#imaginary recasting

[whatithinkaboutdarkshadows]

Episode 716: Someone who is not going to come

Governess Rachel Drummond has figured out that her employers, the Collins family of Collinwood, are keeping someone locked in the room atop the tower in the great house on the estate. Rachel has seemed frightened ever since we first saw her, in #705, and this information has added to her fear considerably. Rachel recently came to the conclusion that some unknown person was trying to harm her. She…

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Edward Hopper, Room in Brooklyn, 1932. Oil on canvas.

In paintings we know well and many we don’t, as well as some enlightening works on paper and writings, the artist long described as a Realist is recast as the architect of his own personal fantasy metropolis. He dispenses almost entirely with street life and traffic, ignores skyscrapers and the Brooklyn Bridge, and inserts imaginary buildings where it suits him; he peers in at private apartments from elevated trains and surveys his own neighborhood from rooftops. He turns offices, restaurants and movie theaters into stages for just one or two actors. He paints windows and storefronts without glass, as if he could just reach in and touch the people and things inside.

   —Karen Rosenberg in the NY Times, Nov. 22, 2022

Photo: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

[signor-signor]

This month, it will have been 10 years (one decade) since Craig McCracken made a pitch for Season 3 of Wander Over Yonder, several months before Disney turned it down. While we wait for Craig to finish up whatever he’s been working on since he left Netflix (specifically, Foster’s Funtime for Imaginary Friends), let’s ask ourselves:

How do we get SaveWOY and other related material back on track in an effort to convince Disney to give WOY proper closure?

In other words…

How do we renew interest in reviving WOY?

Thanks to a user on a SaveWOY Facebook group, we have the information to explain it all…

Remember that Securing Disney’s approval is just Step 1, but to truly make a Wander Over Yonder revival work, we need Craig McCracken and the original creative team on board. Without them, the show risks losing what made it special in the first place.

STEPS FOR A SUCCESSFUL WOY REVIVAL

STEP 1: CONVINCE DISNEY TO GREENLIGHT THE PROJECT

• Show Disney that WOY still has a passionate fanbase and potential for success.

• Push for Disney+ as the ideal home, where revivals like The Clone Wars and The Proud Family have thrived.

• Emphasize the unfinished story—Disney knows that fan outcry for closure (Gravity Falls, The Owl House) can influence decisions.

STEP 2: ENSURE CRAIG MCCRACKEN & KEY CREATORS ARE INVOLVED

• Craig McCracken’s Approval is Crucial. WOY is his vision—without him, it wouldn't be the same. His presence ensures consistency in tone, characters, and storytelling.

• Other Key Members Needed - Jack McBrayer (Wander): His voice defines Wander’s character—recasting him would be a mistake.

Andy Bean (Composer): His music shaped WOY’s energy and emotional moments.

Other Writers & Animators: The humor, heart, and art style need the original team’s touch.

STEP 3: CAMPAIGN FOR THEIR RETURN

• If Disney says yes to a revival, the next step is getting Craig and his team excited about returning.

• Make it clear to Disney that a WOY revival must have the original team to succeed.

BOTTOM LINE

Getting Disney’s approval is the first major hurdle, but without Craig McCracken and his team, a third season wouldn’t be the same. Fans need to push for WOY’s return with the original creative team intact to preserve its heart and magic!

But that’s not all.

WHY THIS MATTERS FOR GAINING MORE SUPPORT

1. Clarifying That WOY Wasn’t Meant to End at Season 2 - Some potential supporters might think WOY had a proper ending, so they don’t see the need for a revival.

The campaign needs to spread awareness that Craig McCracken had a full third season planned and that the final episode wasn’t a real conclusion.

2. Attracting Fans of Other Shows That Got Proper Closures - Fans of shows like Gravity Falls, Steven Universe, or The Owl House—all of which got finales—might not feel the urgency to fight for WOY unless they understand that it was left unfinished.

Making the case that WOY deserves the same closure as those shows can help gain their support.

3. Using Other Fan Revivals as Inspiration - Campaigns like Young Justice and The Clone Wars proved that strong fan demand can bring back shows, even years later.

Showing that WOY has unfinished business makes the case even stronger—this isn’t just nostalgia, it’s about completing the story.

WHAT FANS CAN DO NOW

• Emphasize the Cliffhanger: Social media campaigns should highlight that WOY never got its intended ending.

