have one of the odder and more out-of-character melodies I’ve heard from Sufjan; the note that he resolves to at the end of every other line (‘yes, I would like to be a man’) carries with it this sort of child-like clunkiness, saccharine even by Sufjan standards. No hints of the relative minor anywhere in this song, right through to the chorus, which neatly resolves the final syllable on the root note each and every single time. It is a resolutely positive-sounding song, almost awkwardly so – not that anyone should expect anything different from a song named ‘Joy! Joy! Joy!’ (so! many! loud! exclamations!). Not nearly as listenable as any of his later contented melodies, though. No pentatonic major to be found here.

Though I suppose that’s in keeping with the song’s lyrical themes. This is, like much of Sufjan’s earliest material, a Christian song, and one that insists on Christian orthodoxy in a way that seems very unhip to us modern heathens. When one thinks of Sufjan’s reckoning with his Christianity in music, one tends to think of the moments where he doesn’t appear so Christian at all. Sufjan Stevens is probably the greatest Atheist-baiter in all of popular music, and I suspect this is part of the reason that he is still so revered among the chronically God-hating cadre of online music snobs. We think immediately of ‘we lift our hands and pray over your body, but nothing ever happens’, or ‘don’t do to me what you did to America’; the moments where Sufjan expresses righteous doubt, direct challenge to God. Us atheists like it, I suspect, because we feel as if Sufjan is batting for our team here. Hell yeah, we say, you stick it to ‘em!  

I feel as if Sufjan has become viewed this way for a while now – indie music’s resident self-hating Christian, t.A.T.u. for lapsed Catholics, the man who keeps implying that one day he might just do it! He might just go ahead and cast out God once and for all! (I remember a few interviews around the release of The Ascension in which the interviewers really pushed this angle.) It’s a tempting narrative, and more importantly, an easy narrative to latch onto. Apparently too easy. Because Sufjan really is one of the most, if not the most, dyed-in-the-wool Christians in the ‘cool’ modern music scene. If his songwriting and interviews are anything to go by, he is a progressive Christian in some senses, but he is a flaming fundamentalist in most others. This is most evident in his earlier, less studied work. ‘We Are What You Say’ presents a God that will strike down nonbelievers with the force of a small supernova. ‘A Sun Came’ does exactly the same. And then there’s ‘Joy! Joy! Joy!’, which is literally a song about the importance of reading the Bible closely. Like, very closely ‘Every letter, every line.’

Why should you read every letter, every line? Because it’s the only way to truly live in adherence to ‘the Kingdom’s will’. It is, as Sufjan curiously sings, also the solution for those who ‘would like to be a man’ – interesting because it directly pushes the song into somewhat atypical territory for Sufjan, where issues of gender and masculinity are directly (not implicitly) considered. I suppose this line can be read in two ways. Reading Scripture affirms one’s masculinity directly – God inherently consecrates, validates and solidifies our identity, making us all more comfortable in our own skin – and implicitly – to be an ardent follower of the text is to develop discipline, attentiveness and a fundamental ‘knowing-ness’, all traditionally masculinist qualities. Or perhaps Sufjan speaks of ‘man’ not as man-the-gender but as man-the-species, and thus argues that humanity was born from, and should naturally return to, God’s word. It is one of the more interesting lyrics from Sufjan’s early work. Plenty of ambiguity there.

The remainder of the song is less ambiguous. The four variations of the chorus here: ‘I believe in page’, ‘I read every page’, ‘I believe in peace’, and ‘I believe in joy’. The links between these lines are very clear. This is a song about joy, but it’s a song about the Bible as a conduit of joy, the only path to a sustainable world happiness. We get this spelled out to us quite explicitly in a sort of adorable quasi-bridge section that only a young Sufjan would have come up with. In a sudden transition to spoken word, Sufjan glibly asks Sharia Nova (his long-time backing vocalist and frontwoman of My Brightest Diamond, who was already involved with his projects in this early stage) what she believes in. The answer? ‘Peace and justice for all’, immediately followed by a chaotic drum break. Get your asses on the floor in the name of peace and justice!

