BLAIR WALDORF in “HI, SOCIETY”

female awesome meme: [2/5] absolute badasses → Nina Zenik

the sun you swelled under, the tree you grew from

[ commissioned by @durgas ]

pairings: zoya nazyalensky x alina starkov

characters: zoya nazyalensky, alina starkov, nikolai lantsov (mentioned), genya safin

very loosely inspired by the priory of the orange tree. not mal or nikolai bashing. please check the replies for ao3 link!

favorite i medici costumes | lucrezia donati’s red dress

favorite i medici costumes | underrated ladies’ outfits (requested by anon)

MEDICI - 1.06 // 2.05 mother and daughter in pastel blue and yellow outfits

female awesome meme: [3/5] warrior characters → Zoya Nazyalensky

“Some days I am more wolf than woman, and I am still learning how to stop apologizing for my wild.” ― Nikita Gill

desi light academia moodboard set in shimla, india

[ image ID in alt text ]

To all the Tumblr users who tend to use tags very liberally:

Let’s play a game. Type the following words into your tags box, then post the first automatic tag that comes up. you, also, what, when, why, how, look, because, never

oh comE ON

MEDICI: 3.08 The Fate of the City

being a brown girl and growing up w white friends was so painful, when i have a daughter im going to do everything i can to make sure she grows up with other brown girls 

there’s so much shame and humiliation in being a brown teenager surrounded by white girls. when i went through puberty it wasnt same as my friends

like they just…..grew, they got breasts and hips and kept it moving. i got facial hair before any of the boys we knew. my body hair was (and is still) dark, thick, prominent and all over. 

my closest friend saw my pubic hair in the girls changing room and told the entire school about it. someone asked me if i was secretly a man. i went home that day, my 12th birthday, and held back tears as my family cut my cake. i leaned too far over my work in art class causing my shirt to hitch up and my back to be exposed, i didn’t notice until the laughter of the group of boys behind me was loud enough. 

there’s so much shame in being brown and having body hair. there’s so much self-hatred towards the natural state of our bodies. so when i see white women (whose bodies mine has always been dichotomised against) partaking in body hair activism that doesn’t acknowledge this, when i see those tiny tufts of wispy thin blonde armpit hair dyed bright pastel colours, i feel no empowerment and no liberation - just the pain i’ve always felt within my own natural body. 

i screenshotted this cos the actual comment they made is like 800+ words but imagine seeing a post by a brown girl for other girls of colour who struggle w body hair and thinking ah yes this is the perfect place for me to interject my congealed mayonnaise opinion that op is totally wrong about her own lived experience 

i’m not black. not every black girl has “dark” skin. people with deeper skintones - black or not - have darker hair to match you racist dumb ass. be QUIET for two seconds. white people are banned from doing anything but reblog or like this post from this moment on, commenting rights have been revoked and you have not-your-everday-geek to blame 

Literally almost every comment is white people going “yeah I’m blonde buuuuuut…” or “I’m white and I blah blah blah “ like damn nobody cares wtf y’all look like, for once stop talking over WOC!!! Not every narrative is yours to interject// claim!!!

“I’m not heartless, I’ve just learned how to use my heart less.”

for @yenvengerberg

today it was revealed that a white woman in brownface was amita suman’s stunt double in shadow and bone. 

at a time when hollywood is preaching to stop aapi hate the show has shown us, twice so far, that they don’t care about our community. by having a south asian coded character make racist remarks towards an east asian coded character they added nothing to the plot or character development- all they did was try to create a divide between our communities. this hurt more especially because zoya was never racist in the books.

they condoned putting a stuntwoman in brownface because they couldn’t be bothered to find a desi stuntwoman for amita. there were are truly so many talented desi dancers and acrobats out there but shadow and bone refused to cast accurately because stuntwomen are supposed to show up in blurry or fast moving shots, making it “easier” to rely on brownface speaks volumes about how much they care about diversity.

