Bezi || Black Bookwyrm Reads
@beingabookwyrm
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reviewer, @DreamingITDpod , asst marketing manager @simonkids @simonteen // 🇺🇸🇪🇹 // opinions my own // “there’s no end to what a living world demands of us”
a land of myth & time of magic
Joined July 2013
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Hi 👋🏾 I’m Bezi; I work in publishing, love SFF & YA by Black creators & wrote my MA thesis on colorblind casting Black women in fantasy! Currently not accepting unsolicited book review pitches 😊
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wow 🫤 I can’t believe we haven’t gotten any original Black characters in fantasy stories recently 🫤 nowhere to be found 🫤 where could they be 🫤
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say it with me: Black African people interacted with & impacted Roman Britain and early medieval Britain!!!! there’s no excuse for your medievalism dramas or fantasies, including Arthuriana, to not have Black people!!!
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this the correct energy PERIOD. especially now that we’re finally bringing all the Sleepy Hollow stuff to light — from day one I need studios putting Black actresses in these roles to stand behind them LOUDLY and publicly call out racism BY NAME in media coverage & in fandom
Rick Riordan on Adapting ‘Percy Jackson’ for TV: “We Dove in With Both Feet”
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so sick over the exact parallels btw Annabeth in ep 4 & Medusa’s story
“I would’ve worshipped Athena forever that way, in silence. Then he came, and I felt like he saw me in a way I’d never been seen before. But Athena declared I had embarrassed her & needed to be punished.”
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LOVE how the writing for the show hones in on showing Annabeth from multiple angles — how she sees herself, how others see her, how Percy sees her. and ofc this is especially meaningful bc this is a multi-dimensionality & interiority Black girl leads rarely get in fantasy media
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I know the show’s already being written but I just saw a TikTok about having a Black Annabeth — daughter of Athena goddess of weaving — be great at braiding her own hair and now I NEED it
like that’s exactly what we mean by reshaping a role instead of just colorblind casting!!!
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HI HELLO NETFLIX PAY YOUR WRITERS SO THEY CAN WRITE MORE MOVIES LIKE
#TheyClonedTyrone
👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
AND PAY YOUR ACTORS SO WE CAN GET MORE HILARIOUS ICONIC TRIOS LIKE IN THIS MOVIE!!! bc John Boyega, Jamie Foxx, and my girl Teyonah Parris ate this movie UP and we deserve more 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
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@ExquisiteWill
and his immediate “sorry won’t happen again” I’m crying real tears from laughing this hard
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I need everyone to appreciate how iconic her fro is. like it would have meant so much to my 14 year old self to see the Black girl lead of a major franchise with her natural hair out and flourishing
Leah Sava Jeffries discusses bringing Annabeth to life and researching on greek mythology and the
#PercyJackson
books.
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*looks directly at the Merlin fandom*
A lot of people seem anti smooching these days, but it really grinds my corn whey people look at Black woman and go hmmm that’s a good platonic soulmate right there. Meanwhile y’all will ship 2 white dudes who just happen to be in the same show.
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colorblind casting will not save us, visibility alone in narratives that are not ~quite adapted for us will not save us, but some of y’all need to be honest and just say you’re not paying attention to kids media that’s not TLM, which had a multimillion dollar marketing budget
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I AM SCREAMING BLACK ANNABETH 🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾 THE BLACK GIRLS WON TODAY!!!!!! PROTECT MY GIRL LEAH IMMEDIATELY
CASTING NEWS: The trio is complete!
@AryanSimhadri
@LeahSavJeffries
@walkerscobell3
@disneyplus
#Annabeth
#Grover
#PercyJackson
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the power this had. the cultural impact this had. when I found out Annabeth was going to be Black, I was casually scrolling on Twitter under the dryer at the hair salon, and I literally started tearing up. could not stop yelling about it for WEEKS (I still can’t)
A year ago we received our first official announcement of the
#PercyJackson
trio in a photo as they entered production.
Leah Sava Jeffries as Annabeth.
Walker Scobell as Percy Jackson.
Aryan Simhadri as Grover Underwood.
