#hello have my blood of angels doctrine that i lose my SHIT over

[talentforlying]

@nightmarecountry: ‘♬ GIMME. I love seeing you wax lyrical about Johnnyboy. — SONGS I LOVE

blood of angels - brown bird! THE john constantine song for me, actually!! the lyrics, the frenetic pace of the backing track, the clinical delivery that explodes into desperate rebellion on the chorus, the undertone of seething disdain and secret self-recrimination born of exhausted cynicism!! this is the song of someone who's cycled all the way around from deep depression to a motherfucking god complex, and if that isn't john constantine in a nutshell. you have lines like:

i drank the blood of angels from a bottle / just to see if i could call the lightning down / it hasn't struck me yet, and i would wage my soul to bet / that there ain't no one throwing lightning anyhow

which make me think of his tendency to just ride the synchronicity highway and trust it'll put him where he needs to be, and let him do what he needs to do. also, his general 'well if god was gonna kill me he'd have fucking done it already' attitude towards risk-taking and making bets on a bluff. also, he has literally snorted santa claus's bones to hype up his magic, so like, he would actually drink angel blood if he had reason to. then there's:

too many tries at tempting fate to call it over / and you get to thinking fate's got different plans / like maybe, i'm not born to die but to bring darkness to the sky / and pull that goddamn sun down anyway i can

which make me think of the laughing magician arc, where constantine learned that his twin was supposed to have lived in his place and his being born instead cursed the world, and his reaction to this — and to his twin saying that if constantine let him take over his body, the world would be fixed — was 'fuck you and fuck that, i can live with a damned world as long as i'm the one living in it'. constantine is someone who's gone his whole life being told he should have died, shouldn't have existed, shouldn't have been born, should've taken someone else's place. of fucking course he resents it, of course he's bitter about it. but if the universe wanted him dead, it should have tried harder. that's where this comes in:

you could be right, they might come for me at night / in angry mobs with torches bright outside my door / for all my spite, i might never win the fight / but i will rage against the light forever more

he is a survivor against all odds, against death and fate and destiny, and he will continue to survive against all odds. he doesn't have to be liked. he doesn't have to be wanted. his purpose is to keep up the fucking fight, no matter the cost, and that's just what he's going to do. and finally, the part that kind of breaks my heart:

don't try to come 'round here spreading sentiments of cheer / you told your last white lie, everything is not alright / you hope, you pray, you love the light of day / but there's no one up there listening tonight

the way this is sung, it feels like constantine's exhausted-ass friends telling him to fuck all the way off after he's done something he can't fix, but also? constantine expects the worst, but he does also hope for the best. i think there's a part of him that genuinely, genuinely wants things to turn out okay in the end, and it takes a piece out of him every time he can't make it all work out for everybody. he knows magic has a cost, he knows the price is steep. he knows he can't save everybody and that some people get exactly what they went asking for. he knows the world is dark and full of terrors and horrors beyond human imagining but within human hands to reach and craft. but he still hopes. he still finds joy and love in the little things in life. and it still hurts when it doesn't last.

+ song for the corinthian: okay evil eye - franz ferdinand not only gives me general corinthian vibes, but also fucks heavy specifically for our dark mirror relationship w/ corinth and constantine, like:

well, i have the evil eye / well, i, i, i see your soul / you wear it on your face / it's warning what you do

also i mean. you do wear eyes on your face, so if he wants your soul, all he's gotta do is take it off ya. also, "don't believe in god, but believe in that shit / (not me!) not me! i'd like to bring them down" is giving corinth vs dream to me? very rebellious kid talking shit behind a parent's back in a way. all bravado as long as they're out of sight, the kind of rebellion born of missing something in that relationship.