I find this moment endearing because it is the sort of knowingly-schlocky juvenilia that Sufjan would call back to on his 2016 tour especially. Its naïveté fits the song snugly. The answers to life’s hardships, sorrows, dilemmas and difficulties? Not so difficult after all, actually. You’ll find them if, and only if, you read every page. Cause and effect. Read God’s word, find peace. Find joy.

And so ‘Joy! Joy! Joy!’ is one of the most uncomplicatedly, unquestioningly Christian songs in Sufjan’s entire body of work. It’s a crowded field, but this one very much stands out: a song about the glee of orthodoxy and the orthodoxy of glee, a welcome inclusion amidst countless songs that view Christianity with reverent dourness (pre-Illinois) or direct cynicism (post-Illinois). The unyielding torrent of sugar that composes ‘Joy! Joy! Joy!’ will inevitably be off-putting to many; its dearth of subtlety and promulgation of an approach to Christianity that many modern faithful no longer subscribe to can only have limited appeal, if we treat this song only as a lyrical product.

Part of what makes Sufjan so outstanding is that everyone can find a part of themselves in his best music. It’ll be hard for many people to find a part of themselves in ‘Joy! Joy! Joy!’. Fair play, then: judge ‘Joy! Joy! Joy!’ by its musical merits alone. There are plenty of them. Unbridled happiness is everywhere here, and it’s created by way of a musical style that makes this one so ahead of its time that it seems absurd to find it as a bonus track on A Sun Came. So much so, in fact, that I am almost surprised that Sufjan never considered playing this one on any of his late period synth-heavy tours. Not the smoothest or most listenable song that Sufjan has ever created, but it is better than it has any right to be. It executes its message with a startling clarity:

This is the happiness that God has given us! Rejoice! Rejoice! Rejoice!

[tianalova]

I ❤️ SUFJAN STEVENS.

Seriously, I discovered this man in 2021. I vividly remember listening to Death with Dignity, at night, laying in my bed, in the dark, with just my earphones in. I was 13, and i was then listening to music on Youtube. The algorithm randomly added that song in my mix, and it was the slowed and reverb version of it LOLL

I’ve never thought i’d listen to this kind of music (i used to listen to only agressive pop and all that kind of stuff), but this album opener blew my mind. I fell in love with the song within the first few guitalin? (i think) arpeggios. I thought « how is it possible to make something this beautiful ?? and i’m not even 10secs in. »

I didn’t really understood the lyrics at first, as English isn’t my native language, but his voice really activated some part of my brain. It tickled it and i fell in love with Sufjan’s voice : i have never heard a voice like this before !! so breathy, beautiful and « lived in ». I mean. He has lived a lot of things lol

the piano part in the song made me almost cry.

and don’t even get me started on the last part of the song. The vocals. The instruments. so much emotion conveyed without any lyrics. The little chord progression (i hope that you know which one i’m referring to) that made the whole thing feel so mesmerizing. The last few notes of the sliding guitar? i think… idk what instrument that is. I cannot explain with words how i was feeling. and all of that in slowed and reverb LOLLL it made me so emotional. I wasn’t even able to process the whole thing. Too much happening for me. and the song ended. it was a whole experience.

And then i listenend to carrie and lowell. No shade in the shadow of the cross always gets me. John my beloved too. my three favorite songs ever. Maybe i’ll write a whole new post for them.

illinois : a whole different thing. I was like bro that man can do anything.

the greatest gift : carrie and lowell but the unreleased and the remixes. The demos really make me emotional all the time. We can hear sufjans voice so clearly

age of adz : the first time i listened to it i think i despised it LOLLLL. but now it’s my FAVORITE album ever. Who is able to make a 25 min long song this good?? and there are no boring parts in Impossible soul. Man this guy is a genius. I want to be well is my favorite ; sufjan conveys the feeling of being sick so well?? the little high-pitched electronic sounds really sound like nervous disease

michigan : i just have one thing to say : so pretty

bangers.

the ascension : never thought i’d like electronic pop music but i do now !!! he does everything so well. I particularly love this album bc his voice sometimes gets really loud and strong (on landslide, make me an offer i cannot refuse or tell me you love me, for example)

A beginners mind : wowowowowowowow this blew my mind. If « magic » was an album it would be this one.

reflections : i love these piano pieces !!! the same for the decalogue

planetarium : this album grew on me a lot. I love Jupiter, and also the end of Neptune. I love watching sufjan performing mercury on Youtube. But the spoken part at the end of Earth freaks me out. i ended up crying 😭😭😭 they were so scary.