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if I see one more yt person, let alone reviewer/critic, call the Kristen Stewart Christmas movie the “lesbian Get Out” when the cast looks like this. I’m begging you to realize race is not a metaphor for other marginalizations
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today’s
#PJOSeriesArt
that I am obsessed with, Grover keeping Annabeth from k!lling this dumbass yt boy 🤣🤣🤣 an iconic trio dynamic
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not to put too fine a point on it, but all of them being Black women, and all of this happening during the WGA strike and leading up to a possible SAG strike, is very Telling
Let’s talk about how many of the diversity leaders have left/been laid off within the last two weeks. This is crazy.
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it’s finally time to share my news 😁
today was my last day at my internship — starting Monday I’ll be working full time in digital marketing for Penguin Young Readers, assisting the amazing teams at
@PenguinTeen
and
@penguinkids
!!! 🐧🎉
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Leah walking into the Percy Jackson audition room like
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@jifueko
lmaooooo this was hilarious!! her lecturing the other deer on their teaching skills 🤣🤣🤣
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✨an update✨
As of today, I’m officially a Marketing Coordinator for Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing! I’m so excited to work on campaigns for a variety of kids & YA titles, including one of my favorite series of all time, the Legendborn Cycle by Tracy Deonn 🥰
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and! just in case this makes its way to ✨certain✨ corners of the internet, I’m not saying any of the above stories are beyond critique!
I just wish ppl who got in their feelings about the success of adaptations talked about that in a big picture view of Black kids in fantasy
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sorry y’all I didn’t list titles - everyone’s named them in the replies already but just in case:
1) The Sea Beast
2) Wendell & Wild
3) Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur
4) Disney’s Wish
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@kosherhotdogz
you’re so right and you should say it. Daniel Radcliffe particularly would have ate it up
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me seeing the TL mourning the end of a show I couldn’t get into
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@quintabrunson
God fearing black people: we don't fuck with ghosts or Ouji boards or any of that shit
white people:
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period because the way some of y’all love brooding male heroes with angsty backstories they’re hiding from, but when it’s a Black TEENAGER running from her responsibilities because the power she’s inherited feels like it’s choking her, you don’t get it
“we need more complex female characters” y’all could barely handle her
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last notes:
1) I said “fantasy” to reference comments about The Little Mermaid/adaptations
2) I wrote a literal thesis on this😊
3) WISH is out in Nov
4) many more original Black fantasy novels are out now, many of which I’ve reviewed on IG and a few I’ve worked on marketing for
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me: I can’t handle horror
also me: *is obsessed with this trend on TikTok*
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I’ve talked about this before but this makes me so ANGRY. his epigraph is a footnote on the walls. and that epigraph is “I was a stranger and ye took me in” when he was a KIDNAPPED CHILD.
hoping the headlines about this will intensify public pressure though
Buckingham Palace has reportedly rejected a request to return the remains of a teenage Ethiopian royal, Prince Alemayehu, who was buried at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle more than 140 years ago.
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12 GOT spin-offs coming but where are the fantasy shows like these huh!!! what’s not clicking!!!!
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be so serious. the way I saw the first pic and was like “why is Tiana holding hands with Prince Eric” — YOU’RE TELLING ME THAT’S SUPPOSED TO BE NAVEEN
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🗣🗣🗣 DONT FORGET ALL THE FANTASY AUTHORS WHO LOVE TO USE RACISM AND OPPRESSION AS *ALLEGORY* AND/OR *WITHOUT ACTUAL POC* IN THEIR BOOKS, BUT STAY SILENT WHEN IT‘S HAPPENING IN THE REAL WORLD. we saw you then, and we see you now.
don’t forget all the fantasy authors who love to use racism and oppression as a theme in their books but stay silent when it’s happening in the real world
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he got cast at 13 and now he’s almost 15, that’s middle school to high school LOL puberty comes at you fast
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oooh I know they drive her NUTS 🤣 I love this cast so much y’all
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no bc let’s talk about it. Gwen was written to carry the emotional wellbeing of not just Arthur in the latter half of the series, but also Merlin & Morgana from the very beginning. for all her warmth and generosity, she deserved so much more credit — from the show AND the fandom
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nothing you can say will make me not proud of this
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this is exactly how the modern Prince Consort of Genovia should dress and you can’t change my mind
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more on Black Africans in Roman Britain:
for further reading on medieval race studies, check out Geraldine Heng’s The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, and
@ProfCWhit
’s Black Metaphors: How Modern Racism Emerged from Medieval Race Thinking!
