Once upon a time, in the year 2010 — nearly a decade ago, fuck me — there was a land called Livejournal. And the residents of that land loved nothing more than to collect angsty songs by white men and collate them into angsty playlists about white men. Entire communities sustained themselves on this practice, even though this was before Spotify, so making a fanmix literally involved bundling a bunch of mp3 files and a questionably photoshopped album cover jpg into a zip file which you’d then store on MegaUpload and just cross your fingers and hope the link didn’t break or you didn’t get, like, arrested for piracy.
We can point to broad trends in Livejournal fanmixes of this era: a lot of Death Cab, a lot of The National, a lot of home-baked acoustic versions of “Teenage Dream.” But there was one song, and one song only, that defined the Livejournal fanmix, that made it what it is today, that animated an entire generation of repressed gays. What song could that be, you ask? What timeless classic, what work of sonic art?
You already know. It’s seared in your memory. You hear this banjocore shitstorm in your dreams. That opening guitar riff hits and it sends you reeling back to the days when you thought the two white men on the TV show were going to fuck, and then they had the audacity to not fuck.
Yes, “Little Lion Man” defined a generation and aged like milk. Shockingly, it could have been worse: I learned while researching this article that the producers of Glee actually asked Mumford & Sons if they could perform “Little Lion Man” in the show’s fourth season. It would have been a Dalton Academy Warblers number. And Mumford and his sons were apparently like, “Good fucking God, dude, no, fuck, no, we have to draw the line somewhere. We’re not going to trigger renal failure in your remaining cadre of intimacy-starved gay teen viewers.” Thus did “Little Lion Man” become a relic of a purer age.
Here, without further ado, is a list of every fictional character that popped up when I ran a Google search for “little lion man livejournal fanmix 2010,” and a few variants thereof. I should note that this list is not comprehensive. This only scratches the surface of the “Little Lion Man” phenomenon, that precious moment in time when we were all SuperWhoLocking without shame and getting into virtual knife fights about who would make the best boyfriend for Kurt Hummel. (Kum canoe all the way, btw.) I digress. Here we go.
- Alana Bloom from Hannibal
- Arthur from Inception
- Bilbo Baggins
- Blaine from Glee
- The entire cast of Bones
- Buffy
- Captain America
- Castiel
- Chloe from 24
- Cuddy from House
- The entire cast of Criminal Minds
- Dean Winchester
- Derek Hale
- Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights
- The Hulk
- Eames from Inception
- Eduardo Saverin
- England from Hetalia
- Gale from The Hunger Games
- Hal from Being Human
- Hanna from Hanna is Not a Boy’s Name
- Hannibal Lecter
- Harry Potter
- House from House
- Ian from Shameless
- Ianto from Torchwood
- Iron Man
- Italy from Hetalia
- Jack from Lost
- Jack from Torchwood
- John Watson
- Juliet from Lost
- Karkat
- Karofsky from Glee
- Kate from Lost
- Katniss Everdeen
- Kirk
- Kurt from Glee
- Loki
- Luke from As the World Turns
- Luke Castellan from Percy Jackson
- The Marauders
- Mark from 24
- Mark Antony
- Mark Zuckerberg
- Mickey from Shameless
- Mordred from Merlin
- Mulder
- The Netherlands from Hetalia
- Noah from As the World Turns
- Percy Jackson
- Penny from The Big Bang Theory
- Pete Campbell
- Portugal from Hetalia
- Quinn from Glee
- Richard III
- Robert Chase from House
- Sam Winchester
- Sawyer from Lost
- Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory
- Sherlock Holmes
- Snape
- Spain from Hetalia
- Spike from Buffy
- Spock
- Squall Leonhart
- Stiles Stilinski
- Thirteen from House
- Thalia from Percy Jackson
- Thorin Oakenshield
- Tom from Being Human
- Tyrion Lannister
- Will from Hannibal
If for any reason you want even more “Little Lion Man” content, 8tracks has got you covered to the tune of 366 individual playlists. Be blessed.
The words “KUM CANOE” will haunt me until the day of my death.
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being reminded of Hanna Is Not A Boy’s Name in 2018 created an emotion in me that cannot be described by the english language but instead by the echoing cries of an injured falcon in an empty desert quarry
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I saw a Neil Perry edit set to Little Lion Man the other day and my first thought was this article. Had to check back to see if he made the list
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