Posts, videos, and petitions should stress that Season 2 was not a real finale.

• Engage Fans of Other Shows: Get Gravity Falls, Owl House, and Amphibia fans interested by framing WOY as the next show that needs proper closure.

Many of those fans already fought for extended content and could help boost the movement.

• Create Buzz Around Craig’s Original Plan: More people need to know that a fully planned Season 3 existed, but Disney shut it down.

Spreading concept art, old interviews, and Craig’s vision for Lord Dominator’s arc could build more excitement.

BOTTOM LINE

The more people understand that WOY wasn’t actually completed, the easier it will be to get broader fan support. The campaign needs to educate people on the cliffhanger and show why a Season 3 or TV movie is necessary to give the series the ending it deserves!

I couldn’t have said it all better myself.

[fatehbaz]

As America’s borders moved west, empire thus unspooled through farming and homesteading as much as military conquest. [...] The unfamiliar desert ecology and climate meant that they could not easily deploy their trusted models of farming, animal husbandry, and commerce in places with limited access to water, high and variable temperatures, different soil compositions [...]. To address this challenge, empire-builders in early America took Middle Eastern deserts as a key source of inspiration. 

Jefferson Davis’ Camel Corps [funded by a 1855 Congressional appropriation to collect camels from around the Middle East and Northern Africa] was one of the earliest examples of how this worked. [...]

American travel writers, explorers, scientists, and government officials had long described the arid West as a local version of the Middle Eastern and North African desert – an “American Zahara” or a Biblical Orient with spiritual and physical power equal to the Old World deserts [...]. These authors harnessed the “Sahara” trope, Catrin Gersdorf argues, “to deactivate the existential anxieties of the pioneers and to alleviate some of their visceral reactions to the American West’s aridity, recasting it as a quasi-Oriental space containing yet unidentified but extremely valuable historical and cultural riches.” Nineteenth-century authors’ constant references to the Sahara [...] helped [...] settlers imagine the newly American desert lands as a “domestic” Orient and, in this way, [...] familiar. [...]

---

[T]he U.S. Army waged overt war [with Indigenous residents] into the early 1900s. Displacing the people from the land was one thing, but redefining their social and cultural association with the desert was a different matter. 

Here again, the camel proved useful. This is vividly illustrated when the U.S. Army finally collected enough camels in Texas to run its first Camel Corps trial to assess the animals’ endurance and suitability for military purposes. The Army’s man in charge, General Edward Fitzgerald Beale, brought Hi Jolly, his fellow cameleers, and a large camel caravan together to travel from Texas to California beginning in September 1857. When the expedition stopped in Los Angeles in January 1858, the San Francisco Evening Bulletin described the scene with dramatized gusto:

General Beale and about fourteen camels stalked into town last Friday week and gave our streets quite an Oriental aspect. It looked oddly enough to see outside of a menagerie, a herd of huge, ungainly awkward but docile animals move about in our midst with people riding them like horses and bringing up weird and far-off associations to the Eastern traveler, whether by book or otherwise of the land of the mosque, crescent or turban, of the pilgrim mufti and dervish with visions of the great shrines of the world, Mecca and Jerusalem, and the toiling throngs that have for centuries wended thither, of the burning sands of Arabia and Sahara where the desert is boundless as the ocean and the camel is the ship thereof.

This account actively rewrites the then-dominant imaginary of U.S. West [...], enlisting the camel to transform it into a whimsical vision of the Old World in the New. [...] Colonization was made friendlier by conceiving of it as a pilgrimage, an act of return. [...] In this way, the territories annexed in the mid-1800s could begin to be imagined as a [...] home [...].

---

All text above by: Natalie Koch. “Double Exposure.” Arid Empire: The Entangled Fates of Arizona and Arabia. 2022. [Some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[sirenthatmakesyouwantcake]

these are my thoughts about the first episode of season two of interview with the vampire SPOILERS FOR THE EPISODE

i forgot how sweet season one ended, I'm trying so hard not to make to much noise. Theyre so cute

the recasting of claudia is ok, I liked the other girl a bit more, she looked younger and more innocent. the original actor looked more like a doll than a child but I guess that was kind of the point.

