Etcetera OG ✎ COMPLETE

; a twenty one pilots music video that never happened but should have

                  I wasn't actually going to post this, honestly. For a little while I think I decided that I was going to, but then I changed my mind because it felt too personal. But here I am, because it's 4:30 in the morning and I really have nothing better to do, so! Here we go.

                  A few of you might remember a thing I do on here sometimes where I tell you about nonexistent One Direction music videos that I see in my head whenever I hear some of their songs. That's kind of what this is going to be, only it isn't One Direction, and it's only one song. It'll kind of be like a random blog entry, to be honest. And I don't keep a blog anymore so this is the closest thing I have to that. Hope you don't mind.

                  So, my sleep schedule is currently all messed up thanks to end-of-the-year homework crunches and whatnot. By six o'clock pm yesterday, I was exhausted after another night of absolutely zero sleep. I figured I'd let myself try to do that now; I knew it would only be a nap because I was on my futon, and if there's one thing you need to know about this god-awful futon it's that we paid eighty dollars for it and it is the worst. There is no way I'd be able to sleep for more than a couple hours on it.

                  I had my headphones on and was resting my eyes for a while. I know that I never fully fell asleep, but I was at a point where I was, like, vividly daydreaming I guess. It was a weird halfway point where I was definitely, most assuredly awake, yet I was dreaming as if I were asleep. No idea, but it happened.

                  A song that I've recently been really into started playing called "Lovely" by Twenty One Pilots. It's apparently a bonus track on their Vessel album (the version that I have anyway, though there's another older version), if you're wondering. And I'm not ignorant as to what the song is about. I always understood the point of it and I've admired it since the first time I heard it – that's why I loved it so much, even. But for some reason as I listened to it this time, things were different.

                  To explain in short, it's essentially a plea to someone who doesn't want to live anymore not to die. Part of the lyrics go, "I pray that one day you'll see / the only difference between life and dying / is one is trying, that's all we're gonna do / so try to love me and I'll try to save you." Those four lines pretty much sum up the song, but it's surprisingly upbeat, which I feel like poetically lends itself to the overall hopefulness of the metaphoric message, and I don't know. It was very artfully done, which is why the first time I heard it after one of my poetry classes – with all of these creative devices fresh in my mind – I immediately began to cry even though the music wasn't sad music.  So, here we go.

                  (Side note: I highly recommend you listen to the song as you read the rest of my story. It'll just help everything make sense; I've put the video above.)

                  A young woman in her early twenties is walking down a sidewalk in a city somewhere, sort of briskly and in time to the beat of the music. Probably New York, because my mind tends to enjoy traveling there. I am seeing her from her front and slightly below eye-level, facing her as she walks towards me (or, considering this is a music video I'm imagining, the camera) and looking sort of up at her. We never meet, of course, as the camera's moving backwards at the same rate she's walking.

                  The shot is mostly of her face; we can't see much more than her shoulders and above apart from a murky sky, but the most important thing to note is that she looks utterly defeated. Her eyes are lifeless and surrounded by a shadow, lips in a straight line but turned down at the corners. It's not like she's actively sad about anything, more like she's just...given up. The scene isn't in black and white, but she's as murky as the sky, almost in various shades of gray from her hair to her skin. It's heartbreaking.