Let’s not forget to acknowledge Alexandre Dumas this Black History Month
The writer of two of the most well known stories worldwide, The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo was a black man.
That’s excellence.
Let’s not forget that he was played on screen by a white man. And the fact that he was black is barely ever mentioned or the book he wrote inspired by his experiences.
Other things not to forget about Alexandre Dumas:
chose to take on his slave grandmother’s last name, Dumas, like his father did before him.
grew up too poor for formal education, so was largely self-taught, including becoming a prolific reader, multilingual, well-travelled, and a foodie, resulting in his writing both a combination encyclopedia/cookbook (which just— is fucking outrageous to me) AND the adaptation of The Nutcracker on which Tchaikovsky based his ballet
he also wrote a LOOOOT of nonfiction and fiction about history, politics, and revolution, bc he was pro-monarchy, but a radical cuss, and that got him in a lot of hot water at home and abroad.
even beyond that, he generally put up with a lot of racist bullshit in France, so he went and wrote a novel about colonialism and a BLATANTLY self-insert anti-slavery vigilante hero (which he then cribbed from to write the Count of Monte Cristo, the main character of which, Edmond Dantés, Dumas also based on himself).
(…a novel which also features a LOAD of PoC beyond the Count, and at LEAST one queer character, btw, bc EVERY MOVIE ADAPTATION OF ANYTHING BY DUMAS IS A LIE; seriously, at LEAST one of the four Musketeers is Black, y’all.)
famously, when some fuckshit or other wanted to come at Dumas with some anti-Black foolishness, Dumas replied, “My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my great-grandfather a monkey. You see, Sir, my family starts where yours ends.”
for the bicentennial of his birthday, Pres. Jacques Cirac was like, “…sorry about the hella racism,” and had Dumas’s ashes reinterred at the Panthéon of Paris, bc if you’re gonna keep the corpses of the cream of the crop all together, Dumas’s more widely read and translated than literally everybody else.
and they are still finding stuff old dude wrote, seriously; like discovering “lost” works as recently as 2002, publishing stuff for the first time as recently as 2005.
ALSO IMPORTANT:
SWAG
I am absolutely ashamed to admit I had NO idea Dumas was black.
daddy general dumas was an immense fierce french warrior who was a 6 foot plus, stunningly gorgeous and charismatic Black gentleman
he invaded egypt
the native egyptians said “is this napoleon? this must be napoleon. we for one welcome our majestic new overlord”
then napoleon showed up
napoleon has all the presence of yesterday’s plain Tesco hummus
the native egyptians were like “… no… no, we’ve thought very hard and we’ll have General Dumas actually”
this did not make napoleon happy
in fact it made him jealous
napoleon felt so emasculated that he launched a campaign of revenge against General Dumas, including taking away his pension, that probably inspired a lot of Alexandre’s rather satisfying scenes in which fathers are nobly avenged and the money-grubbing villains are rubbed in the mud
He was also born in present-day Haiti. Back then, it was the French colony of Saint-Domingue.
The fact that they love to talk about Alexandre Dumas in schools in France but never mention he was black. Why am I learning this here.
If you have never read The Count of Monte Cristo, please please pleaaaase give it a read. It’s extremely good. If you’re not a huge fan of historical novels and haven’t read some, just get the abridged version. It’s a little bit of an easier read for the modern reader.
by the way the funniest thing ive read all week is this post on reddit i think where somebody asked for the pros and cons of different stem majors and so this one girl responded and she said she was a software engineer i believe and then she said “ok pro #1. i never have to wait in line for the bathroom ever again. there are more female restrooms in this building than there are women”
pro #2: growing up i was surrounded by so many saras. just. saras everywhere. which sara do you want? but now, as a software engineer, I am the only sara. the eleven marks weep in jealousy.
the marks smdjdjdjdjd YEAH when i took my first compsci class the lab section had twice as many nicks than there were women
someone was complaining to me about how there are too many ryans on the team, and i said “you wanna know how to fix that? hire more women” and the only other woman sitting nearby spat out her coffee
thank god for the mythbusters though because it used to be that whenever i knew i had insomnia i’d just kind of accept it and stay up doing whatever until my morning classes and spend the day feeling like shit
but then they did an episode where they established that even just fucking laying there for a half hour, not even sleeping just laying there and not even for an hour, makes a significant difference and you’ll feel way better
it has made a huge difference in my life to know that it’s okay if i can’t fall asleep, it takes a lot of the pressure off and ironically helps me fall asleep better
…i did not know this, thank you
If anyone wants to look it up, the episode was specifically the Deadliest Catch crossover ep, and the myth was that it’s better/safer when working a 30 hour shift to take a 20 minute nap every six hours rather than try to power through. They did an obstacle course test, one without naps and one with, and even though they couldn’t even sleep half the time the naps resulted in their scores doubling.
So actually I undersold it, even if it’s 7:40 and your alarm goes off at 8 just lie down and shut your eyes and it will still be better than nothing
This is what my mom always tells me: “You’ll rest even when you’re just lying down”. Good to know for everyone who has problems sleeping.
This is really important to remember!!
if you learn nothing else from following me, learn this.
