The Lord Forgives

I went to catholic school when I was little so basically I’m a massive slut for religious themes and theology (even though I’m basically agnostic)

sacrilege based on the quote “godhood is just like girlhood: a begging to be believed” (kristin chang), because I’m obsessed with the idea of analyzing godhood through the lens of the experience of the teenage girl, thereby removing much of the power, agency, and capacity for violence that we associate with a male god (particularly in the old testament), and with men in general, and instead viewing god as a helpless, hysterical victim of fate the way we view teen girls, which then allows us to see the additional deeper layer of the pent-up, unexpressed female rage that often afflicts teen girls

*note: sacrilege feels a little incomplete, so if anyone has any suggestions or songs they think would fit feel free to tell me!

casual blasphemy songs with religious themes or outright discussion of religion, especially in ways that equate divinity with humanity (an idea that I find extremely interesting; I think religion is often people looking at humanity in its purest and strongest form and becoming so overwhelmed by it that they feel the need to remove it from themselves, elevating it and calling it “holy”)

holy sometimes when I listen to these songs I think I understand what people feel when they kneel with a rosary: god, not as a tyrant or an angry righteous father (those are commonplace and wholly human), but instead as protection and love and attention (description is from john 10:14, my favorite bible verse)

BONUS: 

fragmented supernatural-inspired, although it’s subtle (similar to sacrilege in that it relates divinity and teen girls, because i’m in love with the idea of castiel beginning to understand his own humanity by relating to the experience of the teen girl… fragmented, unsure of his identity, struggling with independence and the rejection of his family, lost and unseen, and with a relentless feeling of being misunderstood). also, cas’ biggest influences in the “human” front are dean and sam, who have never dealt with their own trauma in their lives and aren’t exactly great role models of emotional honesty, so I think the emotional rawness and honest anger that’s present in the music that teen girls resonate with would also resonate with him, especially since it’s all so different from anything dean and sam would listen to or allow themselves to openly engage with; therefore, it would allow him a space for emotional expression that is entirely his own and not a mimicry of the brothers. cas’ gender (or his lack of it, considering that he is technically a divine being in a male vessel) is another aspect of his identity that I feel he could grow to understand better through interaction with female artists and the female experience. on god somebody get these boys some mitski

links to my other playlists posts:

science concept playlists (julian bashir as dr. frankenstein au, mad science, and david from the alien movies aesthetics)

fandom playlists pt 1 (it’s always sunny in philadelphia, bryan fuller’s hannibal, and supernatural)

playlists about sex (an abandoned burlesque club, pegging the devil, and violence v. love)

horror or horror-ish-movie inspired (nina forever, the lost boys, and venom)

it has to do with how he’s portrayed in art history. back in the 12th century, when he became a plague saint, there was a shift from showing sebastian not as a burly soldier but as a ‘pure’ young man. it hung around as a popular trend that was then capitalized upon by renaissance artists like guido reni. as we clung to the image of him as the pure youth, we removed more and more gore from his wounds, and consequently that arrow episode where he was almost martyred takes on connotations that are far more ecstatic and orgastic than painful.

this atmosphere imbues his paintings with a certain sense of languid homoeroticism, which non straight men happily took to. the gay connotation has thus been around for a long time, and in enduring ways, seeing him referenced by gay writers like wilde and mann. yukio mishima, another writer, even cited in 1949 that seeing reni’s sebastian painting was his moment of gay awakening.

for reference, here’s one of reni’s sebastians (left) with a 1970 depiction of sebastian by luigi ortani (right). you can see, then, how much this male idealization of saint sebastian has stayed the same throughout history ;)