My cat has been climbing on my shoulder like a parrot

Lestat's entrance was so perfect and the bird was both terrifying and... I don't know, it was just right. So was claudia smoking it really fits her character

He looks like a Robert (around 17:09) he looks really British too, like more British than a British person

I thought Morgan was John Ham for a moment 😭 (18:45)

claudia being treated as child is hilarious, I do feel bad for her sometimes, she has to live as a child her whole immortal life

I love story's with two different stories being told at the same time, the drama with lying about who Rashid is and Daniel's personality, and this sort of vampire horror story with such a different attitude

did you know, we have no fucking clue why we dream, it's mostly a mystery, I also think it's cool how they added in that vampires can dream (31:40) and then all of small things and how much he loved Claudia, it's really sweet

I really like that they didn't show the head getting chopped off, some shows do and sometimes it can be a bit much for me (35:05)

Is it thought, that thing is scary, vampires are supposed to be beautiful (36:15) 

Russia vampires are just built different  (39:00)

My first thought was, 'america, who would go to america to find happy people', but then I remembered when this takes place. I completely forgot about how much we used to love the government (41:30)

I don't think bro's ok (44:41)

What is in those pages? Why can't they look at them? (45:42) Maybe claudia caught them fucking

THEYRE HOLDING HANDS ANFJDISNJ, THEYRE SO CUTE (47:40)

armand is definitely a power bottom

It took until they were going back to new orleans for me to figure out that lestat is just imaginary

Edit: i have no idea where I got new orleans from, they are going to paris which makes a lot more sense

The episode title is good, I really like the metaphorical part and the actors seem like pretty cool people

Assad Zaman is so adorable, he's just so small and I want to protect him. I think that armand looking harmless is a nice touch (I never finished the book so I have no idea what he should have looked like but I like TV show armand better that movie armand), he could probably wipe out one of the small european countries texas has swallowed if he wanted to but he really doesn't look like it

Overall, it was a pretty good episode and I'm looking forward to the next, the title looks interesting, maybe I'll finally finish the book after this season.

Thank you for reading.

links to the rest of these posts

S2E2 S2E3 S2E4 S2E5 S2E6

[youngbugandtonystank]

yapping about lizzie stealing romani heritage in your answers but hyping rdj as doctor doom your a hypocrite and youre just bias ed with your irondad ship LIAR RDJ AS DOOM IS GONNA FLOP HARD

You've been sending the same ask over and over again, let me shut your mouth a little bit

Both are wrong, they should've chosen romani actors for BOTH. No doubt about that.

But be honest here, if Doom was played by another actor, say Cillian Murphy, Giancarlo Esposito or Mads Mikkelsen, you wouldn't hear half this noise. Neither of them romani but yall would be eating this up. Don't lie.

here's the thing,

Elizabeth Olsen was chosen to play THE scarlet witch and Wanda Maximoff of THE franchise. The 616 sacred timeline main MCU Wanda and she's been playing this character for 10 years. Pietro Maximoff was played by Evan Peters and Aaron Taylor Johnson:

“They’re g in a way,” chips in Aaron Taylor-Johnson. “They’re Romani. They’re sort of like travellers… there’s a lot of clashing. He’s quick tempered. He gets agitated. He’s impatient. But he’s super protective. They’re very yin-and-yang in that twin sense. In his power, he’s physical and she’s psychological. My character is very much on the frontline, but he can be quite emotional. You see this beautiful tenderness between them.”

Aaron Taylor-Johnson on his character in Avengers: Age of Ultron (x) I'm sorry for the slur there, apparently Elizabeth and Aaron were not well aware that was a slur, hopefully they don't speak this way anymore.

RDJ is only playing the character for the next 2 Avengers movies, as said before here:

Robert Downey Jr. might not play Doctor Doom in the MCU after ‘AVENGERS: SECRET WARS’. The role might be recast, since Downey’s Doom is not from Earth-616.

These are multiversal movies, he might not even come back after the next ones. This isnt even the main Doom of 616, so Marvel can still cast a Romani actor for the ''prime'' version if they want to, kinda like John Krasinski playing 838 Reed Richards, the one whos gonna stay for 616 is Pedro Pascals. Same with the next Doom, the one who will stay in the MCU for the next few years since they're doing a soft reboot after these next two movies. You'll have Magneto, the X-men and more in the MCU going forward. Its clear that RDJs Doom is meant to be a big event level character, likely God Emperor Doom from Secret Wars (given the leaks thats what it looks like) which means he's not even supposed to be the long term Doom of the MCU

Marvel fans have become professional complainers already making imaginary conflicts about everything. First it's ''marvel is dead, we miss the old ones, they were better, what is this woke crap?'' then they coming back is a ''desperate move, we don't want this, we want new faces''?

