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Louis Abel-Truchet (French, 1857–1918) - El jardín soleado

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Chessy Normile

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so much longing for something bigger lately. of what exactly? i still don’t know. but i’m tired of the routine, tired of the way i limit myself, the way i limit my life, the way i try to fit into moulds for the sake of just fitting in. i’ve lost myself in the routine. there’s comfort in the sameness, the way this ennui is also a comfort somehow.

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When Toni Morrison said the grandeur of life is the attempt, not the solution… And how she went on to explain that it’s about behaving as beautifully as one can under completely impossible circumstances. The power that has, you know? It’s really just the making room for what breathes in the presence of the attempt. In the coming-to-be. 

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gaspard et lisa x hello kitty official art

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I think one of the big strengths of fanfiction as a medium is that it can, on average, assume the reader has a way higher degree of familiarity with canon than like…canon can. If you’re in the Star Wars AO3 tag you probably like Star Wars enough to remember more things about it than the average Star Wars-enjoying-ten-year-old. Which makes it way easier for fanwriter a to get to the juicy stuff and really engage with the worldbuilding or minor characters without having to spell out like. Who Wedge Antilles is for everyone who forgot or never noticed him in the first place. You could write a book about Wedge in the old EU because EU readers could also be assumed to be serious fans, but you can’t make a new canon Disney+ show about him. Those cost money to make and are intended for a broader audience.

And all this means that like. A good fic writer can and often will surpass canon when it comes to like. Thematic resonance and stuff, because they can really dig into something. Star Trek 2009 gave Kirk a new, more generic tragic backstory because it couldn’t expect the average moviegoer to be familiar with Kirk’s old, way more interesting tragic backstory. (Frankly, I’m not sure jj abrams knew about TOS Kirk’s backstory) whereas I have read a LOT of well-written, interesting, deeply resonant fanfic examinations of Tarsus IV, and what it means for Kirk’s character that he’s a genocide survivor. Star Trek 2009 answers the question “why did Kirk cheat on the kobayashi maru?” With “‘cause his dad crashed a spaceship when he was a baby.” A close examination of TOS canon implies the answer is “because he lived through a real-life Kobayashi that did have a win option, but which wasn’t taken.” BUT—and this is significant—even the TOS canon movies can’t really assume knowledge of the full TOS tv show, so that implication is never examined or made explicit. Instead it’s fanfic (and maybe spin off novels? Idk I’ve only read 2 trek books, if there’s one out there that covers this that would be really cool) where we get dives into that thread, where Kirk gets a commendation for original thinking because he can look a testing board in the eye and say “I’ve seen what happens when someone is entrenched in this kind of thinking, and I cannot let it happen to me. I understand the lesson, but it’s not hypothetical anymore and it never will be. I did what I had to do.” And that’s interesting! That’s meaningful! That can’t happen in a summer blockbuster. But it can happen in fic, easily, and that’s a strength of fic, I think.

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is it unfair of me to want my partner to grow with me? it frustrates me how complacent he is of where he is in life. i can’t understand how one can talk and talk about wanting so much, and yet feel okay about doing nothing about it but complain about why things don’t fall easy to their laps. why all the talk of changing and getting better and improving when all you’re going to do is talk about how hard it is and nothing else, and yet you still expect things to change. i’m so tired of trying to make things easy for you.

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Night Drive - Heidi Palmer , 2018.

Swiss American , b. 1955 -

Oil on canvas , 9 x 12 in.

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Happiness, I would tell her, is to spend every day without craning one’s neck to look forward to tomorrow, next month, next year, and without holding out one’s hands to stop every day from becoming yesterday.

Yiyun Li. (2022). The Book of Goose.

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urban melancholy

rob adams / jules de balincourt / frank brunner / sydney smith

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rest in peace Louise Glück, 1943-2023

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these past few months has consisted of too many drunken nights that I wish I remembered more of and a handful of wholesome moments that I will cherish forever. I can’t wait for more new experiences, new places to see, new people to meet. time is slipping past way too fast, I’m not holding on tightly enough. I’m bored out of my mind trying to break out of this routine I got so comfortable in.

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Maria Filopoulou (Greek, 1964) - Ancient Pool, Hierapolis IV (2006)

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the whole point of life is being deeply moved by art. and bread

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a handful of years, and i still cry about the same thing. a handful of years, do people say that? living day by day and still the ache. how does one heal from a wound that’s gets reminded that it exists by a a gentle stabbing every so often?

#pp #2023

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Sue zhao/Ryan O'Connell