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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.

when this post first went around (a year ago apparently) I was like BUT WHAT ABOUT DADDY DUMAS THOUGH because basically

• 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
  

I was never taught that he was Black either. WTF.

General Dumas (aka Thomas Alexandre Davy de La Pailleterie) looked like this…

…and like this…

…while “Napoleon has all the presence of yesterday’s plain Tesco hummus“…

:-D

I suspect Alexandre Dumas would have laughed at that, because besides looking like someone who laughed a lot…

…he was also a foodie.

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.

(via inyriljace)

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Role swap au where Zuko was the Avatar who got frozen for a hundred years, so when he’s rescued from the ice instead of a goofy twelve year old Katara catches this mysterious teenager with long hair and a cool scar and a fucking DRAGON

Katara: BOY???? HOT BOY?????? HOT TEENAGE BOY?????????

Zuko: *speaks*

Katara: nevermind I hate him

How does Aang factor into this? I ask because the more I think about it the more I want him to somehow be trying to capture the Avatar.

Aang is 112 years old, decided he was going to be Zuko’s airbending teacher, and refuses to take no for an answer

Aang: Aw, the new Avatar doesn’t want me.
Aang: *gets out a weighted net* Time for Plan B then.

JDJSHJABDBFJSH

Look, you know how you keep a net from falling on you? YOU AIRBEND IT, SUCKA. Air comes right after fire in the cycle so it’s not like the guy has any other options. Do you want a flaming net falling on you? No? Then learn to airbend. Or this tiny old man will cart you away like a trussed turkey and lecture you about the power of laughter, going with the flow, opening your chakras, and other hippie shit.

Sokka, slouching against a fence, not moving: Oh nooooooo, that creepy old man stole the Avataaaaaaaaaar.
Sokka, sitting down on the ground: We should dooooo something.
Sokka, pulling out his lunch: Otherwise he might actually learn something. That would be teeeerrible.
Katara, indignant rage coursing through her body: Sokka!!!!!!!! We have to go look for him!!!!
Sokka: Might! Actually! Learn! Something! Katara!
Katara: *wavers*
Katara, also sitting down: We have to go look for him…. *gets out her own sandwich* But, maybe after lunch.

I love that this transforms Aang’s role in the full Team Avatar familial situation from the baby of the family to the Grandpa with weird hobbies

My brain, immediately after the “Aang won’t take no for an answer” post:

Aang: I’m gonna ride him! *jumps on Zuko’s shoulders*

Actually, I thought a bit more about this: If Aang is “grandpa figure who won’t fucking stop teaching Zuko to be a better and more spiritually fulfilled person,” then what is Iroh doing?

And then it hit me.

Iroh: *sitting in a teahouse at a paisho table*
Iroh, deadpan: I must capture the last airbender. 
Iroh: It is the only way to make sure the powe rof the Avatar won’t be turned on the Fire Nation.
Iroh: Only then will I be redeemed in the eyes of the Fire Lord for my failure at Ba Sing Se.
Iroh: …
Iroh: Anyway, it’s your turn.

About half of the B plots are just Iroh finding new ways to feign incompetence and bad luck so that his political watchdog can’t prove that he’s letting Aang - and by extension Zuko - get away.

@ray10k

Sometimes Iroh plays paisho with Aang, whose entire disguise during these games consists of a painfully fake mustache.

AANG WAS THE OTHER PLAYER IN THAT SCENE OF COURSE IT’S PERFECT (the moustache is just a bit of Appa’s fur tied in a string)

heres the question…. since aang and zuko would be roughly the same age in this AU…. Would they have known each other as kids? and more importantly? would they have gotten into shenanigans with boomy?

(via inyriljace)

dykes-for-dnd:

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moonawrites:

For all their differences, James Potter and Severus Snape did have one thing in common.

They were both prepared to sacrifice James Potter’s life to save Lily.

(via harrypotterr)