BE FUCKING HONEST if the main villain was played by someone new specially someone without a major fan base or prior star power, there's a good chance yall be crying OUT LOUD lol throwing the same tantrum just for different reasons ''marvel is risking it, why do they give the main villain of the next big event to someone new in the franchisee??? god i miss Thanos!!!!! nothing can't beat IW and Endgame!!!'' There are several talented Romani actors such as Connor Swindells and Charlie Clapham to play Doom but yall be complaining about them too ''too young, too old, not the aura i want, not sure he's up to the challenge, hes not good enough for the role idk but he just doesnt make me feel hyped???, marvel Cillian was RIGHT THERE!!''

Yall dont wanna admit it but every time you say you want new faces, you reject them and complain about them screaming ''MARVEL IS DEAD!'' every. chance. you. get. You're attached to the nostalgia and can't move on.

Also, not all actors want these kind of roles, understand that too. Many of them favor roles in more serious dramas or films with what they consider significant artistic depth rather than large scale superhero productions, not all of them are interested in marvel movies, not saying they couldn't be but the reason RDJ is in this position is because they quickly needed someone with the element of surprise to keep the audience talking and seated for the next movies after what happened with Jonathan Majors. From whats been reported Downey even turned down Christopher Nolan to focus on Marvel, trust me this man cares about this franchise, he's one of the main reasons it is successful, thinking he wouldn't put his 100% on this is just bs.

At the end of the day, its a cycle of complaint based on what yall are comfortable with. Familiarity breeds comfort. Marvel will do what works for the story. Yall can complain all you want but be honest if RDJ wasnt playing Doom, you'd be asking, ''Why didn't they cast someone that can hype this up like RDJ? A villain at the level of Josh Brolin'' Or do yall want me to remind all of you that you were also complaining about Jonathan Majors when Quantumania came out?

So, yeah, yall might have preferred someone new at first but that hype would've died down real quick and yall would find something else to complain about. Moral of the story? you cant please everyone, wait until the movie comes out

[justsomeguycore]

i’m tired of ethereal/occult/fae/imaginary/fantasy hierarchies being recast in terms of corporations and businesses, it’s time for corporations and businesses to be recast in terms of spirituality. the CEO is the high priest of the company,

[gunsatthaphan]

~ Monthly BL Breakdown: June 2023 ~  

⛱️ Happy July!!! 👗

Disclaimer: ALL shows can be streamed here or here, as well as on Youtube and other platforms. For more info on where to watch what, check out this post!

New breakdowns are coming at the end of every month - feel free to add stuff!  -> previous breakdowns

What came out this month? (green = seen/currently watching)

🌟 Let’s Eat Together - June 2nd (Japan)

🌟 Ever After - June 3rd (Philippines)

🌟 Tin Tem Jai (Special Episodes) - June 3rd + June 4th (Thailand)

🌟 Twins - June 6th (Thailand)

🌟 Love Tractor  - June 7th (South Korea)

🌟 Stupid Genius - June 9th (Vietnam)

🌟 Moonlight Armour - June 10th (Philippines) 

🌟 Aedan - June 12th (Philippines) 

🌟 Tokyo In April - June 15th (Japan)

🌟 The Internship (movie) - June 22nd (Thailand)

🌟 His Man Season 2 (dating show) - June 23rd (South Korea)

🌟 A Story to Remember - June 23rd (Philippines) 

🌟 Tie the Not - June 24th (Philippines) 

🌟 Dinosaur Love - June 25th (Thailand)

🌟 One in a Hundred (international release) - June 29th (China) 

Monthly likes/dislikes

❣️ ø

👎🏻 La Pluie - Sadly I had to drop this one because I got super bored by it. It had a very interesting premise and the first 2-3 episodes were solid but then it deflated. Them revealing Pat as the soulmate so soon was a fatal mistake imo, they should have leaned more into the mystery of who he is to Saengtai etc. The story with Lomfon and Saengtian had an interesting start as well but then went nowhere. It’s a pity because I thought they were onto something with this show. oh well. 

