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.

Me sentí cute hoyyy 💖

his ass is NOT getting up for his 8am lecture

🪲🌱🥬💚 Dat Green Daikon

💀🖤💨

Getting ready for the summer

dog girl summer yay :3c night doodles

ganja babe <3

don’t want me to think of you but that’s something i’ll never not

causally thinking about having car sex while high with hanma <3.

he’d be so touchy in the car with you while you’re both smoking a blunt. he would be watching you with those half lidded eyes that you could get lost in, and his mouth can’t help but water when he thinks about stuffing you with his thick cock. he would start flirting with you then eventually have you sitting atop his lap while you grind on his lap. his cock would be painfully hard inside of his sweatpants and the high from the weed is only making him more turned on. he has all of these lewd thoughts about you and he’s not shameful about it whatsoever.

soon enough, he would have you on top of him with his cock nice and snug inside your dripping pussy. your senses are completely heightened from the high and you’re lost in complete bliss with him. he would just rub his thumb on your pretty lips while you whine his name oh so nicely.

“yeahhh, that’s it, babydoll. take my cock like a good girl.. i know you can do it.”

I don't know what would be a funnier setup; Kurapika receiving a quick tutorial and still bungling it, or Morel presenting him with the supplies and saying, "show me what you got!" as a callback to the 2nd phase of the Hunter Exam. Anywho, happy (belated) 420 to those who celebrate!

more days like this

The one thing that excites me more than a pop-up summer thunderstorm is a walk in a damp, dripping, glowing-green forest after the storm has passed. The forest's living essence is made all the more real and immediate by the intoxicating perfume of decaying things, creatures flitting like ghosts through the leaves and underbrush, and clinging raindrops unleashed from the treetops by an evanescent breeze. Photos above are from a hike this morning on Glade Run Trail in Coopers Rock State Forest.

From top: common boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum), which is closely related to Joe Pye weed, and sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale); the deep purple-red berries of common elderberry (Sambucus canadensis); hollow Joe Pye weed (Eupatorium fistulosum), which can attain a height of 7 to 8 feet; eastern tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus), whose tattered wings show the wear and tear of summer errands; a colony of gregarious fungi, perhaps cross-veined troop mushroom (Xeromphalina kauffmanii), which grow in huge numbers on decaying hardwoods; a red-capped bolete, perhaps Leccinum longicurvipes, which is symbiont with oak trees; an eastern newt (Notophthalmus viridescens); white wood aster (Eurybia divaricata); bigleaf aster (Eurybia macrophylla); cowbane (Oxypolis rigidior), also known as common water dropwort; bluestem goldenrod (Solidago caesia), a woodland goldenrod with flowerheads in the leaf axils; and Appalachian oak-leach (Aureolaria laevigata), also known as smooth false foxglove, which is semi-parasitic on oak tree roots.