The whole point of inclusion and diversity in a show is so people can watch it and actually relate to the characters and be like "YES, SHE'S SMART AND BEAUTIFUL AND SUCCESSFUL AND SHE LOOKS LIKE ME, THEREFORE I CAN BE THOSE THINGS TOO". As someone who cried when Amita and Jessie talked about diversity in the industry, and as someone who's brown, I think it's safe to say that I found this whole ordeal to be disgusting.
90% of the content I've consumed in my life has been white-culture based. I grew up watching films and reading books that portrayed people who were nothing like me.
When S&B announced its casting and literally made it's whole marketing strategy 'Diversity' I was beyond happy. Amita talking about how hard she had to work to be able to do a pushup, let alone be INEJ made me have mad respect for her and the whole crew.
So seeing a white woman being PAINTED BROWN TO DO STUNTS FOR A CHARACTER WHO'S SUPPOSED TO BE BROWN really really stung. I don't know who's decision this was, and frankly I don't care. This one thing has changed so many people's perspective on a show that's literally based on a group of people who don't care about what the others look like, or where they're from, and love them regardless.
I really hope they take accountability for this and apologize. Because this may seem like a really little, meaningless thing to some white people, but it's a big deal to all those kids who read the books and then were BEYOND EXCITED TO WATCH THE SHOW. One brown woman in a netflix show that remained #1 for 13 days represents all those brown girls who believe that they too, would be accepted for WHO THEY ARE, NOT WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE.
“Hello, Sam,” she breathed onto the river breeze.
“I miss you,” she said. “Every day, I miss you. And I wonder what you would have made of all this. Made of me. I think—I think you would have been a wonderful king. I think they would have liked you more than me, actually.” Her throat tightened. “I never told you—how I felt. But I loved you, and I think a part of me might always love you. Maybe you were my mate, and I never knew it. Maybe I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering about that. Maybe I’ll see you again in the Afterworld, and then I’ll know for sure. But until then … until then I’ll miss you, and I’ll wish you were here.”
if this isn't the most painful eulogy and confession I've ever read.
As Dante was watching me search the sky through the lens of a telescope, he whispered, “Someday, I’m going to discover all the secrets of the universe.”
That made me smile. “What are you going to do with all those secrets, Dante?”
“I’ll know what to do with them,” he said. “Maybe change the world.”
I believed him.
~Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“Most of us can hide our greatest hurts and longings. It’s how we survive each day. We pretend the pain isn’t there, that we are made of scars instead of wounds."
“Most women suffer thorns for the sake of the flowers. But we who would wield power adorn ourselves in flowers to hide the sting of our thorns.”
~Leigh Bardugo, King of Scars
GENTLE REMINDER that though all the other characters are amazing, ALINA STARKOV IS THE PROTAGONIST LET'S NOT FORGET THE QUEEN.
“Get up,” Chaol whispered. "Celaena,” he breathed, his voice laced with pain—and hope. This was all she had left—his outstretched hand, and the promise of hope, of something better waiting on the other side of that line.
Back when I shipped Chaolena</3
“Is he with her?” Otho asked.
“The Lady Lillian belongs to herself, and no one else.”
“So she’s not with him?”
“No.”
Otho shrugged. “That’s strange.”
“Why?” Chaol had the sudden urge to strangle him.
“Because it looks like he’s in love with her,” he said, and walked away.
~Throne of Glass, Sjm
"It’s weird because I always know things about people, gut feelings that usually lead me in more or less the right direction. I do think I got a gut feeling with you, I just didn’t have what I needed in my head to understand it. But I kind of kept chasing it anyway, like I was just going blindly in a certain direction and hoping for the best. I guess that makes you the North Star?"
If not this sort of vulnerable beautiful confession, what's the point🙄?
“Senior year. And then life. Maybe that's the way it worked. High school was just a prologue to the real novel. Everybody got to write you -- but when you graduated, you got to write yourself. At graduation you got to collect your teacher's pens and your parents' pens and you got your own pen. And you could do all the writing. Yeah. Wouldn't that be sweet?”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
I hope your December is filled with red scarves and spiced tea and fluffy blankets and fairy lights and late night movies like little women and home alone and evermore by Taylor Swift and Christmas songs and candles and pies and books and mistletoe and candycanes and snow and poetry and sunny mornings and love❤✨
Don't read the last page
But I stay when it's hard or it's wrong or you're making mistakes
I want your midnights
But I'll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year's Day
Hold on to the memories, they will hold on to you.
~New Years Day, Taylor swift.