New series & movie announcements

🎥 Beyond the Star - Date TBA (Thailand) 

🎥 The Rebound (produced by AllThis Entertainment) - Date TBA (Thailand)

🎥 My Imaginary Boyfriend (novel adaption) - Date TBA (Thailand)

🎥 Choco Milk Shake Season 2 - Date TBA (South Korea) 

🎥 The Only One (novel adaption) - Date TBA (Taiwan) 

🎥 So-And-So (novel adaption) - Date TBA (Taiwan)  

🎥 Beyond the Duo (movie) - Date TBA (Myanmar) 

🎥 The Bartender - Date TBA (Myanmar) 

🎥 Kiseki: Dear to Me - Date TBA (Taiwan) 

🎥 Dear Dopamine - Coming 2024 (Thailand) 

🎥 90's Boyfriend - Date TBA (Philippines)

🎥 Jazz for Two - Date TBA (South Korea) 

🎥 My Dear Gangster Oppa (starring MeenPing) - Date TBA (Thailand)

🎥 Spirit Reborn - Date TBA (Thailand) 

🎥 My Momentary Wish - Date TBA (Thailand) 

🎥 Mr. Cinderella Season 2 - Coming September 2023 (Vietnam) 

🎥 Love of the Sea - Date TBA (Myanmar) 

Other news from the BL world

❗️ The upcoming GMMTV BLs Dangerous Romance, Only Friends, Last Twilight and Cooking Crush as well as the WabiSabi production Absolute Zero have started filming.

❗️ Actor Build Jakapan announced his withdrawal from the upcoming BL 4 Minutes due to the events that have occured over the last few months and his resulting departure from BOC. It’s unclear whether or not his co-star Bible Wichapas will remain a part of the project and get a new acting partner or if the project will get cancelled altogether. 

❗️ The upcoming Domundi BL Love Upon a Time released its pilot trailer. 

❗️ A second season for the Korean BL Choco Milk Shake was announced. Further details are unknown. 

❗️ The members of the kpop group OnlyOneOf will star in the upcoming Korean BL Bump Up Business. Further details are unknown.  

❗️ Actor Frank Thanatsaran announced that he will not be reprising his role as Itt in the upcoming sequel Love Syndrome: The Beginning. His role will be recast. It was announced that instead, he will star in the upcoming BL The Rebound, where he will be paired with Nammon Krittanai. The series will be produced by AllThis Entertainment and will be directed by Golf Tanwarin. (The Eclipse, 609 Bedtime Story)  

❗️ A spinoff for the Korean BL Unintentional Love Story was announced. Further details are still unknown. 

❗️GMMTV has announced the following cast changes for their upcoming BLs:

Only Friends: Piploy K. will be replaced by Lookjun B. (role of น้ำเชื่อม) 

Cooking Crush: Mark P. will be replaced by Aungpao O. (role of Dynamite) 

❗️ Y MOMENT Entertainment Thailand has announced their lineup for 2023/2024:

Low Frequency - Coming July 2023

Venus in the Sky - Coming September 2023

Kiseki - Coming 2024

Time - Coming 2024 

Lovely Addict - Coming 2024

Beyond the Star - Coming 2024

❗️ Actor Ja Pachara has decided not to renew his contract with his agency 888 Entertainment. He will continue to work as a freelanced artist. 

❗️ The upcoming horror/fantasy BL movie After Sundown released its official trailer. The movie will star ZeeNunew and will be released in Thai cinemas on July 20th. 

❗️ The Thai BL A Boss and a Babe won in the category “Rising BL series” at this year’s Asia Top Awards.

❗️ The ongoing filming for the upcoming Special Edition of Chains of Heart has been suspended due to intractable scheduling conflicts of the main actors. The project has been cancelled. 

❗️ The long awaited Thai remake of the Japanese BL Cherry Magic (starring TayNew) will air in 2024. According to cast + crew, after a long struggle with copyright issues, the trailer will be released shortly. Filming will start at the end of the year. 

