#Hail St. Sebastian

[scatterghosts]

Hail St. Sebastian by The Mountain Goats // art by Welder Wings

[thejunkyardafewblocksfromhere]

It gets harder to keep trying to hold on Watch our hopes take wing Wave at them when they're gone Plunge like suicides from rooftops Break our ankles when we land And bless the arrows That strike us where we stand -Hail Saint Sebastian, The Mountain Goats

[spiritunwilling]

Oh Steven Quarz Universe Hail St Sebastian AMV we're really in it now

[gumgumvibecheck]

listening to unreleased mountain goats music is such a catch 22 cause its all fantastic and makes you access esoteric and previously forbidden emotions but its much more difficult to share and inflict on your friends

[ofallingstar]

List of books I read in 2023

Charlotte's Web by E.B. White

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

The Broken Girls by Simone St. James

Women Talking by Miriam Toews

L'homme semence by Violette Ailhaud

Into the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

On Magic & The Occult by W.B. Yeats

Faithful Place by Tana French

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe

Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996 by Seamus Heaney

The Love Object by Edna O'Brien

Don Quijote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Night by Elie Wiesel

In Between the Sheets by Ian McEwan

The Lost Days by Rob Reger & Jessica Gruner

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

Parallax by Sinéad Morrissey

The Woman in the Strongbox by Maureen O'Hagan

Diaries, 1910-1923 by Franz Kafka

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates

The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell

Walking to Martha's Vineyard by Franz Wright

A Tale for the Time Being Ruth Ozeki

Mouthful of Forevers by Clementine von Radics

Wasteland by Francesca Lia Block

The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich

Find Me by André Aciman

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

The Grace Year by Kim Ligget

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold

A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

A Stolen Life by Jaycee Dugard

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King

My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix

Psycho by Robert Bloch

Classic Tales Of Vampires And Shapeshifters by Tig Thomas

Love Devours: Tales of Monstrous Adoration by Sarah Diemer

Through the Woods by Emily Carroll

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Putney by Sofka Zinovieff

The Woman in Me by Britney Spears

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

The Maid by Nita Prose

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Deep by Rivers Solomon

You can follow me or add me as a friend on Goodreads.

[technofinch]

"I wrote this on a tour bus, in 2009. And then I promptly put it away, even though I thought it was kinda good, but some things you have to kill, just to see if they will come crawling back up. Tonight, the song 'Hail St. Sebastian', written outside of I think the Mercy Lounge in Nashville on a tour bus with Owen Pallett, comes crawling back up from the grave." -- 2012-03-24 - Merkin Concert Hall - New York, NY

[wrathfulrook]

Holy Mary, Mother of God

Summary: As Staci suffers under Jacob and the cult, he turns back to his religion. Every day he prays to the Holy Mother, both to beg her help and to remind himself that he is not a Peggie.

Rating: M

Word Count: ~1.2k

Read it on ao3.

Staci hadn’t been to Mass in years, since he had moved out of his parents’ house. He hadn’t been to confession in even longer, not since he was confirmed. He didn’t remember the last time he prayed. Not that he didn’t believe. He did. He had Faith. He just wasn’t very observant.

Maybe this was his punishment.

While going through his trials, mindlessly killing and fighting for his life, he considered that he had died in the helicopter crash and had gone to hell. It made sense. Spending his time alert starved and thirsty in a cage under the hot sun, his time in the trials a thoughtless red haze of blood and death.

He’d prayed for the first time in a long time. Initially to God, but then to St. Sebastian. In middle school, Staci had chosen Sebastian as his confirmation saint for no other reason than that he was the patron saint of athletes and that he had survived the first attempt on his life. Staci just thought he was cool. Though, once he heard the name “Staci Sebastian” spoken aloud for the first time in front of the entire parish, he felt it was significantly less cool. And he never gave too much thought to his confirmation saint afterwards.