for a show that has been praised for representation and diversity and was going to mean so much for asian viewers, shadow and bone failed to deliver time and time again, showing us that all we can count on when it comes to south asian representation in hollywood is constant disrespect and racism.

netflix and leigh bardugo along with the rest of the showrunners and writers marketed the show as being a diverse fantasy but were surrounded by a team that approved brownface should tell you all you need to know about how much they respected desi people in the first place. so many south asians were excited to finally see themselves onscreen in inej and zoya, especially as the show was praised by reviewers and writers as being diverse and accurate representation and this is what we got.

amita was so excited to play inej, a strong brown woman whose identity was not solely defined by her race and i can’t imagine how she felt watching a white woman paint herself brown so that she could perform stunts that amita had trained for as well. if anything, this proves that hollywood’s pushing of diversity on screen does nothing to help poc and representation unless that same diversity exists behind the camera.

I truly don’t mean to step on any toes here, and I totally agree there is a problem with the amount of diverse stuntpeople… but I actually happen to know some about this. And you’re not going to like it, but not only are there very few stuntwomen of color(ANY color), but there are very few stuntwomen in general.

Stuntpeople are not just people off the street, and aren’t just people with gymnastics experience. Yes, those things help, but truly, to be a stuntperson, you have to be properly trained. It is number one, a safety issue. They do not want anyone gdtting hurt, because they can get the shit sued out of them if they do. What I know about specifically is stunt driving, and there’s this thing called wigging, which is when a male stunt driver wears a wig to drive for a woman. Which they have to do often, because there’s so few women to do the work.

You say, “can’t be bothered to find a desi stuntwoman”, but do you actually know that? Were you the stunt coordinator on the show? I wasn’t. They could very well have looked for a desi stuntwoman, and been unable to find one. Based on my knowledge of the stunt community, that seems like a likely explanation as to what happened. Logistically, it would be much EASIER to have a desi stuntwoman in there, because they wouldn’t have to worry so much about hiding her face in the shots.

I didn’t watch the show. But it simply isn’t as simple to just FIND someone who looks right.

@bashhowardproductions

You mean well, and thank you for the input! But the issues goes deeper than just finding someone, the right one, or the right stunt person.

Inej Ghafa is a brown character from the books meant to be played by a brown woman. She’s an acrobat, and given the circumstance that she is in during the course of the books and the show, being an acrobat is very culturally and ethnically very significant to her.

They chose a white woman take her place instead of training Amita Suman herself (and she has gone through vigorous training for various scenes), and the stunts on the show, as other viewers (esp. acrobats themselves) have pointed out that the stunts could have been done by Amita herself with adequate training, since they’re not the most complex. All without brining in another person from a different race and skin colour.

But the problem isn’t even that. The fact that the show runners and the production team sought to paint a white woman brown with mesh tops and etc. and take the place specifically reserved for a brown woman, and very integral to her character, even for stunts, is very, very wrong.

The production was wrapped up in February 2020, long before the pandemic was raging. There were ample spaces for the team to look for someone who would take the space rightfully and show Inej Ghafa in the best possible way. You may be right—perhaps the team did look for someone and not find them; but that may be ridiculous in itself because the cinema industry in South Asia is large. Very vibrant and very large, with many stunts, many of which completely defy the gravity itself.

By not choosing a stunt woman of colour, or a person of colour, or even someone who could have helped Amita learn the stunts, or do it themselves to the best of their ability, to what could be rightfully theirs to portray—the showrunners lack the faith to stay true to the characters’ integrity.

And for Amita Suman, a woman so profoundly impacted by Inej, be seen so easily replaceable by a white woman in a space where roles for brown women are so scarce, I can’t even imagine how hurtful that must have been.

If the show runners can’t be bothered to stay as true as possible to the characters and the story, I can’t imagine why they should be show runners in the first place.

It was the vow of the drüskelle to Fjerda. And now it was Matthias’ promise to her.