Morningstar's Musings: People are People, Love is Love, and Mashed Potatoes Should Always Be Made with Garlic

People are People, Love is Love, and Mashed Potatoes Should Always Be Made with Garlic

I have a long-held belief that people are people, love is love, and mashed potatoes should always be made with garlic. I know, I know people struggle with the idea of garlic in their delicious potatoes but I’m telling you it packs a HUGE amount of flavor without the added calories. I mean let’s be real, adding all that gross gravy or cheese or sour cream is not only ruining the mashed potatoes but also adding tons more fat to an already terrible-for-you food.

But I digress. Onto the people are people and love is love part.

 

As a community, we are supposed to be open and welcoming, understanding and compassionate, strong and united. We are all different. We come from different backgrounds, we’ve experienced different things, we live different lives, and some of us have survived things the rest could never imagine. The writers among us sit down and write all those things into stories that give us feels and love and above all else show us the things we haven’t lived. Show us the brave ones that have survived, the ones that keep fighting, the ones that had it “easy”, and the ones that are just starting to find out who they are.

  

This community, all of you, are ones that have taught me so much. And you continue to do so through every word written, every story completed, and every interaction with all of you in this community. We’ve all made a friend or 10 in our virtual world. We all interact with these people every damn day. They post, we comment, we laugh, we cry, we share, we talk.

We don’t judge.

Whatever it is we accept. Well we’re supposed to...

SO

Why are we so resistant to change when we push against those in the world for that very thing?

Why do we fight to stop progress in our own genre when we fight for progress everywhere else?

Why do some rail against books with poly relationships, but scream love is love?

Why do so many shout against books with gay men living in an open relationship, but love the people in our community living that life?

HOW DID WE BECOME SO CLOSED MINDED?

I have preferences in my stories. We all do. Some of those are tropes, some are writing style, and some are words we don’t like being used.  I have things I love, things I like, and some pet peeves that cause some epic rants...ask my friends, they’ve gotten an ear full I tell ya!

BUT

I don’t judge or hate stories that have things in them that are outside my comfort zone.

Isn’t that why we read?

To experience things that we don’t know.

To learn and see things that are otherwise outside our reach?

To, on some level, feel the pain or love or happiness or anxiety etc. that some person has felt or is feeling?

As a reviewer, I read a book and rate it based on many, many things BUT never because a couple occasionally or whenever the fuck they want have another guy (or 2 or 10) in their bed. Never because the relationship is between three (or more) guys. Never because the writer has shown them in a previous relationship where they had sex (OMG people do that?! *eye roll*). All these things are things that happen in real life. Real things people experience.

What you dislike are REAL people. What you find intolerable is how REAL people live and how they love.

I am not saying you have to LIKE it. You don’t even have to read it. What I am saying is don’t freak out and yell and rant over someone writing that story because YOU don’t like it.

Because that is you being the very opposite of what our community stands for.

Like I said earlier, garlic mashed potatoes are the best thing ever to happen to mashed potatoes. But I would never judge or look down on the person sitting next to me eating mac & cheese with ketchup on it, or my weird aunt who eats hot dogs with mayo on top, or my even weirder friend (Luna David) who eats PEANUT BUTTER on her hot dog.

Because I love you all with all your weirdness, sexual kinkiness, and wonderful hearts.

Love is Love