But throughout his trials he prayed to the saint for strength. If St. Sebastian could survive being tied to a tree and used for target practice, he could survive this ordeal. He could be strong. And so he was.

After the trials, the physical torture stopped, but Staci didn’t feel any relief. Any one slip-up, a single display of weakness, and he would be reclassified as meat. And he was under far more scrutiny than the average resident of the vet center. Jacob kept him close, made him his personal assistant. He was always there, always watching. Staci was supposed to be strong but submissive, a fine line to walk.

He didn’t pray to St. Sebastian too much after his trials. He didn’t pray to God much either. The Peggies prayed to the same God, and something about that didn’t sit right with Staci. Instead, he prayed to Mary. The Peggies didn’t care about St. Mary. Protestants never did. So Staci directed his prayers to the holy mother of God.

He started every morning with a silent Hail Mary and a request that she protect him, that she look after him. His thoughts turned to the sinless, virgin mother every time Jacob knocked him around, every time he suffered. And he suffered a lot as Jacob’s assistant. And he witnessed even more suffering. Every time he passed the cages, every time he witnessed bodies carried out of their trials, tied to posts for target practice, or fed to the wolves, he asked Mary to watch out for them, to ensure their suffering was taken into account, weighed against their time to be spent in Purgatory.

And every night, to help himself fall asleep despite the sounds of screams and howls of wolves he never got used to, he prayed the Rosary, keeping count on his fingers since he didn’t have the beads. And it always worked; he fell soundly asleep long before he reached final Mystery. But more than that, it brought him comfort. He didn’t remember every Mystery. He couldn’t recite the Apostle’s Creed. But he did as much as he could, and he tried. And it was something the Peggies never did. Not even Joseph, their beloved “Father,” prayed the Rosary, despite wearing the beads as some sort of blasphemous accessory.

No. Staci wasn’t like them and they weren’t like him. He was Catholic. His Faith had clear rules and doctrine and hierarchy. Something so horrible as the Project at Eden’s Gate could never happen in the Catholic Church. A priest goes as bonkers as Joseph? The bishop steps in. And the parish would never let their priest turn out like Joseph, because deviations from the Catechism wouldn’t be tolerated. It was all so clear. Every question had a clear, prescribed answer. And if you followed the hierarchy to the top, the Pope spoke directly with the Holy Spirit. He wasn’t a mad man claiming divine knowledge. He was official, appointed, and bound within the limits of the role.

You simply couldn’t make a crazy Catholic cult. Every cult he’d ever heard of was made up of Protestants. Staci never like Protestantism for that very reason. It was all so fluid and subjective. It never seemed like any two churches, even of the same denomination, were on the same page. That’s how people like Joseph happened. That’s how Staci ended up in this position.

They could do a whole lot to him. But they could never make him a Peggie. Not really, not in his heart.

He wished he was stronger. Maybe Jacob was right. Maybe he was weak. He wanted to be strong enough, brave enough, to pray the Rosary out loud. He wanted to tell Jacob no when he dragged him along to services. He wanted to stand up for his own beliefs and stay strong and unwavering as he was literally thrown to the wolves. He wished he had the balls to stand up and die a martyr.

But that’s where he and his confirmation saint differed. Staci could never stay strong when staring down the barrel of a gun. He couldn’t resist the conditioning Jacob subjected him to. And he couldn’t make himself assert his true beliefs, not when he’s seen what happens to the people who don’t even do anything to make the Herald angry. He was weak.

So, he prayed for forgiveness. He prayed for strength. He asked Mary to intervene on his behalf, to ask her Son to show him mercy, to help him in some way, any way.

No help ever came.

And maybe he was dead after all? Not in Hell, like he’d initially thought. Maybe this was Purgatory. He suffered so much that it had to be for a reason. Maybe this was the suffering he must endure to cleanse his soul, to finally be worthy of Heaven. If this was Purgatory, it was working. He was becoming a better person. He was less of an asshole, just quiet and empathetic. He prayed multiple times a day. Wasn’t Purgatory supposed to bring you closer to God? Staci had never been more religious than now. Maybe because he was dead.

