leohtttbriar

[leohtttbriar]

"We're in the world, not against it. It doesn't work to try to stand outside things and run them that way. It just doesn't work, it goes against life. There is a way but you have to follow it. The world is, no matter how we think it ought to be. You have to be with it. You have to let it be."

The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula K. Le Guin

[leohtttbriar]

it's funny how gina prince-bythewood had me so easily forgetting that i was watching a comic-book superhero movie with the old guard (2020). watching the sequel i'm like "oh right. this is Genre."

[leohtttbriar]

Keiran Brennan Hinton (Canadian, born 1992)

Table for Two, 2023

Oil on linen

56 × 44 in (142.2 × 111.8 cm)

Private collection

[leohtttbriar]

[THE PRIZE]

Tpring enjoyers unite, that’s my emotional support divorced woman. I’d like to thank @jennelikejennay for helping me with the calligraphy on the banner 🫶🏻.

The symb of lism..the orchids..the ahn woon, the tears, Tpau’s staff, you don’t need me to write the essay

[leohtttbriar]

Binti: The Night Masquerade, Nnedi Okorafor, p. 77

if i could give a brief description of the binti series, it would probably be something along these lines—recognition of the self in the alien, and of the alien in the self, and the dance of repulsion or attraction that follows

[leohtttbriar]

all lichens, all coral (ao3 link)

“What would you have us do, Joe? Would you have us trust those who betray us? Would you have us invite Quynh to exact punishment? What price do you think we should pay? For being betrayed or betraying?” “Again, Nicky, I don’t think you want to start a conversation about self-penance. You, you in particular should not start a conversation about penance.” “I am trying”— “I don’t want to step on your anagogical toes here, but no amount of interpretive work you’re doing is going to lead me to faith in Christ.” “At some point, perhaps in a few hundred years, I assume you will stop accusing me of trying to convert you.”

Everyone goes with Andy to meet Quynh. Joe and Nicky argue in the car. Somehow, this helps.

[leohtttbriar]

"Do you suppose," she said wistfully, "that we'll ever break through the speed of light?"

Leon smiled, knowing where her thoughts were leading. To travel faster than light--to go home to Earth, yet to return to your native world while your friends were still alive--every colonist must, at some time or other have dreamed of this. There was no problem, in the whole history of the human race, that had called forth so much effort and that still remained so utterly intractable.

"I don't believe so," he said. "If it could be done, someone would have discovered how by this time. No--we have to do it the slow way, because there isn't any other. That's how the universe is built, and there's nothing we can do about it."

The Songs of Distant Earth, A.C. Clarke

[leohtttbriar]

Gillis Coignet (detail)

[leohtttbriar]

Curiosity could also cut against empire. Because it challenged existing knowledge with the rare and the surprising, it did not necessarily make order. Indeed, its collections could speak to the fragility of colonial projects, the dangers that menaced would-be masters, and furnish words and objects that could ultimately be turned against the imperial order that was taking shape.

Delbourgo, James

[leohtttbriar]

there wasn't enough lingering on the fact that b'elanna just spontaneously came up with a strategy which she gave an official name before explaining what she was going to do ("a skeletal lock" she said casually, which the viewer is informed is not an established 'thing', despite the way b'elanna made reference to it as if it was, bc janeway immediately went "um what?"). also not enough lingering on what it is that she spontaneously came up with. locking on the minerals of the bone tissue. she can find and pull anyone out of a storm. she knows your bones. something fun and intimate about that.

[leohtttbriar]

Colin Fraser

‘Westerly’

[leohtttbriar]

Hugo Charlemont - Summer hyacinths (Galtonias), ca. 1901

[leohtttbriar]

STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES 3x7 | Is There in Truth No Beauty?

[leohtttbriar]

the way this joke about sondheim captures everything i love about sondheim

[leohtttbriar]

makes me happy that uhura knows the rules of musicals. i'm sure she knows many of the rules of many kinds of theatre and performance. she's got that "aware of the genre" "aware of the artifice like the house facades in sunset boulevard that script reader betty schaefer is comfortable with" "knows what story she's in" "knows what a story is" "knows why people tell a story" sort of narrative posture.

[leohtttbriar]

i wonder if part of the inspiration for this episode was the conservative push to add creationism to public school curriculum that was emerging in the u.s., i believe, at the time. bc this episode is an interesting reflection of how creationists necessarily deny the existence/timeline of dinosaurs and the implications of evolution--and how this sort of denial is not only a denial of self but also a rejection of a certain communion a being could have with another who was from the same improbable life from a shared planet. the imagined curiosity the dinosaur has about the human is clearly the projection of curiosity we have about the dinosaurs but it's also something close to affection for the sharing in something statistically special.

[leohtttbriar]

Jeffrey Vaughn (American, b. 1953)

October Garden, 2020

Oil on linen