Aporia : original!!! i like it

Carrie and lowell live : i’m gonna have to make a whole new post for this one too

Silver and gold : man how is Sufjan able to make a christmas album with 58 songs, when he already made Songs for Christmas ?😭 he is so prolific. i love justice delivers its death. maybe one of the realest songs i’ve ever heard in my short life lol. And christmas unicorn being right after that heart wrenching song is so hilarious. I AM THE BIGGEST CHRISTMAS UNICORN FAN !!!!

All delighted people : one of his best works. I’m gonna make a post for this one too

The BQE and RUN RABBIT RUN : BEAUTIGUL ARRANGEMENTS

songs for christmas : love the vibe : jesus, banjo and piano and pretty synthesizers and organ

man i am writing too much

The Avalanche : illinoise but another one. with 742947 versions of the same song (and i Love Sufjan for that)

a sun came : make some bangers and add some talking tracks in the middle. and don’t forget satans saxophone

enjoy your rabbit : LFJELEURIE PPPROFFRRRRRRRR ZZZAAZZ PAAAGREE BRRRWSWOOOOOOOOOOO MEEEEP MEEEEPPPPP BAAWWWW PKSSSKKSKSKS SSSSS EZZZZHHHHH

seven swans : take seven swans but make them Christian and add guitar and banjo. and don’t forget the American references. And don’t run, because He will chase you cause he is the Lord.

and i’m ending this with Javelin

The first album drop i have ever witnessed in my life.

man i will make another another another post for this one too

and he has so many singles

you can tell i got tired writing this LOLLLL i stopped being serious and i don’t even know if someone is going to read all of that but if someone does, thank you lol

but i am forever full of respect and love and i’m so grateful for Sufjan’s music, and for Sufjan himself. I hope he will heal completely from GBS. praying for him!!

[possibilistfanfiction]

hey!! I'm obsessed w your writing about butch bea -- it's been super life-giving and I feel so seen when I read it :) lol it's gotten to the point where I am BEGGING my gf to watch warrior nun for the sake of being able to read the butch bea universe... anyways. it's incredible. show-stopping. legendary.

I did have a question, though -- what kind of music do you think bea listens to? to me (read: I'm projecting lol) she'd love "take the sadness out of saturday night" by bleachers, "in defense of my own happiness" by joy oladokun, and boygenius (both the first ep & all three of their solo work). and of course ava loves to sing "solid" by muna to bea.

anyways, again, I LOVE this universe & am very grateful that you've spent so much time & energy fleshing it out :) have a great day!

well i have none of these songs as ones bea would listen to but that’s cool! do whatever u want!! i have no agenda w music ppl fuck w so do ur thing lol

maybe bc i’m in LA, but i think she’s p vibey. lots of frank ocean, moses sumney, blood orange. especially blond & negro swan as like fundamental albums for her. bea is also fun!! i think she loves like alicia keys & tlc, really good classic r&b, & subsequently like solange. also i obviously love arooj aftab but i do stand by like. the supreme holiness in her music so i think bea would rly love it. it’s like profoundly undeniable. in that vein, sufjan stevens & leonard cohen as well. i think bea would also rly love like… karen o, silversun pickups, paramore kinda vibes too when she’s Feeling It. & god help anyone who ever plays a love supreme for her

mm for me ava is a pop girly!! which is my favorite!! i literally mean this w like i think pop is the most supreme genre of all time ever, so like… carly rae! charli xcx! caroline polacheck! she is here to feel! she is here to have fun! she is here to be sexy! she is here to be sad! she is here to be in love! the intelligence & excess of pop & its like silly yet obsessive nature,,, how could ava not fall in love. how could anyone not fall in love. pop forever. + the entirety of the insecure soundtrack (which bea probably has half of on vinyl) — best show of all time re:music. (somewhere in there there’s them watching insecure as an ode to LA but i digress lol). i do think ava also probably loves anything justin vernon does (hymn alternatives, the poet of our generation — a word about gnosis, it ain’t gonna buy the groceries), & also she loves contemporary classical.

both of them are absolutely feral abt florence + the machine, all of her discography but i think her latest album maybe more than anything