He hoped so. He hoped this was Purgatory so that when it was finally over, when he’d finally atoned for all his sins in life, he could go to Heaven. Never to suffer again. He hoped this was Purgatory so that it wasn’t really happening to others. So that there were no people in cages back in Hope County, that no one was being fed alive to wolves. He hoped that this was all being done for his benefit, to make his soul pure again, to ready him for eternal life in Heaven.

But he couldn’t be sure. So, just in case, he prayed.

[unloneliest]

let's GOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! what's yall's dream songs not currently on streaming services to get added via jordan lake sessions? my top 3 are hail st. sebastian / anything off of jam eater blues / attention all pickpockets

[the-sixxth-sinner]

Alexi's Art & Fics masterpost

AO3

Ko-Fi

Mötley Crüe

Art

demon!Nikki (based on @arnold-layne 's fic "Ex Malo Bonum")

Christmas comic

Vince (based on @tattooed-lies 's fic "Add it up")

Nikki as a Caravaggio painting

A very cool portrait of Nikki made with water and salt

Tommy sketches

Vince sketches

"God Bless the children of the Beast" pt. 1 (demon!Terror Twins portraits)

God Bless the children of the Beast pt. 2 (demon!Vince & Mick portraits)

Old ass Nikki portrait

Old ass Crüe fanart

Baby boy. Baby (Nikki w a dog collar sketch)

Tommy portrait (inking and shadows practice)

Run. (Tommy piece based on this fanfic on AO3)

City Boy Blues

Mötley taröts

stripper!Vince

Birthday moodboards

Vince

Mick

Tommy

Nikki

Fics

Terminus (See you in Hell) cover art playlist (Nikki's last moments before taking the extreme step. tw for suicide and drug abuse)

Mask of Sanity (inspired by American Psycho. Nikki has a bad trip and uh... shit happens. tw for sex, drugs & violence)

Rebel Rouser (Nikki Sixx x fem!reader. set in the 70s, reader has a crush on frankie and they skip school together. tw for underage sex)

To: my future self (Nikki writes a letter to his future self. tw for depression)

Sumthin' for Nuthin' (a series where i took the concept of gigolo!Nikki and ran with it)

Ep. 1 (Vinikki) (tw for homophobia and smut)

Ep. 2 (tw for smut and light bdsm)

❗Ep. 3 (tw for smut (who wouldve guessed) and public sex among other nasty stuff)

The Dogs d'Amour

Art

Tyla sketches

Tyla in his own art style

How come it never rains?

Tyla portrait

Jo Dog

Bam Bam

Planetary Pied Piper

Pourin' Out My Heart

Digital remakes of two of my faves

My Chemical Romance

Art

All Hail the Rat King (Gerard)

Gerard short shorts sketches.jpg

Gerard clown outfit sketch.jpg

Sailor Senshi Gerard!!

You Must Fix Your Heart (tattoo flashes)

Can You Stake My Heart? (vampire!Gerard sketch)

Frank Iero nosebleed.jpg

American Gothic (Gee+Frank)

Bonus:

I hope I die before they save my soul (Frank fanart)

Edits

The Foundations of Decay (tw religion)

Cringe is Dead and I Killed Her (glittery edits of Gerard, Frank & Ray)

Other

Art

Angels don't Kill (Children of Bodom)

Raw Meat = Blood Drool (The Editors)

Lani Sparks as St. Sebastian (requested by @junkyardromeo)

Moodboards

LA PAURA DEL BUIO (Måneskin)