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say it with me kids, colorblind!!! casting!!! an adaptation!!! is not!!! enough!!! you need thoughtful, complex reimagining and rewriting!!! you need to be willing to take the story apart, not just patch up the leaky bits!!!!
Through casting and script choices, 'Peter Pan & Wendy' attempts to correct the more insensitive components of the 1953 animated film 'Peter Pan.'
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I personally don’t think Leah should have to wear BLOND braids — some of y’all are TOO obsessed with hair color and it’s telling — but I do love the idea of her in braids & that would be such a cute in-universe explanation for why she wouldn’t need to keep going to the salon
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this tweet is getting attention & depictions of Black ppl / Blackness in not just medieval lit, but ALSO modern media “evoking” medievalism, are topics I LOVE talking about!!! esp when the field of medieval studies is only beginning to acknowledge the work of scholars of color
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anyway their vibes are immaculate and I will not be taking questions at this time
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chills. literal chills. so subtle I almost missed it the first time I watched it
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add them to the list of pairings we need to see more of please
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@rickriordan
@ClaireOdell99
hello! this is very much not own voices, in that it’s written by a white woman. if you’re looking for wlw by Black women, may I suggest YOU SHOULD SEE ME IN A CROWN by
@byleahjohnson
or the many queer Black stories in A PHOENIX FIRST MUST BURN edited by
@whimsicallyours
?
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I talk about this a bit in my thesis, but there’s a reason all of the princess story adaptations that cast BW as leads were Cinderella/Cinderella-lite stories. Being “rescued” from labor/invisibility & allowed to rest in luxury is a fantasy BW had not been allowed to dream
Girlboss fairy tale adaptations always try to modernize their stories by minimizing the romance and upping the generic speeches about being a Strong Woman instead of digging into what made these stories appealing or subversive to women in their original historical contexts.
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I’m just saying, I’m still waiting on
@charlieputh
to record the full version of this song with her and put it on Spotify
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it’s just unimaginative to colorblind casting everyone BUT the Darling kids. besides the weird dynamics (Tink’s jealousy? Peter’s infatuation w/ the one(1) white girl?) this misses that Hook=patriarchal authority which is why he’s the villain in her fear of growing up— (1/2)
The first trailer for ‘PETER PAN & WENDY’ has been released.
The film releases on April 28 on Disney+
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@halfbloodtrio
the strikes / a pre-Christmas release date makes more sense for programming that they want families to watch together
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BIG PJOTV SPOILER ALERT for Leah’s answer but the way she’s describing the exact moment we’re all braced for (see the
@halfbloodtrio
tweet below) … oh I’m gonna be WRECKED 😩😭😩😭
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characters from different universes that would be besties
(aka, I watched
#AcrossTheSpiderVerse
and I have not been able to stop thinking about Blackness and belonging when institutions are built on your exclusion & your suffering)
characters from different universes that would be besties
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READ THIS THREAD AND THEN READ IT AGAIN 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 bc tell me why Legendborn (and like Talia Hibbert) are the closest to a Black “BookTok hit” — yet neither of them have gotten the kind of concentrated significant sales boost that ANY of the other authors listed have (we know why)
Respectfully, Adam is yt passing and the majority of POC who have found success on BookTok are light skinned. The truth of the matter is TikTok is anti-black. The algorithm makes it incredibly difficult for Black/dark skinned people to be viewed.
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someone in the replies said that’s just The Backyardigans and bruh I should not be laughing this hard in public
a sitcom about a friend group where not everyone is in every episode because they have other friends they like to hang out with sometimes
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F I N A L L Y
Trump will lose his Twitter ‘public interest’ protections in January
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Percy Jackson is still trending after 2 days and this popped up and y’all don’t understand, the bar is so high because the writing on Black Sails was PHENOMENAL, so much of the dialogue/monologues literally haunt me to this day??? anyway I can’t wait for this
Daphne Oliver will be a writer for the
#PercyJackson
live action series on
#DisneyPlus
.
