TESSER WELL
Thinking beyond the straight line
I’ve been carrying the idea for this space around for a while, without quite knowing where to put it.
The questions I’m interested in don’t arrive fully formed. They tend to show up attached to stories that start behaving differently over time. Stories that get retold, adapted, argued over, or quietly leaned on when the world feels unstable or frightening or overly certain of itself.
I wanted a place to sit with those questions without rushing them toward conclusions.
That’s what Tesser Well is for.
Lately, my work has kept returning me to questions of legacy and stewardship: what it means to inherit stories, to care for them, and to decide how (or whether) they should change. At the same time, I’ve been watching older narratives surface again in new forms, carrying more weight than expected—especially children’s stories, which so often seem to tell the truth before we’re ready to hear it.
I don’t always know what I think about these moments right away. I usually need to circle them, come back, let them contradict one another a bit. This space gives me room to do that in public, slowly.
Here are some of the threads I expect to keep pulling on here—beginning with Stranger Things, which I’ve been finding both compelling and deeply uncomfortable:
– what it means when a story that isn’t “for kids” nonetheless does the moral work children’s stories often do
– how fear, violence, and darkness land differently when a show is watched across generations
– why friendship becomes a moral force when institutions fail
I don’t yet know where all of that will lead. But I’m interested in staying with the questions long enough to let them complicate one another, rather than rushing toward answers.
I’ll be writing about once a month. Everything here is free. Mostly, this will be a place for thinking out loud, in good faith, with readers who are comfortable sitting with unfinished questions.
I don’t know exactly what Tesser Well will become. I do know that I wanted a place where stories could stay active—examined, questioned, and held without being flattened into conclusions.
If any of this sparks your curiosity, I’m glad you’re here.
—Charlotte
Can we talk about Holly’s brass bed? I was sure that was an allusion to Meg but the internet just said it was a reference to The Shining.
I'm so glad you're here, Charlotte! At the moment, I'm so curious about the interweaving of Wrinkle and Stranger Things, as well as the idea of watching a show with fear and darkness across generations. My fourteen year old daughter is all in and watches all of Stranger Things. My eleven year old son hears the buzz all around him and feels the social pressure of being in on the conversation, but it's so intense. I watched the first episode with him the other night to let him in on the conversation, and we're going to chew on that for a while. I'll take all the insight!