[olreid]

hello... which mountain goats songs would you most relate with ill-made knight? asking for a friend

hmm well let's get the obvious pulls out of the way first:

answering the phone - but i think something's wrong with me / i think something's glued down wrong, maybe permanently

wild sage - some days i think i'd feel better if i tried harder / most days i know it's not true

psalms 40:2 - lord send me a mechanic if i'm not beyond repair

white cedar - i'll be reborn someday, someday / if i wait long enough

heel turn 2 - i don't want to die in here

in memory of satan - no one screams cause it’s just me / locked up in myself, never gonna get free

cry for judas - i’m still here / but all is lost

and now for some pulls that r not so obvious:

hail st. sebastian - if it doesn't crush me it's alright / if it doesn't break me it's alright

for charles bronson - set your sights on good fortune, concentrate / pull back the hammer, try to hold the gun straight / try to hold the gun straight

almost every door - the moment's never going to come / when anyone can say that the coast is clear

mobile - lord if you won’t keep me safe and warm / then send down the storm, send down the storm

if you see light - waiting for the front door to splinter / waiting all winter

tucson fog - trying to read the omens in the kitchen sink / trying to force an ending / where everything turns out well

milk song - the way you vanished gradually / has made a bitter man of me

song for my stepfather - now there’s only you and me / and the replica where my body used to be

incandescent ruins - shining on the inside, maybe

[opera-ghosts]

OTD in Music History: Composer, conductor, and piano / organ virtuoso Felix Mendelssohn (1809 - 1847) is born in Germany. Nothing short of a living legend in his own time, Mendelssohn still remains one of the most popular and frequently performed composers of the early Romantic period. Mendelssohn's considerable compositional output encompass symphonies, concertos, piano music, organ music, art songs, and chamber music. His best-known individual works include the "String Octet" (1825 -- written when he was just 16!) the "Overture To A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1826 -- written when he was just 17!), the "Italian" (1834) and "Scottish" (1842) Symphonies, the "St. Paul" (1836) and "Elijah" (1846) Oratorios, and his 1st Piano Trio (1839) and Violin Concerto (1844). Mendelssohn's collections of "Songs Without Words" are probably his most famous solo piano compositions; he also penned the melody for the ever-popular Christmas carol, "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!" Mendelssohn was also hailed for helping to spark revived interest among the concert-going public in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 - 1750), through his landmark 1829 performance of (a highly-edited and thoroughly rescored version of) the St Matthew Passion. One of the greatest and most influential conductors of the early 19th Century, Mendelssohn’s ten visits to Britain – during which he oversaw the premiere of many of his most important works – exerted a profound and lasting impact on the musical culture of that country. PICTURED: An 1844 autograph letter written and signed by Mendelssohn -- in surprisingly good English! -- to a female admirer, regarding various musical and social matters. Most notably, Mendelssohn describes celebrated Italian bass Luciani Mariani (1801 - 1859) as "his favorite singer.” Mariani created a number of important opera roles, including Oroe in Giacomo Rossini's (1792 – 1868) "Semiramide" (1823), Rodolfo in Vincenzo Bellini's (1801 – 1835) "La sonnambula" (1831), and Alfonso d'Este in Gaetano Donizetti's (1797 – 1848) "Lucrezia Borgia" (1833).

[electric-rabbits]

It's a Hail St. Sebastian kind of night lets go girls

[synoddiane]

Allegedly trans Mountain Goats songs ranked by how Palmcorder Yajna they are

A friend linked me to this article about trans Mountain Goats songs, noting that it included that one Mountain Goats song I like, so I decided to listen to all of them. In ascending order of Palmcorder Yajna:

White Cedar: Zero Palmcorder Yajna.

Hail St. Sebastian: Simply not a Palmcorder Yajna.

Birth of Serpents: Traces of Palmcorder Yajna in this.

The Mummy's Hand: Gets a little Palmcorder Yajna towards the end.

Heretic Pride: A non-Palmcorder Yajna song with a few Palmcorder Yajna parts.

Hebrews 11:40: Starts off promisingly Palmcorder Yajna, doesn't quite follow through.