I’ll also add: you can train yourself to be better at napping. Set an alarm for 12, 22, or 30 minutes. Lay there the entire time, whether or not you sleep. When it goes off, get up, no matter what. You’ll eventually train yourself to understand that you can relax and sleep for those few minutes (and yes, 12 minutes can still help). SUPER IMPORTANT: get up when the alarm goes off. If you sleep longer than 30 minutes at a time, you can enter a different stage of sleep and then you’ll have that dreaded sleep paralysis when you get up, when your legs are 1,000 pounds and your head is stuffed with grass clippings.
I mean, if you don’t count healing a Roman Centurions young male lover without commenting negatively on the relationship, then I guess….
(we mistranslate pais on purpose, just like we regendered a number of the earliest Christian leaders as male.)
The text goes out of its way to deliberately use the word pais and point out that deliberate choice and yet it still got mistranslated. I want to tie every homophobic so-called christian to a folding chair and make them endure my lecture on the word pais make that my life’s mission Jesus and I will be happy.
Pais is ‘beloved or same sex-lover’ and it gets mistranslated to ‘servant’ even though the other word for servant is placed squarely in the passage to make the word choice obviously deliberate. Both Matthew and Luke use the word ‘pais’ making it very very clear that the man was the centurion’s lover. Jesus praises the centurion’s faith and does not comment negatively on the relationship, he blesses it. Now, Jesus healed thousands. But most of the individual stories that tell of healings highlight specific points – the woman at the well, the centurion’s lover, the Canaanite woman, etc. – that marginalized people deserve Christ’s healing and love just as much as everyone else. They are all shown to have exceptional faith.
So-called christians today would have us block women’s healthcare, while Jesus himself healed a woman with menorrhagia. So-called christians today are hostile to immigrants, while Jesus held up the Canaanite woman as an example of great faith. So-called christians today label homosexuality as the ultimate sin, while Jesus himself blessed the centurion and his pais.
You know… earlier today I said almost exactly the same thing in a chattybubble to Mel:
the characters aren’t “glamorous” and sexually available to male characters so… >.>
I mean, in the larger conversation surrounding that out of context comment, discussing the “image” that the CW seems to be trying to cultivate of glossy eye candy, a show about six kickass monster-killing women who nevertheless lean on one another for real emotional support, and who don’t wear spandex superhero uniforms or prom dresses or whatever, but who live real lives outside of their monster hunting and deep personal traumas and personal losses associated with that… I mean…
We, the audience, have said that is exactly what WE want to see, but the network keeps trying to shove something else entirely at us. Kinda makes you wonder why…
Also, while we’re here, the Spite-O-Meter is up over 48k signatures and still climbing. Which is just… unheard of, I mean Wayward isn’t even its own *series* yet and nearly 50k people have voiced their wish to see it happen.
@postmodernmulticoloredcloak‘s tags (and yes Marghe, I know this was said tongue-in-cheek with a heavy side eye at Pedowitz, so I’ll elaborate):
I mean, Pedowitz has said that he wants to appeal to a broader female audience, and believed that Dynasty (DYNASTY?!) was the show to do that?! Like, I’m convinced he knows like four women, and they all miss watching Alexis Carrington Colby Dexter Colby (or whatever the heck her long list of names was it was a long damn time ago and I was mostly dazzled by everyone’s architectural shoulder pads okay? She got married and divorced A LOT. For a “powerful female character” she sure did go through husbands like tissues) prance around in evening wear and crush the patriarchy of international corporate culture or whatever the heck she did.
And it’s not just women who want to watch Wayward. It’s absolutely NOT useless for male consumption, though that may be what Pedowitz believes. I mean, this is the same dude that once referred to Tumblr as “the male Pinterest.” I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few days watching the Spite O Meter click up, and there are a lot of women’s names on that list… but there are a not-insignificant number of Toms, Dicks, and Harrys as well. (and one Mr. Mittens, who is crushed and angry that the show didn’t get picked up, and who’s well outside the network’s “target audience” of young adult women… and even young adult men. Then again, Mr. Mittens is the sort of dude who went to see Little Women in the theater in 1994 with two other dudes and the three of them got all weepy and loved it, so I admit he might’ve never really been part of the “average young adult male audience” even when he was a young adult male).
But the whole point of Wayward isn’t just about its potential to depict a wlw story, it’s to show the fact that WOMEN OVERALL have the same power to tell us their stories that men do. That stories about women don’t need to be filtered through men’s stories in order for men to be able to relate or enjoy those stories. It’s about representation, not just for LGBTQ, not just for PoC, not just for a specific target marginalized group, but for an entire diverse cast of women to tell us their stories, where any male character that might happen to come along would be secondary to the women’s stories and not become the focus of it.
