#I’m not even eastern european technically I’m very very west asian but still

[myname-isnia]

If I see one more person hating on panel housing I’m legit gonna throw hands

[yukinojou]

I already squeed quite a bit on Twitter, but turns out my Shadow and Bone thoughts demand longform. So that was a 40+ tweet thread or using my Tumblr for an original post for once.

I was wary about the Shadow and Bone adaptation the way I'm usually wary about good books being adapted onscreen. It was amplified because my actual favourites are the Six of Crows books, and because the American-based movie complex has a bad track record of doing anything based on Eastern Europe. 8 episodes in 3 days should tell you how much I loved it - the moment I finished, I wanted more.

First, the technical praise:

Damn but the plotting is tight. It took me a while to realised it's based on heist movie bones, where every little thing (The Freaking Bullet!) is important. The story fulfills its promises and manages not to bore at the same time - it delights by the way they're fulfilled. I called out a few plot developments moments before they happened, and I was happy about it. Such a joy after so many series where "not doing what viewers expect" led to plot holes and lack of sense. It might be an upside to the streaming model after all.

From a dramatic point of view I can tell all the reasons for all the changes, especially providing additional outsider points of view on Ravka (Crows) and letting viewers see Mal for themselves the way he only comes across in later books.

Speaking of which, this is a masterclass in rewriting a story draft. SaB was Bardugo's first, and having read later books you can really see where she didn't quite dare to break the YA rules yet, especially Single POV that necessitated a tight focus on Alina's often negative feelings rather than the big picture and a triangle that felt a bit forced. The world in the series is so much bigger, the way Bardugo could finally paint it when SaB success gave her more creative freedom, and some structural choices feel familiar too. It's a combination of various choices by crew and cast, but the end result meshes together so tightly and naturally.

Visuals! Especially the war parts because Every Soviet Movie Ever, but also the clothes (I would kill for Nina's blouse in the bar), the jewelry, the interiors. The stag was so very beautiful. And a deep commitment to a coherent aesthetic for each character and setting.

Look, you can do a serious fantasy series with colours! Both skin colours and bright sets and clothing! And all scenes were well lit enough to know what's going on, even in the Fold!

Representation (aka I Am Emotion)

To start with: I was born behind the Iron Curtain, in the last years of the Cold War. The Curtain was always permeable to some extent, and we have always been aware that while we have talented artists of our own, we never had the budgets and polish of the Anglosphere Entertainment Machine. So we watched a hell of a lot of American visual storytelling especially because yeah, you can tell we don't have the budgets. 90s and 2000s especially, it's getting better now.

In American stories, the BEST case scenario for Eastern European representation is the Big Dumb Pole, the ethnic stereotype Americans don't even notice they use, where the punchline is that his English is bad or that he grew up outside Anglo culture. Other than that, it's criminals, beggars, sex trafficking victims, refugees. Sure, we may look similar (except we really really don't, not if you're raised here and see the distinct lack of all those long-jawed Anglo faces), but we are not and have never been the West, never mind America. It's probably better for younger people now, but I was raised under rationing and passport bans. Star Trek and Beverly Hills 90210 were exactly as foreign to me.

The first ever character I really identified with was Susan Ivanova in Babylon 5 (written by J. Michael Straczynski, yay behind-camera representation). This was a Russian Jewish woman very much in charge, in the way of strong women I know so well, not taking any bullshit, not repressing her feminity. I recognised her bones, she could be my cousin. The sheer relief of it. There have been few such occasions since.

The reason I picked up Shadow and Bone in the first place was recommendations from other Polish people. I've had no problems finding representation in Eastern European books because wow our scene is strong in SFF especially, but it's always a treat to find a book in English that gets it. And Leigh gets it, the bones of our culture, and I could even look past the grammar issue (dear gods and Americans, Starkova for a woman, Morozov for a guy) that really irked me because of the love for the setting and the characters, the weaving in of religion/mysticism (we never laicisized the same way as the West, natch), the understanding of how deep are the scars left in a nation at war for centuries. The books are precious to me, they and Arden's Winternight and Novik's Spinning Silver.

To sum up: Shadow and Bone the Netflix series gets it. You can tell just how much they've immersed themselves in Eastern European culture and media, it comes across so well in visuals and writing and characters. Not just the obvious bits (though the WWII propaganda posters gave me a giggle), but the palaces, the additional plotlines and characters, the costumes, the attitudes. About the only thing missing in the soldier scenes was someone singing and/or quoting poetry.

I will blame the Apparat's lack of beard on filming in a non-Orthodox country. Poland's Catholic too, but I very much imagined him as an Orthodox patriarch, possibly because I read the books shortly after a visit to Pecherska Lavra in Kiev and the labyrinthine holy catacombs there. Small quibble, not my religion, not my place to speak.

(I've seen discussion on the issues with biracial representation in the show, which is visceral and apparently based on bad experiences of one of the show writers in a way that's caused pain to other Asian and biracial people. I'm not qualified to speak on those parts, other that Eastern Europe is... yeah. Racist in subtly different ways. If anything, the treatment of the Suli as explained in Six of Crows always read so very true of the way Roma are treated, and even sanitised.)

And now for the spoiler-filled bits:

Kaz and Inej. I mean... just THEM. So many props to the actors, the writers, the bloody goat.

I adore the fact the only people who get to have sex in the show are Jesper and a very lucky stablehand.

Ben Barnes needs either an award or a kick. The man's acting choices and puppy eyes are as epic as his hair.

So Much Love for Alina initiating the kiss. Her book characterisation makes sense, she's so trapped in her own head because she has no time to process everything that's happening, but grabbing life by the lapels is a much more active choice. Still not making the relationship equal, but closer to it.

Speaking of, Kaz's constant awareness of how unequal his relationship with Inej is, and attempts to give her agency. I'm really curious how his touch issues come across to someone who doesn't know the backstory there.

Feodor and his actor. He looks exactly like the pre-war heartthrob Adolf Dymsza, a specific upper-class Polish ethnic type that's much rarer now that, well, Nazis killed millions of Polish intellectuals in their attempt to reduce us to unskilled labour only. The faces he makes are the Best.

Nina!! Nina is perfect, those cheekbones, that cheek, I was giggling myself silly half the time. I cannot wait to see Danielle Galligan take on the challenge of Nina's plotline in Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom, she'll kill us dead.

I already mentioned that the writers fixed Mal's absence from the first book, but Mal in general! The haircut gives him a kind of rugby charm, and Archie Renaux is outstanding at emoting without talking. Honestly, all the casting in this series is inspired, but him in particular.

Extra bonus: Howard Charles and Luke Pasqualino playing so very much against the type of the swaggering Musketeers I saw them play last. Arken dropping the mask at the end... Howard Charles is love.

I can't believe not only was Milo's bullet a plot point, but the fact Alina was wearing a particularly sparkly hair ornament in a long series of beautiful hair ornaments was a plot point.

In conclusion: so much love, and next three season NOW please. Okay, give me a week to reread the books, and an extra day because new Murderbot drops tomorrow...

[clovertrails]

Finding a new trail

Leaving my front door, I turned left, walking south. After a few intersections, I hit Mosholu Avenue, a commercial street whose name derives from the Algonquin word for “smooth stones” or “small stones.” Oddly, the river that does run through Riverdale, which likely created the “smooth stones” which the word mosholu describes, is named Tibbetts Creek, after a European settler. It’s kind of odd to name a commercial avenue after a geographic feature of a river, no? But perhaps that could be read in a hopeful manner—to think of the urban commercial avenue as a river incarnate, a life-giving force through the town.

At Mosholu, I turned right (west, toward the river), following the avenue as it rounded corner, passing the local Tudor-style NYPL branch. Past the Riverdale Neighborhood House, a quaint colonial building with a pool and playground that looks vaguely hospitable for a certain kind of respectable citizen. Past the weedy baseball field, past the playground, mostly empty during the pandemic, but sometimes with a gaggle of teenage guys, chilling.

I usually crossed the street at this point and walked up a sidewalk to a curious little park that exists as an island amidst a crisscrossing web of highways. I walked up the street mostly because I didn’t feel like crossing the six-lane avenue just yet. Wanted secluded lanes that would allow me to keep to myself.

The park consists of a hilltop, a green island that just peeps over a loop-de-loop of highways, another one of Robert Moses’ concrete graffiti scrawls over the landscape of the Bronx. There’s a dog park in the middle that’s sort of falling apart; I’ve never seen anyone using it, dog or human. Mostly there are a lot of benches, facing outward and inward.

I kept walking, down garden-style, five-story, red brick apartments. Turned onto a quiet residential road with suburban single-family houses. No sidewalks, just gravelly weedy transitional spaces between grass and pavement.

I remember the gates first. I didn’t yet know it was a school; all I saw was a gate and behind it, trimmed lawns rolling up to a genteel brick building. A gated compound, vast flat fields, lacrosse fields, parking lots – of course, a private school. I followed the road as it sloped downward, hugging the edge of the prep school. There is something so sinister about a totally manicured lawn. How much labor, how much capital, do you need, to sustain this ugly face of control? Walking alongside the compound, I thought of all the iterations of this sort of gated, fenced-in, land – estates, kingdoms, plantations. 

At the end of the hill, the road spilled into nondescript dirt space. From a handful of cars, I gathered that it was a parking lot. The air changed, becoming cooler, denser. Ahead, the gravel met a chain-link fence tagged with the NYC Parks logo, a green maple leaf. This was a park? An old traffic cone and squashed cardboard boxes lay fallen against the fence. If you were walking quickly, or even driving, you would miss it entirely. My mind flashed to other Hudson parks I knew – Riverside Park, Riverbank State Park, Fort Tryon, Inwood. But this one was new, never previously encountered on a map or in person.

It seemed out of nowhere, a glen of hickory and oak, between mansions and railroads. No surprise, my mind flashed back to the gated private school that I had just passed. It was not lost on me that the serendipity of slipping into this trail occurred next to a private school with a 50K tuition in one of the richest neighborhoods in this zip code. Technically, this is a public park, but it is geographically located for the wealthy elite.

Not knowing what was inside this park, or how far it extended, I entered. Dusty paths, tall hickory and oak, flush with undergrowth. I followed a dirt trail and saw the glimmers of sunlight through the kaleidoscopic canopy of trees. I soon found the chain-link fence that formed the eastern perimeter of this park, and glimpsed the water beyond, drinking in its murmuring waves. Wandering more, I came across a dried-up gully, with a fallen tree trunk spanning its width. The top of the trunk had eroded into a temptingly flat surface. Certainly passable, if one had the guts to try. I walked five steps forward, paused, and retreated. Too old.

One thing to know is that the trees there were very tall. They do not rival the California redwoods, but the distance between the bushy undergrowth and the swaying canopy overhead felt vast. The treetops were so tall that they caught all the river wind, swirling it amongst their branches, so that I, a small ant standing below, heard the roar of the wind more so than felt its touch on my skin.

In the immediate vicinity of my body, there was the peace and quiet of overgrown trails and mossy trunks, but several leagues upward (what does a league measure? I do not know, but it feels like the right word), the treetops were in a great upheaval—maple, oak, hickory, all mingling—caught up in the wind, swaying and fluttering in one uplift.

The trail itself is fairly narrow, walk about 15 meters one way and you will see the faint outlines of a chain-link fences. On the riverside, you’ll catch sight of the railroads ahead, and on the roadside, the outlines of secluded houses, lights of vehicles driving by.

But this place, it felt like a little gem, one that, momentarily, was all my own. I knew that if I pulled up Google Maps, I would find this trail on the maps, and that if I searched it online, I would find the NYC Parks page for this trail, explaining in byte-form. The zoning, the planning committee, the pushback, et cetera. But it would say nothing about how it felt, walking through desolate suburban streets and posh gated lawns to then discover, without notice, relief. A windy green corridor, tucked by the river, rushing, still, roaring, quiet—all at once. 

I returned to the trail the next day, and the day after that. I found my legs craving, turning toward the park. One day during dinner, my mom inquired after where I went walking that day, and I mentioned that I went to Riverdale Park, by the river. They were puzzled – where?

Is it by the train station, my mom asked. By the train station, I sometimes see a little trail there and wonder what it is, she said, referring to the Riverdale Metro North station that services the Hudson Line, connecting Grand Central in midtown to Poughkeepsie up north in the valley.

No, I shake my head, no, thinking that she was referring to the pathetic concrete strip accessible to pedestrians by the train station. It’s basically a 15 meter long sidewalk with a single bench and overflowing trash cans where you might sit down and look over the Hudson. It’s certainly something, at least, but one cannot feel antsy, gazing upon the vast sweep of the Hudson while hemmed in by these arbitrary fences for “viewing.”  

Mine was a place that I had resisted placing on a map; it was this little gem of a shady glen pocketed into the outskirts of a suburb. It’s further south of here, next to Wave Hill, I said. You walked there? My dad asked, incredulous. Yes, I walked, I said, hiding my pride in my nonchalance. It’s only like twenty minutes.

Of course, my parents did not understand. They keep to their established routes – to the train station, to the field, to the grocery store. Whatever trail that my mom was referring to was not it. Besides, the trail was quite far from the train station – at least half a mile or so south of it.

I showed them the trail on Google Maps, pointing out the green rectangular patch. Ah, we have never been there, they mused. A week or so later, Saturday afternoon, instead of taking the car to the beach on Long Island, as is our tradition, we drove over to the trail. They were astonished when they arrived at the dirt entrance of the park.  A secret! They exclaimed. They’ve been keeping this a secret! Five years and we had no idea this place existed. Who would have known? So out of the way. Who was keeping this secret??

I chuckled at their astonishment, their indignation, that they had only now discovered this place. Part of my reaction is a weariness of knowing my parents calcified habits. They have lived in New York City for almost a decade now but still – my dad especially – are still suburban in their bones. Their favorite store remains Costco, where they shop at least once a week, despite having been empty nesters for more than a few years now. During the weekends, they drive up north to the suburbs to go hiking more often than they drive south to Manhattan for entertainment. The most urban that they venture is to the local Asian neighborhoods – Chinatown, Flushing, Elmhurst, for shopping and eating.

But their indignant exclamation, they’ve been keeping this secret! lingers with me and evinces, I think, a kernel of truth. If you zoom out from where I’m standing, in this little park in Riverdale, and run your eyes down the western length of New York City, you will see green hugging most of the coastline, corresponding to the richest zip codes in Manhattan. I think about the other, far larger and more famous park, Van Cortlandt Park, that sits next to the 242nd street subway station and attracts more populous crowds of Black, Latinx, Asian, and white residents, picnicking, playing baseball, soccer, flying kites, working out. Of course, Van Cortlandt has far more acreage and resources to avail itself to such recreation, but the park is well-trodden and busy, evidenced not only by the multitude of bodies but also the glass shards that depressingly litter its trails. Most of all, I guess, Van Cortlandt is unmissable, obvious, in plain sight. 

On the other hand, the trail running through Riverdale Park is sequestered away, on the margins with a nondescript entrance and overgrown signage. This trail offers the illusory feeling of having discovered it by yourself, a feeling of privacy within a public space. And within this privacy, unexpected and lively things emerge. But how might relishing the serendipitous joys of stumbling into one’s own world of green manifest not the sublimity of nature (or the self, touched by nature), but rather the hoarding of wealth, in its material and immaterial forms, across private and public lines? How might we deem both of these to be true and think of them together?  Things to keep thinking about…

[whiteanti]

sry if that's gonna turn out long but i really want your onion on it. in relations to that anon who asked you abt white passing people - what do you think about "west asians" loool. like caucasians, not white europeans but people from the caucasus like armenians georgians azeris etc. personally i could never consider them poc lmao first of all demographic region such as west asia doesnt exist, most countries from that region are middle eastern and the ones who are not are BETWEEN europe and asia

and not to bring that up but armenians have been legally classified as white like 100 years ago, ntm how they never looked racialized in the first place its just that white americans considered anything that’s not white american as impure. like even white southern and eastern europeans. and cool you could say they’re white passing poc but there are not Any specific racialized features that make you go oh thats a poc.. its not fucking 2012 anymore we cant still push that race is social bullshit

(i think tumblr ate the 3rd or 2nd ask so im rewriting it) even if it was its still made to not only benefit them but put them on top. with tht circassian beauty shit that was spread among both europe and the global south w circassian women and their “big beautiful hair” as the beauty standard while black women were and still to this day are abused degraded etc for their hair then you have white ass circassians and other caucasians using as an argument about not being white that white russians call thm bl*ckies or the white version of the n word lmaooo can you believe… and like ok your ppl faced genocide and ethnic cleansing from white russians but how does that contribute to you being racialized ESP in the modern day world. 

not only that but so many of them have pale skin, blue eyes, blonde hair like straight up cracker and they still insist on being poc just cuz they’re not Straight from mother europe. its just a caucasian online thing to claim the racialized experience for white ppl jokes access and extra oppression points. 

if you ask the average middle aged lets say armenian person what race they are they’re gonna tell you white. and with the amount of anti asian sentiment in their communities how tf do they expect to be accepted as asian like they’re truly playing with us. 

also wht bugs me is how they cant tell the difference btwn racism and xenophobia/ethnophobia sjhgahsj how do you insist on facing racism without being racialized? they face as much discrimination in white countries as any average white foreigner would but go explain that shit to them that if you’re not racialized you cant use the terms racism and xenophobia interchargeably. 

to me the only asians are east, southeast, south, central and north, also anything mixed inbetween. all these crackers lite from the caucasus mountains can go fuck themselves and shove their forced victimization up their asses cuz at this point i’m so tired of their white asses trying to prove me they’re on the same level as us whn it comes to discrimination. 

like yes s and se asians are way more discriminated than the rest of us but we (east central north) do face racial discrimination unlike caucasians lmao. and sure they face intergenerational trauma from the genocides of their countries but so do we, in way bigger amounts. thats why im so sceptical abt terms like visible poc cuz you either are a poc or not… they have so many tactics as a gotcha to racialized asians to make us seem as if we’re bigots who invalidate their genocides and talk so aimlessly abt it when all we want is for them to acknowledge their whiteness, white privilege, white guilt and self victimization against us. but anyways im so sry for making it this long but i needed to get if off my chest and you’re like the only person i know who can understand it and give a well thought out opinion. i rlly wish you all the best and good luck on all your exams 💓💓💓

btw for the previous asks i only said “mixed inbetween” bc i talked about monoracial asians specifically not that someone isnt asian if they’re mixed w black or anything else, also idk much abt indigenous ppl from oceania or how they identify so that’s why i left it out

ok so I reformatted some of the asks to make them easier to read (as in I changed where paragraph breaks were bc wow there r so many) but my answer is below the cut! 

[EDIT] since a few ppl r asking me abt this no I don't fully agree w this anon. I don't think arabs are white. I don't think Iranians are white. I don’t know if Armenians or other ethnicities from the Caucasus region are white I think thats an ongoing discussion w in their communities, but as far as I knew I thought people saw Armenians as white. again I could be wrong but that is what I think the general consensus is. if you want to have in in-depth discussion abt this topic pls ask someone from within those communities or at the very least has researched it in-depth.

ok so just from what I know a lot of ppl from the caucus region classified themselves as white during segregation, etc in order to escape racial discrimination. Armenians as far as ik r generally classified as white? the Kardashians are Armenian and I don’t think anyone has ever said they’re poc. geographically Armenia is in west Asia so technically they’re asian but does that mean they’re poc? but if u say Armenians r white then r arabs white? Armenians do face discrimination and they have faced a genocide which is denied by the Turkish govt. but most ashkenazi jewish ppl r also white so….. idk.

as for in Europe they would definitely be seen as poc or at the very least not white. basically anywhere east of turkey (ofc excluding Russia) is seen as Big Scary Middle East full of ppl who want to invade Europe. but again in America I’m not too sure bc race relations r definitely different there.

I think its a rlly complex question w a complex answer and tbh I don’t know enough abt any of this to b able to give a cohesive opinion. what I will say is that I think this is a different discussion completely from whether mixed white poc r poc or not. this is a discussion is to whether a whole ethnicities of ppl who look ‘white’ are poc or not. its complicated bc race isn't ‘real’ as in theres not way to divide humans into 5 groups. ppl like from the caucasus region don’t fit neatly into white or asian and if u look historically the region is closely tied w Greece, Iran and the Mughals in India so again… theres no definite answer. but as far as ik they definitely have a large degree of white passing privilege but I would still say to a lesser extent than full white europeans. they’re also mostly racialised in europe or at least demonised to a certain extent. more than Eastern Europeans and less than poc but like idk lol. I hope this is an ok answer bc to b honest my brain is so fried rn