She has worked on ‘Black Sails’ with Jon Steinberg and Dan Shotz, Sails showrunners who are also leading the Percy Jackson series. She is also working on Hulu’s thriller: ‘The Old Man.’
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get a transparent tinted laptop case and put your stickers under it, and you can arrange them and have them stay without taking off the sticker backing!
okay people who buy stickers and actually use them: HOW DO YOU DECIDE WHAT TO STICK THEM ON HOW DO I FINALLY START USING MY STICKERS
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let me be very clear: knowing what we know about the NYT list, if YOU SHOULD SEE ME IN A CROWN, A SONG OF WRAITHS AND RUIN, and A SONG BELOW WATER don’t make the YA list after all three of them were backordered during their pub week—
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actually, let me clarify with Ares
not only do I think he should be white bc of the implications if he were POC, the main reason is bc I ALSO think that what he represents — rage executed on a global scale, war & genocide — are inherently embodied by Western colonial masculinity
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Imma need the goddesses to all be WOC because there is not enough melanin in the studio I’m so serious
The Gods of
#PercyJackson
& The Olympians (so far):
Ares, Mr. D / Dionysus, Hermes, Hades, Hephaestus…. more to come!
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apropos of nothing at all, here are a few of my favorite recent romance novels written for teens 😌💕
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officially have my own first apartment, with furniture (in various states of disarray) all moved in 🙌🏾 dead on my feet but taking time to just look at this incredible view of the city outside my floor-to-ceiling windows (!!!) & be thankful I got here 🥰
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PERIODDDD. she said this show is not just gonna be how Percy sees her, this is Annabeth’s story too and she’s gonna tell it her way. love love love
“When you read the books, it’s coming from Percy Jackson’s perspective. I’m not playing Percy Jackson so I wanted to make sure i knew Annabeth’s story. I had to study more on her and who is Athena and who are the people around her that she cares about. I wanted that strength but
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SHE’S HEREEEEEE!!! As a Black fantasy nerd with two degrees in medieval studies, y’all already know the Legendborn Cycle series by
@tracydeonn
means EVERYTHING to me — Bloodmarked is gonna emotionally wreck me, I CAN’T WAIT 😭🙌🏾❤️⚔️💙🙌🏾😭
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and I guess while we’re all here, gonna go ahead & say overall that IMHO the idea of reshaping a role only goes so far if certain character traits would have badly stereotypical implications as played by a POC — eg. I would argue that Ares should DEFINITELY be white
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Y’ALL!!!! I found (*very* last minute) tickets to a limited Percy Jackson early screening!!! 🧡 thankfully
@thegildedperla
& I had our camp shirts ready to go, and we even reunited w/ new friends we met at the PJO Happy Sad Confused event —
@PercySeries
bringing ppl together 🧡💙
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when you make every villain redeemable except the Black ones, that’s anti Black.
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@ExquisiteWill
thank you for boosting this and reminding me the co-writer for episode 3 and one of the EPs is a Black woman and it shows!!! love that for us
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I’ll say it rn, this is my favorite ep of the show so far and I absolutely love how well they understand Annabeth & the changes they’ve made to deepen how we see her
and when Athena is her Black mom who she strives so hard to please & emulate I will cry
“Percy and Annabeth are most different is in terms of their upbringing. Annabeth is fully steeped in the Olympian culture, the family culture of what you owe up to the gods in tribute and obligation. She has a calcified vision of her mother that has to change in order to get
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I’m already barely coherent literally on my sickbed and then they do THIS like my emotions can’t handle this. but once again this is Jonathan Steinberg we’re talking about, I already knew he was gonna destroy me
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so today was my last day at Penguin Young Readers 🥰 I’m grateful for & proud of all that I learned while assisting
@penguinkids
and
@PenguinTeen
— from the amazing authors I got to meet, to the books I worked on, to the social content I created
More news to come! 👀
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good morning! I have ✨personal news✨
it’s my 1 year anniversary at S&S Children’s, and I’ve officially been promoted from Coordinator to Assistant Marketing Manager!! 💙
I’m so excited to continue working on the books I love & I can’t wait to share more cool things to come 🙌🏾
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this has come up before so I’ll say it again, it’s because the electricity of an TRUE enemies to lovers romance comes from a mutual respect & them viewing each other as equals!!!! if there’s a significant power imbalance being exploited, it doesn’t work!!!!!