I watched the last 20 or so names to sign scroll past, and at least a quarter of them were unambiguously male names (Todd, Alan, Dave, etc.). And honestly that’s REALLY encouraging to me. “Women’s stories” SHOULD be just as appealing to men, you know? Because they are HUMAN stories, and not “just for girls.” And they shouldn’t require the women in question to only appeal to a male audience by appearing scantily clad or sexually available to them.
i walk into starbucks and order a pumpkin spice latte with 13 shots of espresso. i tell the barista that i intend to transcend humanity and become a god. i ask for no whip cream
you say this jokingly but i had a customer actually order a pumpkin spice latte with 9 shots of espresso (also no whip) and when i asked her to verify that she did indeed want 9 shots of espresso she looked me dead in the eyes and said “i have 5 kids”
I once had a woman come in and ordered an Americano with 19 shots of espresso. The drink took ages. It held up the line. I asked her why, and she shrugged and said “I just don’t care”. We still talk about that woman. We never saw her again.
new cryptid: exhausted woman at starbucks
Actual conversation I had at register:
“Hi, welcome to [Starbucks]! What can I get you, today?”
“How much is it to fill a Venti with Espresso?”
“I- I’m sorry?”
“A venti cup. How much to fill it with Espresso?”
“Oh. uh. Well, it’d be I suppose… I only have a button for a Quad. I don’t have special pricing for twenty ounces of espresso in a single… drink.”
“Price is the furthest thing from my mind right now. How many ‘add shots’ is that?”
*deep breath of fear* “It’d be a quad with,” *clears throat* “uh, sixteen additional shots of espresso. But, ma’am, I should tell you that the shots will start to get really bitter if they have to sit and wait for us to pull twenty of them-”
“Taste means nothing to me.”
At this point I am truly fearing for my very existence in the presence of what must clearly be an eldritch being.
“Oh. Well, okay.” I put on my absolute best customer service smile to hide my terror and accept that I must face this dragon, fae, or demon with dignity. “We can certainly get that for you! The price will be _____.”
She begins to pay, I shit thee not, with golden dollar coins. We are a block from Wall Street, and this eldritch demi-being is paying for an unholy elixer with golden coins. My life will end soon, I am sure of it.
“Do you still have the ‘Add Energy’ packets?”
My heart began to race at this request. “Yes ma’am.”
“How many can I add?”
Futile though it is, at least I know the rote response to this. “For health reasons, we won’t add more than one per drink and we cannot sell the packets individually.”
“One then.”
I alter the order and tell her the new price. She pays, dumps the change and five golden dollars into the tip box. I write the order on the venti cup and pass it silently to the girl working the hot beverage station. Normally we called and pass, but this was … not something to be spoken aloud.
My fellow takes the cup, not thinking anything of the minor break with protocol, until she sees the order. She stares at me. “No.”
The woman, which I call her for no other greater insight into her terrifying being is within my grasp, simply stands on the other side and says, calmly but with a commanding tone I expect of Admirals in bad movies, “Yes.”
My fellow barista pales before her task. But we are dutiful, we are true to our task, great though it may be. She sets about clearing the two brand new Matrena’s of all distraction, and sets two tall cups in the ready position. The energy packet is emptied into the venti cup, and the shots begin pouring.
The barista was damn near shaking. This woman’s gaze felt like the fires of the sun. Finally, the shots are pulled, the cup is filled, and the hand off takes place.
Our visiting Incomprehensible takes it to our milk bar and adds a dollop of cream. Satisfied, she proceeds to down what must have been half the damn cup.
Then she smiled at us, like a benediction and I was honestly filled with joy. And horror. She left, and we knew nothing more of her after that.
When I talk with other former employees, we quickly begin talking about “The Company” as if we’d never l, perhaps knowing that part of our soul still powers that awesome and terrible corporate machine. And when I share this stroy, other Baristas at first act shocked but quickly settle and comes the chorus,
“Yeah, I had one like that.”
Okay, Starbucks lore is my new favorite genre of literature. Please collect all these and more into a book.
…I thought Venti Espresso Cryptid was a fever dream my manager had. Good lord.
not as dramatic but i had a customer order a venti bold with 6 shots of espresso and his only explanation was “im driving to new york” ……. i work in boston
When Mark Pedowitz joined the CW as president in 2011, he set about drawing more male viewers to the female-skewing broadcaster — and found success with superhero action series such as “The Flash” and “Arrow.” Now, with its upcoming “Dynasty” reboot and the launch last season of Archie Comics-inspired soap “Riverdale,” the network is looking to reinforce its hold on female viewers.
Pedowitz was “not going to say no” to the pitch for a “Dynasty” reboot from Josh Schwartz, Stephanie Savage, and Sallie Patrick, he said Wednesday at the Television Critics Association press tour, especially with two long-running female-skewing dramas set to end after the coming season.
“We’re losing ‘Vampire Diaries,’ we’re losing ‘Reign,‘” Pedowitz said. “We want to keep more women watching us. ‘Dynasty’ and ‘Riverdale’ does that.”
Speaking to reporters after his executive session, Pedowitz elaborated on his efforts to keep the network’s audience balanced.
“When I got here, we were 70% female to 30% male,” he said. “We’re now 50-50.” He added, “I think the better mix is 55-45, female to male. So we’re trying to bring more women back to us.”
no, not usually. If a heterosexual man wants to watch a threesome it will be m/f/f for sure. Why bother with the extra dick they don’t want to see! Why?
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