Upcoming series & movies for July:

👉🏻 Be Mine SuperStar (starring JaFirst) - July 3rd (Thailand)  

👉🏻 Minato Shouji Coin Laundry Season 2 - July 5th (Japan)  

👉🏻 Stay by My Side - July 7th (Taiwan) 

👉🏻 Stay With Me - July 7th (China) 

👉🏻 Low Frequency - July 8th (Thailand) 

👉🏻 Hidden Agenda - July 9th (Thailand) 

👉🏻 Club Friday: Moments and Memories - July 9th (Thailand) 

👉🏻 Laws of Attraction - July 15th (Thailand) 

👉🏻 Wedding Plan - July 19th (Thailand) 

👉🏻 After Sundown (starring ZeeNunew) - July 20th (Thailand, cinema-release)

👉🏻 Jun and Jun - July 20th (South Korea)  

👉🏻 Stay Still The Series - July TBA (Hong Kong) 

👉🏻 The Star Season 2 - July TBA (Myanmar)

[pumpumdemsugah]

I recently watched IWTV because of the clips and vids you put on my dash (couldn’t help but think of all the discourse and general stupidity the show would be bogged down in if it was lesbians instead of gay men because lesbians can’t do even imaginary foul shit without idiots examining it to death or co-opt it for themselves especially if louis was a black woman but anyway lol) and it’s wonderful. Claudia most of all like I had reservations about the recast but the new actress is so good. From the trailer alone I want her to go on and have a long career because she’s so talented.

New Claudia is soo fucking good. She can act her socks off. I'll be devastated if we don't get to see her in anything else. It would be such a fucking waste

If these people that keep yapping about representation don't cast her in everything I'm fighting someone. The amount of talent to come out of this show is crazy. It makes you wonder how many more people out there who we've only ever seen them do a Greyworm has this in them ?

A couple of lines has me on the ropes

The old Claudia was really good and I was sad to see her go but I think with season 2, Claudia gets to be angry, mature and dark and Delainey is hitting that spot

[the-bjd-community-confess]

Cerberus Project is literally Fairyland's sculpting team, who created the company Fairyland after splitting from Luts. If you're gonna grasp at straws to justify owning a recast, at least try and make straws that aren't imaginary 😭

~Anonymous

[nerdlunch]

355 | Recasting Silverado

Michael and Rob invite Michael DiGiovanni, Christian Nielsen, and Paxton Holley to help cast an imaginary remake of Silverado. Each of our five casting directors have scoured Hollywood for the perfect actors to update the roles of Emmett, Paden, Mal, Jake, Rae, and Cobb, plus other characters we wanted to think about. We've brought our top candidates to the conference room to make final decisions, but also to discuss possible tweaks to the script and even suggest a director.

New Episode of Nerd Lunch

[sshbpodcast]

Episode 387: Soap Trek

DIS: "Point of Light"

Hope you like General Hospital, because Discovery is going full Eastenders this week with "Point of Light". There's a secret baby and a sort-of-love triangle on the Klingon side of things, and while Tilly might not have an evil twin, she has a weird imaginary friend/infection! Oh, and Section 31 shows up. Ugh.

Also this week: middle naming, running lights, and recasting DS9 - part one!

Timestamps: Point of Light: 01:22; DS9 fantasy casting: 54:43

Blog it: Fantasy Casting DS9: The Regulars

[fatehbaz]

The unfamiliar desert ecology and climate meant that they could not easily deploy their trusted models of farming, animal husbandry, and commerce […]. To address this challenge, empire-builders in early America took Middle Eastern deserts as a key source of inspiration. Jefferson Davis’ Camel Corps [funded by a 1855 Congressional appropriation to collect camels from around the Middle East and Northern Africa] was one of the earliest examples of how this worked. […] American travel writers, explorers, scientists, and government officials had long described the arid West as a local version of the Middle Eastern and North African desert – an “American Zahara” or a Biblical Orient with spiritual and physical power equal to the Old World deserts […]. These authors harnessed the “Sahara” trope, Catrin Gersdorf argues, “to deactivate the existential anxieties of the pioneers [...], recasting it as a quasi-Oriental space containing yet unidentified but extremely valuable historical and cultural riches.” Nineteenth-century authors’ constant references to the Sahara […] helped […] settlers imagine the newly American desert lands as a “domestic” Orient and, in this way, […] familiar. […] [T]he U.S. Army waged overt war [with Indigenous residents] into the early 1900s. Displacing the people from the land was one thing, but redefining their social and cultural association with the desert was a different matter. Here again, the camel proved useful. This is vividly illustrated when the U.S. Army finally collected enough camels in Texas to run its first Camel Corps trial to assess the animals’ endurance and suitability for military purposes. The Army’s man in charge, General [E.F.B.], brought Hi Jolly, his fellow cameleers, and a large camel caravan together to travel from Texas to California beginning in September 1857. When the expedition stopped in Los Angeles in January 1858, the San Francisco Evening Bulletin described the scene with dramatized gusto: General Beale and about fourteen camels stalked into town last Friday week and gave our streets quite an Oriental aspect. It looked oddly enough to see outside of a menagerie, a herd of huge, ungainly awkward but docile animals [...] bringing up weird and far-off associations to the Eastern traveler, whether by book or otherwise of the land of the mosque, crescent or turban, of the pilgrim mufti and dervish with visions of the great shrines of the world, Mecca [...], and the toiling throngs that have for centuries wended thither, of the burning sands of Arabia and Sahara where the desert is boundless as the ocean and the camel is the ship thereof. This account actively rewrites the then-dominant imaginary of U.S. West […], enlisting the camel to transform it into a whimsical vision of the Old World in the New. […] Colonization was made friendlier by conceiving of it as a pilgrimage, an act of return.

Text by: Natalie Koch. “Double Exposure.” Arid Empire: The Entangled Fates of Arizona and Arabia. 2022.

---

The social construction of the high, arid landscapes of the Southwest as “more or less worthless” has been a fundamental component of colonization of the Diné, as well as other southwestern and Great Basin tribes. In fact, the inhabitation of dry, arid landscapes by Native nations was used as evidence of their low status on the Western hierarchy of civilization [...]. The “wasteland” is a racial and a spatial signifier that renders an environment and the bodies that inhabit it pollutable. [...] [W]hile we find radioactive tailings piles in the desert, we also find leaking barrels of Agent Orange on Bahamian beaches, dioxin-releasing copper mines near the shores of the Great Lakes, and strip mines in the rainforests of South America. [...] [T]herefore, […] colonial epistemologies do not just look on deserts as wastelands but that wastelands of many kinds are constituted through racial and spatial politics that render certain bodies and landscapes pollutable. […] This very pollution results in the common designation of wastelanded spaces, including those of the uranium industry on Diné land, as “sacrifice” zones. [...] Wastelanding reifies - it makes real, material, lived - what might otherwise be only discursive. [...] Race and space are connected through a social construction of difference that becomes spatialized through segregation and unequal distribution of resources. [...] Wastelanding is a primary of of these “feat[s] of ontological magic,” wherein racialized lands are made to seem uninhabited or unimportantly inhabtied, represented as worthless, and then [...] systematically stripped of their material and ideological worth. [...] It means to wasteland, to render pollutable, the lungs, the cells, and the respiratory tracts of everyone involved in the nuclear cycle. It also means to wasteland Navajo worldviews, epistemology, history [...].

Text by: Traci Brynne Voyles. “Sacrifical Land.” Wastelanding: Legacies of Uranium Mining in Navajo Country. 2015.

Imagining deserts of North America. “Imperialist environmentalism.”

—

Caren Kaplan (1996, 66) argues that “mystified versions of the ‘romance of the desert’ remain with us in postmodernity, often in the supposed service of a ‘postcolonial’ critical practice. The desire to become like or merge with the periphery or margin that one’s own power has established demonstrates the pitfalls of theoretical ‘tourism.’” Those who read the desert as a blank slate for imaginative experimentation and liberation from the status quo can slide dangerously close to, and sometimes merge with, the agents of mastery and exploitation. Indeed, […] the very idea that the desert offers such freedom is embedded in the notions of emptiness that serve to legitimize colonization and exploitation in the first place. […] For a nation concerned with agricultural expansion as the primary civilizing force, hitting arid lands meant that “the project of mastering the continent seemed to have reached a non-negotiable limit.” […] Nevertheless, even as the idea of the desert as ordeal […], the hardship the arid lands imposed on those who ventured into them served to confirm other aspects of Protestant America’s [disk horse] of spiritual mission […]. The well-off, educated middle classes made the deserts inviting as a purgative space of romantic sublimity and aesthetic purity. […] [A]esthetes like Rutgers art historian John C. Van Dyke were writing about the visual splendor of a land that should remain untouched by base economic interests. […] The conflict between contesting impulses toward either exploitation [”conservative”] or conservation [”progressive”] of the land is, then, present from the beginning of U.S. interest in its desert dominion, yet both positions derive at least part of their authority from the imposition of ideas of vacancy onto the terrain. Both read the  space as empty and see this emptiness as its source of value, whether it be to extract from, build upon, or contemplate as evidence of some cosmic truth. Yet this notional vacancy functions also as a form of selective blindness that eliminates consideration of native inhabitants, indigenous traditions, and other, alternative spiritual and utilitarian values that may have prior claim to the land. Speculators and aesthetes alike need the tropes of emptiness and uselessness in order to validate their construction of the landscape as available space. Do the Pueblo Indians, for example, see the terrain they have inhabited for thousands of years as a gap, a vacancy, a howling wilderness?

