#in literature!

[saltcherry]

my hot take on ‘can you use food words to describe skin color, especially of nonwhite people or characters’ is, you probably can do it in a reasonable way, it just depends on how racist the rest of your writing is whether is comes off as creepy. like it’s well-established in English literature to describe skin “as white as milk” and “cheeks as rosy as apples” etc., typically to describe young women or girls. the fetishistic tone is not going to hinge solely on the words chosen (of course, associations have to be considered). the real issue is that the fetishization of white women and of Black women or brown women operates differently. the words used to do it are different. the associations with sexuality are different (y do u think white women who want to assert sexuality often choose to do it by either embodying stereotypes associated with women of color or by directly appropriating aspects of nonwhite culture?). so really the challenge for the writer is not to remove all purple descriptors from their language, even stilted or outdated ones, and their associations (impossible task) but to be good enough at their craft to challenge, remake, critique, etc. those associations. like idk it seems like a very hard task and that’s why the advice is to simply remove that language! however it’s more interesting to try to grapple with language imo. and ultimately more productive because many many types of words carry associations of otherness, sexuality, prejudice, etc. when applied to nonwhite vs white people, Black vs nonBlack people, etc. the language problem can only be understood when you know this and only solved when you work at it with deep knowledge. (I guess the reason some people balk hard at “I don’t get why this is perceived as racist” over e.g. “she had skin like chocolate” is because they are lacking that deep knowledge accrued from reading a lot. related: if you don’t read a lot, and you write with that type of language, without knowledge either conscious or unconscious of those biases, will you replicate them? form new associations? is knowledge a curse, lol?

[letsbelonelytogetherr]

– Audrey Hepburn

[prokopetz]

If you're lamenting the fact that you used to be able to shoot through a 500-page novel in like a day when you were in middle school and now you can't, it's worth bearing in mind that a big part of that is because when you were in middle school, your reading comprehension sucked. Yes, mental health and the stresses of adult life can definitely be factors, but it's also the case that reading is typically more effortful as an adult because you've learned to Ponder The Implications. The material isn't just skimming over the surface of your brain anymore, and some of the spoons you used to spend on maximising your daily page count are now spent on actually thinking about what you're reading!

[becomingvecna]

— David Cronenberg, Consumed

[thoughtcascades]

idk how to flirt but i can make things awkward if you're into that

[incohorace]

what studying literature feels like

[deviika]

Lee Krasner // Franz Kafka

[lucidloving]

@roach-works // Melissa Broder, "Problem Area" // Mary Oliver, "The Return" // @annavonsyfert // Koyoharu Gotouge, Demon Slayer // Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance // David Levithan, How They Met and Other Stories // Tennessee Williams, Notebooks

[poetryforall]

[sleeplessv0id]

what doesn't kill you makes you weird at intimacy

[wedarkacademia]

[joytri]

[letsbelonelytogetherr]

— unknown

[usefulquotes7]

[resqectable]

Please don’t expect me to always be good and kind and loving. There are times when I will be cold and thoughtless and hard to understand.

Sylvia Plath

[flowerytale]

Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere