M’yes!

(via t-pring)

Can I just… 

(via meriadick-brandycock)

meriadick-brandycock:

I want to send Benedict a basket of stereotypically American things

Make sure to add bacon lube & a nudie shot of me. 

meriadick-brandycock:

Benedict Cumberbatch: I found your blog

More like ‘Shortest Horror Erotica Story’.

damespock:

leslie-crusher:

• I love Star Trek. Like, seriously, deeply, irrationally love it. I watched all of season three of Enterprise, for fuck’s sake — I think I can pull rank here and say I’ve seen it at its best and at its worst and I love it all the same. But that doesn’t mean I have to be so grateful for the fact that this movie even exists as part of the Trek canon that I’m going to shy away from calling it out on its bullshit.
• And the fact of the matter is that Benedict Cumberbatch, a white guy, being cast as Khan Noonien Singh, a character of Indian descent, is bullshit. It is whitewashing. It is less progressive than a movie from 1982. And it is racist as fuck.
• I’ve seen Sherlock. I’ve seen Third Star. Benedict Cumberbatch is an excellent actor and I have no doubts he’ll do justice to the role. This is not a complaint lobbied toward him, his acting abilities, or his fans. This is not about Ricardo Montalban’s ~legacy~ and the possibility of Benedict ~tarnishing~ it. It’s about the producers and casting department of the movie and their casting of a white guy in a role written (in the sixties, people) specifically for a person of color.
• Because I know someone’s going to bring it up — no, this is not the first time Star Trek has failed on the race front. They’ve done it a lot. I’m not ignoring that or excusing it or trying to gloss over it, but the fact of the matter is that The Powers That Be had a clear, explicit (mandated, I would argue) opportunity to hire a person of color for this role, and they chose the white guy. They looked at a character of Indian descent — one of the most iconic science fiction villains of all time! — that had been played by one of the most prominent Hispanic actors of his time (which is a whole different issue of problematic casting, yes, but the point remains — not white), and picked the white guy.
• If you have problems with me being angry about this, unfollow me now, because I’m not going to apologize for being upset about racist casting.

i’ve been spoiled and it’s no one’s fault but my own (will talk more about this later).

but let me explain again why this argument pisses me the fuck off.

i’m not refuting that the decision to cast cumberbatch could have been made to make the character of khan more palatable to the predominately white fanbase. but here are some reason for why i don’t think that was the case.

1. backlash.

my brother, Ernest, and i grew up disgustingly poor and (excluding the various stints in the foster homes of new jersey, california, and georgia) alternating between The South (florida, georgia, texas) with our negligent mother, who is of polish/scottish/american indian descent, and inner city philadelphia, with our physically abusive father, who is mostly of african/american indian descent, (and his parents, sisters, brother, and 4 cousins). because i’m pale, no one but a single great grandmother has given a fuck that i am of african descent, i was viciously teased for being one of 2 pale people at school in philly, but that is nothing like the same things as the merciless, widespread prejudice that has gone on for decades. i’ve spent my entire life witnessing racism first hand, it’s still around.

but it seems almost inconceivable to me that the powers that be would cast Benedict Timothy Carlton “Even My Name Is Neon White Beige” Cumberbatch just because he’s a powerhouse of talent, i mean, pale. the least reason being because star trek fans are universally known to have set the bar for finicky, detail oriented purists, so even any idiot could predict exactly this backlash for ARBITRARILY changing any part of the original cannon (my mom’s boyfriend rages about spock/uhura, the uniforms,and fucking vulcan fashion every time i watch XI on a tv).

but i could just be underestimating the idiocy of the studio, before all else, i must remember that they decided to bring back Kirk & Spock at all and had the balls to do it while Shatner and Nimoy are still alive. 

(above: regular beige, not neon beige)

2. descent.

the main point of the original post is outrage that a person of color was not chosen for the role and it is bullshit that they generally don’t take the chance to have more people of color in modern cinema. but the outrage goes more in the direction of “it is wrong to have a pale person represent a character of an identifiable, non-white population”. i say “pale” because, i have no idea what his genetic heritage is but from here i’m using “white” to indicate all people, even people not primarily racially white, like me, who are indistinguishable from white people.

khan is “of indian descent”? that’s cool but the phrase “of a certain descent” could mean any number of his ancestors were originally from india and doesn’t specify how many generations back that blood is from. blood gets diluted very quickly and genetics, especially in humans, can be a toss of the dice. i, personally, am “of african american descent” but this is my face 

and this is the face of my biological father 

this brings up one of my long standing pet peeves about TOS and the world in general, where are the mixed people at? all of the acceptance of diversity that TOS tries to preach and everyone on earth is still sequestered off into little ethnocentric boxes? how about where are all the children of the diversity lovers? this part isn’t about me being white, there are enough white people in TOS, i’m talking about the lack of any gradient at all; i’m not talking about just skin colors and tones here, there’s no variation in hair textures or facial features (or body types but, different beast) to attest to all of the mingling on blood and genetic material. the general message is that there is white and then there’s dark and there is nothing to fill in the gap. N O. this is why i personally loved zoe saldana’s skin on uhura.

(above: babies are cute)

i’m not saying that there isn’t anymore “like breeding with like”, as babies, humans are predisposed to liking people with similar features “it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective: it’s important as you get older to know who all the people in your tribe are” (quote from this article on Cracked, link goes to source study), but, as we get older we are taught to recognize that people that don’t look like us can also be apart of our tribe. then we breed with who we like best. i think of future earth as, at least in part, that melting pot they teach us that america is in elementary school, america now is more of a heterogeneous mixed salad as opposed to the homogeneous pot of several thing melted together that i believe the future to be.

cumberbatch’s casting could be an attempt to make the generations of diversity apparent.

but since everything comes back to my feelings, let me tell you why i’m personally upset at this time.

3. when it gets down to the brass tacks, i like the casting of benedict because i can at least pretend that khan’s mom was indian and his father was white and he turned out pale, it makes me feel represented, not mixed people in general, just me, and people like me. the only pale person i’ve ever met that will admitted to having one non-white parent and one white parent is cmcross. it’s never best practice to be happy when other people are angry and i guess that makes me a bad person or something (i’m not going to equate my rainbows and sunshine head cannon with starvation or depression or true social injustice).

4. AU.

and now i’m ignoring everything that i just said to point out that this is, and was even before nero fucked everything up, an alternate universe. the entire course of human history might have been different even before george kirk died.

the universe has in no way been fleshed out but i offer these innocuous things

• kirk, spock, and mccoy are of a height 
• kirk is blonde and blue eyed
• pike has gray hair

and most importantly

• everyone has a different face

_____

in any case, Cumberbatch will rock the fuck out of khan no matter what anyone says. 

however

reviving khan at all was a stupid idea, the enterprise goes out of harbour with Kirk as captain and everyone already a solid crew. the chances of kirk ever having even met khan, let alone smacking into him again later, are about the same as kirk landing a stone’s throw from spock prime’s cave and there’s only so much of my disbelief that can be suspended, so this better be some good shit.

This is a thing of glory.