Tea and Toast and Thyme

Real thing that changed how i write: I started asking "what does this character think is wrong with them" and separately "what is actually wrong with them." Those two things are almost never the same. She thinks she's too much. She's actually terrified of being too little. He thinks he's bad at commitment. He's actually just never met someone he trusted enough. The gap between their diagnosis of themselves and the real thing, that's your character arc right there. you don't have to explain it. just write both.

tired of cannibalism as a metaphor for love or sex. can we get into cannibalism as a metaphor for colonization.

last night i dreamed acclaimed actor and director kenneth branagh died in a recreation of the battle of agincourt and i happened to be there at the time, so afterwards the investigator for the death (who was an off brand hercule poirot situation) asked me about it and i said “ken was always drawn to spectacle. he loved that feeling of awe” and i remember thinking, in the dream, what the hell am i doing? since when am i on ken terms with real life oscar winner sir kenneth branagh?? being a heartrendingly present bystander at the moment of his bizarre death doesn’t give me the right to ken him

Sharing that reminds me that I gotta discuss how Medical Apartheid explains that the founder of Planned Parenthood believed in using birth control as a form of "positive" eugenics for the Black community. And some person got so vehemently upset at me quoting her own words that they said I was speaking out of historical context to make her look bad, that I lacked comprehension. Even though. I was citing her own words. From her own plan. 😐 Oooh man. Whole book is about how some of our best medical research has come at the cost of Black and brown bodies 😅 gotta be ready to hear some shit!

😐 I'm honestly kind of disgusted at your response so 😅 I don't think I will, actually. You got it. 👍🏾

@deez-no-relation Speaking as a white person, I think the issue is not necessarily the conclusion but the immediate reaction, the starting place. We as white people are conditioned to have a knee-jerk reaction against anything that makes us think about race. That’s not our fault, but it is our responsibility. I think it’s helpful, instead of immediately jumping to “we’ve got to take out the good and leave the bad,” to just … sit with the bad for a bit. Let that discomfort settle and grapple with the idea that a currently important institution comes from truly horrific roots. Don’t try to fix it yet (or ever?). Just sit and learn for now. Maybe take this opportunity to read this particular book. Listen to stories, past and present. And then figure out what your response might be. White supremacy culture (which is not the same as being a white supremacist, mind you) encourages us to smooth over paradox and tension at the expense of racialized minorities instead of wrestling with it. That’s the racist behavior here, something that ALL white folks, if we’re honest with ourselves, have done. (Myself absolutely included!) And the good news is, it absolutely can be learned from! But we have to be uncomfortable for a while.

now what were your great-grandfathers' jobs. that's more interesting. mine were a factory worker / industrial baker, a security guard, a lawyer, and a dairy farmer.

happy juneteenth but dont forget that prisoners are legally allowed to be subject to slave labor and also black people are disproportionately arrested and subjected to that legality. happy juneteenth but slavery still lives in america. america is still dependant on slave labor.