Sentimentalrobots - All Of These Things

I wanted to share this cool picture I found in the ebook version of Dawn, at the end of the book.

"Butler with authors Tananarive Due, Jewelle Gomez (standing), Samuel R. Delany, and Steven Barnes (sitting) at Clark Atlanta University’s conference for African American science fiction writers—the first of its kind—in 1997."

instagram.com/tananarivedue

instagram.com/vampyrevamp

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I love this picture of Octavia Butler with fellow Black Sci Fi writers in 1997! (I turned 7 years old that year) I wish I was older at the time so I could have been there 😊 It would have been amazing to see these five in the 90s, just writing sci fi and making a way for future Black sci fi writers.

So much talent in one image, wow.

ʻIʻiwi

Drepanis coccinea Hakalau Forest NWR Mauna Kea, Hawaiʻi

I know how bleak things seem.

I am not going to lie to you. There is no gurantee you, or me or any of us make it, and taste a better life.

Happiness. Sincerity. Tranquility. Peace. Love. Rest and leisure. Celebration. Cooperation, building something beautiful and meaningful together. A better, more just, more natural life.

None of it is guranteed.

We are balancing on a razor's edge as we ascend closer and closer to our crucible, to our defining moment as a sapient species on the cusp of a new age. Things can go horribly wrong. We have seen sickly dread, clawing woe and untenable rage in our hearts that reverberates through our times. Biblical times, apocalyptic times. Reality may be even worse than the cries of mothers, the silent blood, the vivid imaginations of dystopia.

But, I want you to understand that this is just one possibility.

There is a better world. It may be veiled, we have stumbled through fog and tunnels for so long that we don't believe there is a light anymore. But it is there, and it is not as excruciatingly impossible to hold together as it seems. Tunnels end. Just as we may be staring down the barrel of a gun, we are just as likely simply experiencing a dark, long night before our dawn we so shamefully crave.

Do not be ashamed. You are not weak, you are not naive, you are not stupid. You are a unique shade in a most wonderful swatch of color. We have all been polluted by a system, a feedback loop, a fetishization of fear that has grown its own legs and operates beyond the control of any single person. We are our worst selves right now, it is remarkable we are functioning at all despite everything thrown at us.

It is not doomed to be in vain. The odds on paper do not look great--it is easy to rationalize defeat. Have faith. Have some secret hope tucked away, even when it repulses your sensibilities. History is littered with the impossible being done by those who scoffed at barriers set by naysayers--having the gall to try despite seemingly imminent defeat is what wins the day far, certainly far more often than throwing in the towel before halftime.

Maybe it WILL be in vain. Maybe something miraculous will happen, something unexpected, something that couldn't have happened if we all resigned too soon. Do not be so arrogant as to assume you know the future, you can't possibly, there are variables you cannot possibly forsee at play here.

I know how bleak things seem. I am asking you to try anyways.

it’s weird the items that end up becoming sentimental

mech with “student driver” stickers slapped all over it

October 6, 1998 an ordinary boy was beaten and left for dead, tied to a fence in a pasture in Wyoming. The people who came upon the body believed it was not human but a scarecrow but for the only part of his face not covered in blood were two white lines running down his cheeks where the tears had dried. His death was horrific yet not in vain. This ordinary boy set in motion a fight for equality, a fight for dignity. You don't have to be gay to understand this, you need only be human. Say his name…. Matthew Shepard

This line about how even the other gay people you find annoying or sell outs or who live their life in the exact opposite way you do are still part of the tribe was written in 1977 but should be plastered on the internet today