June 15th, 2026 - Constellation

Dear TNY,

When I saw “Constellation” this morning, I was sure I was hallucinating.  But nope, I guess you don’t follow the fiction issue with a break as I had once believed.

It’s taken eight years, but your story formula has come fully into focus.  This is more of the same.  It’s well-written.  Clean.  There’s a narrative to follow.  This one, thankfully, doesn’t have one billion cardboard characters that I have to try to remember (and always fail at).  But it still winds up doing the same thing as the vast majority of your fiction.  It doesn’t go anywhere. 

The dad is a well-rounded character.  I’ll even take the time to define that by saying that the MC was able to recall both good and bad about his or her father (I don’t know the MC’s gender, which is a red flag?).  The author does this well in that it is very obvious at the beginning that the father is a douchebag and then as we enter the final paragraph, we see that there are warm memories of the father.  This helps move the needle on him, which was firmly established in the piece of shit section after the drawn-out first third or the story describing how much he put the mother down.  But the mother was NOT well-rounded.  In the beginning, she is someone that we feel sorry for.  Someone that looks simple.  Abused.  Doesn’t have any fight.  Doesn’t seem to do anything wrong.  And then we never get another side of her.  Sure, we have that section in which she takes that power back after the fight by looking more beaten, acting more beaten.  But that doesn’t make her a fleshed-out character.  That just makes her that same weak character using the tools she has left.  So that means we vilify the father and feel sorry for the mother.  We don’t feel for either of them.  We don’t want things for them.  We don’t have a deep connection.  We don’t have shit other than witnessing an episode in their life.  And the narrator?  Less than cardboard.  Maybe as thin as the TP I just used (which, so that we are clear, is the kind that you put your thumb through to get poop on yourself).

So, again, with all of these pieces like this, what’s the point?  As far as I can see, there isn’t.  But maybe you are like me.  Each week you are assigned a task, and no matter what, you have to produce.  So you do the best you can using the timeframe as your parameter.  That’s how FTNY feels sometimes.  I don’t know if you know this, but there have been a few people in my life that have told me to stop this.  That it’s a waste of time.  That I write dumb shit on here.  I have lost relationships over this fucking site.  And it’s, what, nothing? 

But it isn’t.  Just like your magazine.  Maybe twice a year we both hit homeruns.  And I, more than most, understand the frustration of waiting for the thing you care about so much to be better when they just can’t do it.  Don’t care to.  Don’t even understand that they need to.  That’s how I feel when I look at you.  And that’s how I must have felt to others. 

It’s the cycle of life, I guess.  As long as I keep going, that’s what it will be.

I’m still in the sad, man.  Mainly over one thing.  And that’s fine.  Nothing to be done about that.  At all.  Just normal human condition bullshit.

In other news, I go in for a shot to the spine tomorrow.  Everything is set up.  It should allow me to stop taking the nerve pain medicine, which is also an antidepressant.  We’ll see how that goes considering I am doing better than I was depression-wise.  But it is harder to come and harder to cry, both of which I have an affinity to.  So what I’ve done is started to adapt practices that hopefully will help when the meds go.  One is walking.  I walk every day now.  Miles and miles.  I make that the only point of the day outside of the little life maintenance I am doing right now.  And two, substances.  I have some mushies now that I can lean on a little when spiral time comes.  The hope is that I can continue to govern the drinking as I have (still going well) as well as broaden the amount of exercise I’m getting and that will help maintain the old meatbot until when more time passes and things will be different. 

But the thing is…the thing I’m sad about is really fucking important and I’m just waiting.  So it’s always there.  Like a fucking car accident that’s just waiting to put me back inside of it again.  But I’d sell a limb to get back in that car.  Because what are we supposed to do with this life if not risk it for the colloquial biscuit.  So the future is unknown.

But I’m here again.  Crazy that I’m here at all.  I can’t believe it got so close.  Probably will get close again.  This is the task, then.  See the beauty.  Push forward.  Last as long as you can.  Give yourself away.

Nick