A lot of books called enemies-to-lovers are just bully romances, and I think it’s time we talk about that
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all I’m gonna say is I’m gonna be thinking about Everything, Everywhere, All at Once for a while
also the cumulative effect of watching this after Encanto & Turning Red. the millennial kids of color / first gen daughters really said we are grown, let’s unpack generational trauma
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posting subtweets on the TL isn’t usually my thing, but I’ve seen this enough times and it’s got to stop — PLEASE stop calling a book “urban fantasy” when it doesn’t take place in a city/isn’t gritty or dark, just because it’s written by a Black person. PLEASE.
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just watched it and really enjoyed it!!! this is a movie that understands female rage. all the characters are vivid, quirky and feral — the story embraces its own insanity while keeping the sisters’ relationship at its heart. the third act had me screaming and crying laughing!!!
Nida Manzoor’s ‘POLITE SOCIETY’ starring Priya Kansara and Ritu Arya releases in theaters on April 28.
The film currently holds a Rotten Tomatoes score of 94%.
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.
@updatespercy
just a heads up: I hopped on Luke Arnold’s live a few minutes ago and asked whether he’d be open to popping up on PJO since so many Black Sails alum were there and he said “of course!” 👀👀👀
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@updatespercy
shamelessly pulling from some of the most interesting fancasts I’ve seen floating around
Navia Robinson as Thalia
Brandon Severs as Charles Beckendorf
Lane Factor as Tyson
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(2/2) —so one way to approach a true reimagining would start by making him/the pirates (but definitely him) the only white person
aka, the white patriarchal authority that a commune of kids of color unite to resist
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@RdotSpoon
no it really is so insane. like he has proven again and again that he is MEANT for romantic lead roles. what more does this man have to do????
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It’s live!!! For my second ever freelance piece, I wrote an essay for
@CatapultStory
on visibility, colorblind casting, and the fantasies Black girls learned to internalize:
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Hi! 👋🏾 I’m Bezi, a bookstagrammer, editor & general SFF film/TV nerd looking for a full time job in publishing 😊 check out my reviews of
#ownvoices
fantasy & YA, and support Black authors!
📸 |
📝 |
✉️ | bybeingabookwyrm
@gmail
.com
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you know, as an explanation for colorblind casting, “King Triton the demigod of the sea being a hoe and having kids with women from every global sea region” is actually not bad lol
there are two (2) white mermaids in the live action little mermaid for
#them
to attach themselves to. 🙏🏾
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BLACK FANTASY STAYS WINNING AND I WILL CONTINUE YELLING ABOUT HOW AMAZING BESTSELLING AUTHORS
@rosiesrambles
@BCMorrow
@jifueko
AND NOW
@tracydeonn
ARE BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT WE DO HERE
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@RdotSpoon
it’s insane. not only is she one of the LEADS, she’s in THEE canon relationship of the show. yes the writing fumbles her arc in specific ways, but the endgame romance is CLEAR. but the way the fandom has demoted her to platonic sidekick to a fanon relationship makes me see red
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@SydneyBattle
👀 a secret that they pledge to bury for years until an inciting incident in their adulthood makes them revisit their past and what really happened that night
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#TheSeaBeast
is a movie about imperialism in a world casually & even largely populated by POC so having a Black girl stand up to institutions of power on behalf of the monsters becomes a lovely — & I have to believe intentional — nod to who is usually deemed the “monstrous” Other
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I literally think about her every day and I WILL bring her up at every opportunity
no bc let’s talk about it. Gwen was written to carry the emotional wellbeing of not just Arthur in the latter half of the series, but also Merlin & Morgana from the very beginning. for all her warmth and generosity, she deserved so much more credit — from the show AND the fandom
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this is your friendly reminder that The Sea Beast comes out on Netflix next week and I *will* be banging pots and pans on the TL to get y’all to watch this movie
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now y’all are leaving with the wrong takeaway from this and it’s not sitting right with me. Kim Possible is BETTER than Batman because she could do everything he did (1) without his millions, (2) in the public eye, and (3) on a school night
Someone said Batman & Kim Possible have the same powers. I haven’t unclenched my fist since.
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