@pscentral​ anniversary event: take two 2.0 adaptations — station eleven (2021–22)

I don't want to live the wrong life and die.

van gogh had a point. and also depression.

fernando pessoa || emily st. john mandel, station eleven || nicholas sparks || vincent van gogh || dante alighieri || richard siken, boot theory || vincent van gogh

I haven’t used tumblr for ten years but am so pleased it’s back because where else do I put all the shit I make ❤️. I’ll put some Station Eleven and Maniac stuff on here from time to time. If you’re a fan of those shows or fucked up little things I’ll do my best to make you laugh or feel things in the technocracy ❤️❤️❤️

Wanna know what was going through the hbo guys heads with station eleven when they were like we have a banging long form art house adaptation of a very popular literary novel it’s the most timely motherfucking plot of all time it’s about pandemic trauma it Speaks to our age it has a globally renowned incredibly famous Actor in a key role it’s our Emmy bait. Let’s seal it in a lead canister and bury it thirty feet underground so no one EVER finds it

Sometimes the Travelling Symphony thought that what they were doing was noble. There were moments around campfires when someone would say something invigorating about the importance of art, and everyone would find it easier to sleep that night. At other times it seemed a difficult and dangerous way to survive and hardly worth it, especially at times when they had to camp between towns, when they were turned away at gunpoint from hostile places, when they were travelling in snow or rain through dangerous territory, actors and musicians carrying guns and crossbows, the horses exhaling great clouds of steam, times when they were cold and afraid and their feet were wet. Or times like now when the heat was unrelenting, July pressing down upon them an the blank walls of the forest on either side, walking by the hour and wondering if an unhinged prophet or his men might be chasing them, arguing to distract themselves from their terrible fear. “All I'm saying,” Dieter said, twelve hours out of St. Deborah by the Water, “is that quote on the lead caravan would be way more profound if we hadn't lifted it from Star Trek.” He was walking near Kirsten and August. Survival is insufficient: Kirsten had had these words tattooed on her left forearm at the age of fifteen and had been arguing with Dieter about it almost ever since. Dieter harboured strong anti-tattoo sentiments. He said he'd seen a man die of an infected tattoo once. Kirsten also had two black knives tattooed on the back of her right wrist, but these were less troubling to Dieter, being much smaller and inked to mark specific events. “Yes,” Kirsten said, “I'm aware of your opinion on the subject, but it remains my favourite line of text in the world.” She considered Dieter one of her dearest friends. The tattoo argument had lost all of its sting over the years and had become something like a familiar room where they met. Midmorning, the sun not yet broken over the tops of the trees. The Symphony had walked through most of the night. Kirsten's feet hurt and she was delirious with exhaustion. It was strange, she kept thinking, that the prophet's dog had the same name as the dog in her comic books. She's never heard the name Luli before or since. “See, that illustrates the whole problem,” Dieter said. “The best Shakespearean actress in the territory, and her favourite line of text is from Star Trek.” “The whole problem with that?” Kirsten felt that she might actually be dreaming at this point, and she longed desperately for a cool bath. “It's got to be one of the best lines ever written for a TV show,” August said. “Did you see that episode?” “I can't say I recall,” Dieter said. “I was never a fan.” “Kirsten?” Kirsten shrugged. She wasn't sure if she actually remembered anything at all of Star Trek, or if it was just that August had told her about it so many times that she's started to picture his stories in her head. “Don't tell me you've never seen Star Trek: Voyager,” August said hopefully. “That episode with those lost Borg and Seven of Nine?” “Remind me,” Kirsten said, and he brightened visibly. While he talked she allowed herself to imagine that she remembered it. A television in a living room, a ship moving through the night silence of space, her brother watching beside her, her parents—if she could only remember their faces—somewhere near.

Emily St John Mandel, “Station Eleven”

I remember damage. And escape.

Then... adrift in a stranger's galaxy for a long time.

But I'm safe now. I found it again. My home.

