Sometimes I Wonder Why I Never Post On Here And Then I Remember That Out Of The 37 People Who Follow

I can't stress enough how much I miss StumbleUpon

idc what anyone says the marauders tiktok kate bush “babooshka” era was sublime and i’ll be chasing that high for the rest of my life

One of these things is not like the others

Toor’s scenes possess a kind of solemnity or quietude that does not suggest equilibrium so much as tender regard. Toor’s protagonists, obvious stand-ins for the artist himself, at least at an earlier moment in his life, seem held in suspension between two worlds, Old and New, never entirely at home in either. But he also holds them at emotional arm’s length, as if these images were tempered by time, less observations than memories, and they begin to assume the lineaments of archetype, despite their depiction of technology à la mode.

(Many of the pictures have an overall green palette, appropriate, perhaps, for the nocturnal illumination of bars or apartment parties—although more readily suggesting fin de siècle gaslight—but also reminiscent of the discoloured varnish of old paintings hanging for generations in smoke-filled drawing rooms.)

on Salman Toor

I was distractedly watching TikTok as one does and this vid about stuff written on anciemt Pompeii's walls comes up. It's all fun and giggles until:

REGVLVS FEL(LAT).

REGULUS SUCKS DICKS.

“litanies to my heavenly brown body” by mark aguhar 

I love looking at old zines, like nothing fucking compares. One my favs is "Shocking Pink", a feminist youth-led magazine published between 1979-1992. (Link to all the zines here.) In it they talk about sexism and access to abortion resources, queer and gender rights, lesbianism and LGBT+ bookshops and all-female bands, racism and historical movements, equality for girls/women in trades and youth-led movements in the midst of Thatcher's Britain. If I could tell anyone looking to research this period I would tell them to read the zines made by the people they want to write about <3

"when talking abt the whomping willow.....could u not have chosen smth a bit less dangerous for a school? like a well-locked door? or perhaps named it smth a bit more scary? like 'death tree?' just so even the stupidest children knew what it was all abt?"

my dad–also a writer–came to visit, and i mentioned that the best thing to come out of the layoff is that i’m writing again. he asked what i was writing about, and i said what i always do: “oh, just fanfic,” which is code for “let’s not look at this too deeply because i’m basically just making action figures kiss in text form” and “this awkward follow-up question is exactly why i don’t call myself a writer in public.”

he said, “you have to stop doing that.”

“i know, i know,” because it’s even more embarrassing to be embarrassed about writing fanfic, considering how many posts i’ve reblogged in its defense.

but i misunderstood his original question: “fanfic is just the genre. i asked what you’re writing about.” 

i did the conversational equivalent of a spinning wheel cursor for at least a minute. i started peeling back the setting and the characters, the fic challenge and the specific episode the story jumps off from, and it was one of those slow-dawning light bulb moments. “i’m writing about loneliness, and who we are in the absence of purpose.”

as, i imagine, are a lot of people right now, who probably also don’t realize they’re writing an existential diary in the guise of getting television characters to fuck. 

“that’s what you’re writing. the rest is just how you get there, and how you get it out into the world. was richard iii really about richard the third? would shakespeare have gotten as many people to see it if it wasn’t a story they knew?”

so, my friends: what are you writing about?

does anyone understand