Text by: John Beck. “Without Form and Void: The American Desert as Trope and Terrain.” Nepantla: Views from South, Volume 2, Issue 1, 2001, pages 63-83.

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Desert landscapes have played an extraordinary role in the project of settler colonialism in the United States. As Traci Brynne Voyles argues in Wastelanding: Legacies of Uranium Mining in Navajo Country, deserts are sites where settler colonialism has superseded its logical  extremes. […] [S]ettler colonialism has gone a step further in the deserts of the US Southwest by rendering these landscapes barren “wastelands.” […] Viewed as desolate, lifeless, and worthless places, desert wastelands extend the settler-colonial project by obscuring present Indigenous inhabitance, justifying state-sanctioned extractivist practices, and naturalizing the presence of the settler state. […] Dian Million (Tanana Athabascan) observes that Indigenous places, in particular, are conceptualized by the settler state as barren, deserted regions: “Indigenous places are often imagined as isolated empty places, disposable, or usable places subordinate to national need. Indigenous peoples are not isolated, in a past […].“

Text by: Nathaniel Otjen. “Indigenous radical resurgence and multispecies landscapes: Leslie Marmon Silko’s The Turqoise Ledge.” Studies in American Indian Literatures, Volume 31, Numbers 3-4, Fall-Winter 2019, pages 135-157.

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Entitled “Deserts Will Bloom Through Atomic Power,” this 1947 ad pictures a terraformed desert valley with a farm that runs on atomic power. […] The ad copy explains, “New ‘BREAD BASKETS’ of the world can grow where only sand and scrub had been. Harnessed atomic energy will transform deserts into rich fruit and grain country.” […] While these wasteland-to-farmland hopes appear in different circumstances with varying intents, […] they are instances of the Edenic recovery narrative that historian Carolyn Merchant identified in Western environmental discourse. […] [T]he promise of a renewed Edenic paradise has historically masked programs of conquest, exploitation, and destruction. Visions such as those from Seagram’s and General Electric offer idyllic, bucolic landscapes, but as with other pastoral art and writing, much is obscured. They mask possible or actual legacies of land seizure and other dispossessions, contamination, and pollution. Of course, there is also the fundamental assumption that these lands are no more than “waste” and only valuable when cultivated in designated ways. […] In his 1909 collected lectures, […] British chemist [F.S.] predicted that […] humans “could transform a desert continent … and make the whole world one smiling Garden of Eden.”

Text by: Chirs Fite. “Imagining a New Eden in the Nuclear West.” Environment & Society Portal, Arcadia (Spring 2020), no. 9, Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society.

[commentsaboutsuperheromovies]

In which I give two reasons to think that the movie would have been a lot better with Eddie Murphy, rather than Richard Pryor, in the role of Gus Gorman. 

[trish-jenner-fan]

Ya casi estamos cerca para halloween aquí les presento mi cast meme de Carrie protagonizada por Octavius de una noche en el museo.

El meme le pertenece a un usuario de deviantart

Detective88

Octavius Carrie cast meme

[wormwoodandhoney]

imaginary musicals >> proud! a modern, lgbt+ version of pride & prejudice

featuring such hit imaginary songs as: proud, universal truth, despite myself, the polite duet (so nice to see you), pemberley, now i’m in the middle, and the wedding waltz.

beto bennet (george salazar) is an outspoken, proud gay activist with a perfect older sister, jane (presilah nunez) and an overbearing mother ready to marry them both off (rita moreno). things take an annoying turn when jane meets the rich and handsome bingley (jelani alladin) and his best friend, equally rich will darcy (ben platt). darcy thinks beto’s family is loud and obnoxious and thinks beto’s mission would be better with a little more quiet dignity.

beto and darcy do not get along- at least, that’s what beto thinks is happening until darcy confesses his feelings in a confusing, sort of insulting ballad. beto is honestly not sure what is even happening.