Broom People: Notable Palmcorder Yajna vibes.

Attention All Pickpockets: Fairly Palmcorder Yajna, especially the chorus.

The Young Thousands: Now we're getting somewhere. Feels like it could be on the same album as Palmcorder Yajna.

Palmcorder Yajna: Way more Palmcorder Yajna than any of these others; feels almost unfair for it to be in the competition.

[vulpinesaint]

First of all, thanks for the saint uquiz. It was fun :) and I like reading your poem snippets. Compelling. Do you know Saint Anthony, he’s good at finding lost things. I always thought that was kinda poetic if not just practical. Also I went to catholic elementary school and they taught us about saint philomena, patron saint of lost causes. She was a little girl who went through terrible things bc she refused marriage from an old emperor. Like why did they tell us, a bunch of little girls about that?

you are so welcome!! it was fun to write :) (i was in a religious fugue state for several nights sobbing in miffy's inbox over the hail mary)

i am not fully acquainted with saint anthony actually! i had my very specific set of saints as a kid and then i Stopped Believing In God so i know other saints only through brief mentions (though i do remember hearing that he was good for praying to when you'd lost something! maybe when i was going through our book of saints looking for a confirmation name). you're so right though there's something so poetic about reaching out to a figure held up in divinity above all else and only below god and asking them to help you find your keys. to point you toward where you left that letter you needed. for the divine to be domestic. smth about the safety of saints... god is not to be invoked except in dire need and even then all defaults to his plan for you. saints come down from the heavens for a moment to take your hand and lead you back to the necklace that you thought you lost all those years ago. lives in my head forever and ever. (can't remember if i put this line in the quiz??? but i wrote smth in the poem i chose lines from about how a saint comes down through the rays of light from the stained glass windows to hold your hand... same feeling.) and god. yeah. the way they handed us those stories of extreme suffering as if it would do nothing to us... for a second, i thought philomena was in my childhood book of saints, since her story sounded familiar, but i went to look on internet archive and she wasn't there; p sure who i was thinking about was saint agnes, whose story is very similar.

(her page was also right across from saint sebastian, so i'm sure i read her story more often than the others, when i went back for my constant visits with him.)

really though, saint philomena and saint agnes and saint maria goretti... how many catholic kids were just presented with stories of awful suffering, often of people not much older than them? st. tarcisius is another saint that i was a teensy bit fixated on as a kid (not as much as sebastian and cecilia) but the entirety of his story is that he was a boy carrying the host in the streets of rome and when he refused to give it up to a gang of men, he was beaten to death. i would go back and read his little passage over and over again. there's a miracle within that story, but really... the stories of martyrs are So Much of what makes me the way i am now. guarantee.

[goingtothebes]

THANK YOU FOR THE TAG @lizardmoor !! I love you so much 💗

This year - tMG

All I Need - Radiohead

Bluejays and Cardinals - tMG

Orange Crush - R.E.M.

Outer Scorpion Squadron - tMG

Videotape - Radiohead

In League With Dragons - tMG

Terror Song - Furniture Huschle

Hail St. Sebastian - tMG

Etiquette Song - tMG

Heel Turn 1 - tMG

Orange - Furniture Huschle

Masher - tMG

Exegetic Chains - tMG

Counterfeit Florida Plates - tMG A

Original Air-Blue Gown - tMG

Michael Myers Resplendant - tMG

I’ve Got the Sex - tMG

Naming Day - tMG

Going to Chino - tMG

Sorry this is so late! It got lost in my drafts. I’m tagging @verminatplay and @unloneliest and anyone else who wants to!

[strawberryblondebutch]

Said five Hail Marys before the game. Another at the start of the 3rd period and then Cava scored. And then another one with like 10 minutes left. Mother Mary and Mother Heise serve so hard

St. Sebastian and Sh*ttuck-St. M*ry’s really pulled through for me 🙏🏻

One more and I can put the Final Girl look into retirement until next season