I Know I Never Thought I Would Make It To 20 But Boy Am I Looking Forward To 30. And 40. And 50. And

BIG JOHN FANCAM ❤️

Czeslaw Milosz, from "Ars Poetica?"

I started collecting knives. Because my friend died. And I was hoping somebody would try to hurt me so I could kill them. Man what a fucking thing to say

i might elaborate later but fanfic replies literally develop writer’s metacognition and make them better writers

Ithaca saga completely changed my brain chemistry.

What do you do when you almost die in space? Leonov drew the orbital sunrise.

Alexei Leonov was the first person to walk in space. When he couldn’t sleep after pressurisation in his suit meant he almost couldn’t get back into the capsule, Leonov picked up his sketchpad and pencils to create the first art in space.

Green (2021):

‘A curved band mixing black and blue represents the portion of Earth visible due to the rising sun. Above the planet, a narrow curvature of red, then yellow, and then the black of space. And in the center of the drawing, we see the red sphere of the sun, almost risen behind the curvature of the Earth. It says something to me that the first art made by humans from outside of Earth's atmosphere depicts Earth's atmosphere.

Leonov was astonished by the brightness of the stars from space, but he did not draw that, nor did he draw himself floating, looking up at the spaceship. He drew home. He drew what Mary Oliver memorably called "this, the one world we all belong to."’

Though we see the orbital sunrise in a more photorealistic way now (NASA, 2021), Leonov’s shows what it might feel like. The awe to see all of humanity’s history in one place, all humans who had ever existed except himself and his team.

‘I like to look at Leonov's drawing when I am exhausted by despair and drudgery, or when I feel the weight of longing and fear pressing in on my chest. I look at the picture and think of all that had to happen for the drawing to exist, for Leonov to exist, for anything to exist. I look at the drawing and take a long, slow breath, and think of how my lungs were made for this air.’

Quotations from John Green’s The Anthropocene Reviewed (2021), images from Brown (2015) and NASA (2022)

few things more humbling than the realization that you really do write the same fic(s) over and over again

You’re at a party and Nagi looms over you without meaning to bc his ass is 6’2” but he can’t take a hint so every time you back up to get some breathing space, he takes another step with you and another and another until he’s backed you into a wall. But the wall is actually Reo’s chest and now you’re sandwiched between them and actually, I think this was the plan all along, for Reo to have his hunting dog chase you into his arms.