My memories are the same as yours. They mean nothing. I feel this again for the first time. I have a job to do.

I have found you nine times before.

Maybe ten.

And I’ll find you again.

Until the last time.

I always do.

I find you because I know you.

And I know you because we are the same.

You will know your end point when you reach it.

In the early days, before their home is broken, they hardly notice me.

It was better to not be noticed. It is better to not be noticed.

I do know you from somewhere.

If you’re noticed then you are known.

And soon you’ll be loved.

To be loved is a calamity for someone with your job.

You have work to do. Work.

Love makes work impossible.

Love will try to see the words before it's finished.

What is your job? Love will ask it.

And you will ask what is my job?

Then there’s a you.

Not to survive because survival is insufficient.

The voices are confusing and soon all I’ll hear is...

I don't want to live the wrong life and then die.

I remember damage. Then escape.

I'm at my best when i'm escaping.

I have a job to do, I still have a job to do.

I have found you nine times before, maybe ten, and i'll find you again.

I always do.

There is no rescue mission.

We are the same. We are safe.

To listen:

little white girl wednesday

fic rec: ted lasso

all the men and women merely players

rating: T // fandom: ted lasso // pairings: ted x trent, keeley x roy x jamie, nate x jade // length: 50.7k author: @laiqualaurelote tags: theatre, shakespeare, post-apocalypse

"So let me get this straight. You, an American whose career highlights consisted mainly of appearing on Saturday Night Live, decide in the wake of the apocalypse to lead a touring Shakespeare company across the ruins of England." "Oh, I know. Heck, I said as much to Rebecca when she suggested it. I said, 'You could fill two Internets with what I don’t know about directing Shakespeare.' And she said, 'Ted, the Internet doesn’t exist any more.'" Trent Crimm meets Ted Lasso by chance at a Shakespeare play. Five years and the end of the world later, they meet again at another. A Station Eleven post-apocalyptic theatre AU (no knowledge of Station Eleven necessary to read).

rec notes:

a post-apocalyptic ted lasso AU where the richmond players are a troupe of travelling shakespearean actors.

simply one of the best things i've read in a long time. it SO perfectly operates within its genre, one of those beautiful pieces of cross-referential AU fanfic, where there is both a deeply thoughtful blending of references, a wonderfully precise understanding of the characters from the original media, and highly-detailed worldbuilding of its own.

the author nails every character's cadence, the variety of voices, their styles of conversation. the descriptive narrative, is also excellent. achingly poetic, there is so much beauty, and so much compelling, grim horror, too. the happy moments are threaded with plenty of intense, sharply sad moments, but there is so much joy, such hope. it's an ode to art, and friendship, and community.

i had such an amazing time reading this story. it's such a brilliant idea, and its execution lives up to the concept. the amount of detail, research, reference, is evident in every chapter. and it's a wonderful tribute to the show, while also giving such a satisfying conclusion to so many story arcs that were left a little underserved in the series finale.

Cosmic Insignificance, Microscopic Persistence: Worm and Other Perspectives

Worm, J.C. McCrae // "Spiral of Ants," Lemon Demon // Mosaic I, M.C. Escher // Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer // "A Whale's Afterlife," Jeffrey Marlow // Haywain Triptych, Hieronymus Bosch // Worm, J.C. McCrae // Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel // Cemetery of Splendour (2015) // "The Universe Under a Microscope," Arjun V. Raman & Nitin S. Baliga // A Bug's Life (1998) // The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin // Solaris (1972) // Worm, J.C. McCrae

emily st. john mandel // station eleven

sometimes it's all about processing your grief and trauma through art it's about borrowing someone else's words when you can't quite reach your words on your own it's about practicing saying goodbye in the safety of the story because the whole play is the death scene it's about. understanding yourself through other peoples situations. using stories to work through things that are too big to be looked directly at. you know? it's one step at a time it's telling your younger self it's not your fault. this is just what happened. it's about getting to say goodbye this time. ya know?

