we are gonna be vacuuming up this post for the next five years

STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES season one | episode twenty-five; the devil in the dark Mister Spock, you are second in command. This will be a dangerous hunt. Either one of us by himself is expendable. Both of us are not. Captain, there are approximately one hundred of us engaged in this search, against one creature. The odds against you and I both being killed are 2,228.7 to 1. 2,228.7 to 1? Those are pretty good odds, Mister Spock. And they are of course accurate, Captain. Of course. Well, I hate to use the word, but logically, with those kind of odds, you might as well stay.

Fortnite, are you sure about this? Did you think it through?

this made me laugh so hard

Their relationship in a nutshell

if you’ve ever wanted to go back in time just to watch “do you like waffles” now’s your chance

why does it have to look like a fake website made for a single scene in a movie :(

This is exactly what YouTube looked like back then, even down to having a 5 star rating system instead of likes and dislikes

and without ads

Considering I’m pretty sure we had a video length cap back then, many videos were in fact single scenes from movies/tv shows

we should start making zines about cool research papers

found my new passion: putting merthur into random meme pics

My printer decided to perfect its postmodernist cut-up technique instead of actually printing my notes

I have titled these “what have you done, you absolute piece of shit” (left) and “?????????” (right), please enjoy

house of leaves aesthetic

Parks and Rec 2x05

the bus to itself every time you press the button:

I forgot how lonely it is to write original fiction.

Where are the kudos? The subscriptions? The comments? The people cheerleading me chapter to chapter? Where are the kind words and compliments and reassurances that what I'm writing isn't complete crap? Where are the unhinged emojis? The asks on Tumblr? Where are my mutuals in my dms apologizing for not reading the latest chapter right away (side note, you know you don't have to apologize at all, right??). Where is the fanart? Where are the recs?

Where is my motivation to keep going?

It's something I've been thinking about a lot, actually, lately. How the experience of writing fanfic is so unique. How you already have an audience, willing and waiting and captive. And that's really it, isn't it? You have an audience. It's almost performative, writing fanfic. It's being on a stage, a one-person show (or two, if you do it with a friend); it's getting live reactions to your performance, it's feeding off the energy of the crowd and informing it back in a feedback loop; it's improvised, sometimes, in almost-real-time. It's building something that you couldn't have built by yourself. A thing that takes on a life of its own.

It's an experience you can't get writing original fiction, and, honestly, not having it is making it hard to write something original at all.

"Where is my motivation to keep going?"

It's where it always was before fanfic, before online support; before recs, before asks, before moots, before fanart.

It's in realizing you're the story's only way out into the world.

In a world full of gatekeeping, this is the gate that only you keep. Turn your back on the responsibility to open the portal to the unborn (original) story and keep it open, and the story dies. And that death is on you.

Yes, it's lonely work, without the constant rush of input we've been trained to be used to. It's been lonely work for a long time: since the first storyteller came up against the silence that wanted to keep the story away from the breath that would make it real in other people's ears. And you could make a case that all the online adornments are just our recent generations' way of keeping both the storytellers and the listeners from being overwhelmed by that loneliness. (Because the listeners have their own version of it: the fear of what happens when the people who can tell stories fall silent. Good storytellers respect that fear, and remember every day their responsibility to do something about it.)

Where do the characters come from? A surprising amount of the time, without warning, they muscle their way into the back of your brain and grab you by the hand (or hair) (or throat) and shout Tell about me! You have to tell them, there's no one else who can do it! ...Sometimes you have to sneak up on them from behind, as you do get the shy ones occasionally whom you have to take by the hand and pull into the light. But give them enough silence—build the space for them—and they'll come.

The silence may be key. One of the smartest pieces of advice I was ever given was that, for half an hour in the morning every day, before starting work, I should sit down and do nothing, and listen. No music, no TV, no news, no reading, no nothing. Sit and listen. It's not meditation; it's not mindfulness. It's listening. Story's voice can be hard to hear, sometimes, until you get better at pushing aside all that relentless rush of situational and sensorial input, and better at waiting to hear the story that's as yet too frail to push its way through the portal without assistance.

To be clear: Fanfic work (or any work in universes not of your making) is a different kind of listening. Working well in already-extant universes requires sharp attention to the tones, concerns and qualities of voices already speaking there; and to a certain extent, to the voices speaking about them. And if you love the characters, too—one of the best reasons for fanfic, really—that's a pleasure.

But when working in your own universes, the listening also requires a selective quality, as the characters find their voices and their proper passions. And as for the love... you're the only one there is to love them, till you get them out into the world. If you've ever been the only one to love somebody, you know how tough that can be.

Then add to that the fillip that those people (or situations) won't be really real until you've worked with them long enough, hard enough, all by yourself? It's a tough row to hoe. And you can't ever be really sure that a summer will come to reveal whether the crop's taken root, and whether it's all been worthwhile.

Nonetheless: it's good work. Some of us don't seem able to stop. Some of us even like it that way.

When you're ready, take that leap and come join us.

can't have shit in Baltimore

oh my goddd just like the prestige drama television series The Wire (2002-2008)

somehow this guy was the most considerate carjacker in all of Baltimore. did he pull a gun on me? yeah. but he let me keep my phone and my wallet, and when he was driving away he rolled down the window and yelled at me "REPORT YOUR CAR STOLEN!" (the cops were confused and laughed when I told them this)

I told my husband @beemovieerotica that's what great about Baltimore, the crime is streamlined here.

the youth today, they have no class. these zoomers don't understand social cues and good manners. it takes a real upstanding citizen to rob your car at gunpoint and then immediately yell at you how to resolve your current dilemma. that's called community building

the downside of having comprehensive insurance

This is quite possibly the most Baltimore thing I’ve ever read.

did somebody say really specific ship dynamics

I love so much that this one gets notes because I made it to describe my own OC ships very specifically, so I’m surprised and delighted that this dynamic is this much of A Thing

Girl you cannot “reclaim phrenology”