My cover and some of the pages that I drew for Station Eleven on HBO Max.

Unsaid in Station Eleven and yet always its guiding metaphysical principal: people are obsessed with asking, “What’s your job?”… because Dr. Eleven (sad job) isn’t allowed to not know what his is.

I think we feel half of ourselves. The half that feels free.

Our job’s to remember that’s only half.

Remember Dr. Eleven, too.

The execs on the show would sometimes just ask me, “Wait tho, what does he mean?”

It’s an incredible feeling to have no idea what that question even means, and still feel so certain, everyone else feels safe, too. And also, this is big business; it’s their job to ask.

I guess it’s your job sometimes to pretend you do. But it’s the future now, a little, so now I do.

It’s his job to escort you out of traumatic places and into new places, which he knows will also end in catastrophe. It’s his job to be an agent asking if you consent to keep going, nevertheless. It’s his job to know awful things, and tolerate hell, hide it from you, and then abandon you.

This is the terrible moment.

But what you don’t see is all he does in-between, the other part of his job.

It’s his job to sift through all the wreckage and pain from the disaster you escaped and find all the beautiful things you now have to take with you, despite the trauma, you just couldn’t then….

Now you need exactly those things, if you want to grow.

It’s a complete mindfuck. You have to circle back.

If you want to live the right life. And even though there has been and has to have been a long time when you can’t admit anything good even happened back there. But come on. It did, it’s just your survival back then required flight.

That’s what it means when you know you’ll see him again, and why that’s good— he’ll come bearing the gifts of your past, which you weren’t strong enough to take, or remember, because you were escaping. You took the knife. But you’re strong enough now. Remember Frank. When you see him again, you know that you’re strong enough to take your best shit, because that’s yours, and remember what you loved by reaching past what you did not. ❤️

He’s the you who didn’t get to run away and change.

He’s a story you made up when you didn’t escape.

It was his job to take you away from something you loved, to swap places, so at first he seems like the bad guy. Sure. But when he’s back, he’s not hunting you. He’s saving you.

It 100% fucking feels like he’s hunting you.

It’s your instinct that he’s a monster, and your heart says run. It’s your job to ignore your instinct, this one time. It’s totally impossible to know. You have to stay and look back at him.

These are moments.

You see him or you don’t.

If you can find the courage to know the moment, and look at him, he’ll show you the remnants of the life you lost. You’re allowed to take it all back, and allowed to remember, say fuck you to chaos, and to hold both his presence, and still hold the pain, cuz you’re strong enough, now, for both. He shows up the second you’re strong enough, when you’re safe.

But by then, he’s not.

Now he needs help.

We don’t remember what we owe.

The time spent following you, ignored, has destroyed him. His job is to reunite you with yourself, with the you you were before you fractured into two, and you’ve treated him like a fucking asshole and hated him for it.

He’s you.

Healing presents as an encounter with an unsafe-seeming stranger.

You bailed. He stayed, even though he couldn’t really show or quite imagine yet, back then, that you’d ever be unified again, or ever be anything but a fucked up damaged you. Let alone more beautiful than you were. Certainly more beautiful than you have thought you could be, in the meantime.

What happened is awful and you won’t ever recover from it or go back to who you were. You were powerless and couldn’t stop it. I’m sorry.

Look right at him when he comes.

To me this is the feeling of God. The story of this dude. Or the best I can do, as an atheist.

To me he is the one moral law.

Choose to stay, if you see him. If you see him you’re strong enough to stay.

Don’t treat your imagination like shit because it’s wiser than you.

You were always going to be destroyed.

Bow and be grateful to whatever emotions you understand the least.

That’s your future you talking to you. Your emotions are encrypted messages from the future, from yourself. You’re your best guide.

The feelings you can explain the least love you the most.

Try to listen.

Stay. Bow. Look right at it the whole thing.

You’ll still be there.

Nothing else is safe.