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I was one of the first black women in the country, more years ago than I care to remember, who wore an afro ‘outside,’ in public. This was way before Star Trek. I wore one of the biggest afros in New York, but I wore it with Dior and Chanel suits. One of the other persons who was the first to wear an afro, but she cut it very short, was Cicely Tyson.

But when it came time to do the Star Trek movie, I had to fight for that afro. It was nothing against the afro, but the feeling was that the afro had become so very popular that it looked too contemporary.

I said, ‘However, the afro is not modern, the afro has been around for at least not less than 5,000 years and probably at least 10,000. I’m not sure how long we’ve been on the planet, but as long as there have been black people the afro has been around.’

Then they said, ‘Well, it can’t be the big bubble, so let’s try to get a more “Uhura’ style.” I said, ‘What are you going to do, deny her race and make her hair straight again? If we’re going to have to live through that again…’ They assured me that what they had in mind was more of a balance, and we agreed.

We said, ‘OK, women in the future will do all kinds of things, as they have in the past. For 5,000 years and more they’ve straightened their hair and curled it and rolled it and twisted it and braided it and twirled it and shaved it off and done everything under the sun. And so, in the future, it’s very conceivable that, just as we do today, black people will do these twirly-curl kind of things, and point their bangs, and this would be peculiar to Uhura: the pointed bangs and long sideburns.’

[…] To tell the truth, I really wanted cornrow braids. And don’t you dare call them ‘Bo Derek braids!’ That’s something that we’ve been doing for thousands of years before she was born!

Nichelle Nichols in Return to Tomorrow: The Filming of Star Trek The Motion Picture. h/t the Women of Star Trek Facebook page.

I love this so, so much. It really speaks to issues that black women in Hollywood and everyday life are still facing today around the shaming of natural hair that comes with the assumption that the beauty standard to appeal to is that of white women’s hair. And it touches on cultural appropriation of black hairstyles like cornrows by white people! Nichelle Nichols is so the most amazing.

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(via trekkiefeminist)

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thetwelfthpanda:

I got several asks before asking if I can do a livestream because they want to see how I draw but I can never do that while I’m living here because our internet connection sucks (I actually have no idea what I sacrificed in order to stream TAB; it must have been a bit of my soul). So this is just a low quality video of me doodling my gay son for those who want to see how I draw Sherlock.

(Source: http://thetwelfthpanda.tumblr.com/)
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ksica:

It’ll just be a story. One of those Donna Noble stories where she missed it all again.

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kryptaria:

downbythegreenwood:

hansbekhart:

downbythegreenwood:

downbythegreenwood:

I HAVE HIS FUKCING ADDRESS
THANK YOU GOOGLE
NOW I JUST NEED TO DO A FEASIBILITY CHECK

IT DOESN’T EXIST 

ALSO WTF IS UP WITH THE MOVIE
@hansbekhart is having your front door opening to a vacant? lot? a normal thing? because there’s not much street going on during the “end of the line” scene. 

What, in this scene?

Not normal, but good history on the part of whoever set the shot that way.  It looks like Steve lives in a rear tenement, the shittiest of the shitty options of tenement living.  Tenements sometimes had a few buildings built onto a lot, and the ones in the back were the older, cheaper, shittier, smaller, less ventilated, more fatally hazard to your health ones.  

You might pass through a courtyard or through the front tenement in order to get to your building. 

Cute, right?  

In each of these buildings there would’ve been literally a hundred or more people living there at any given time, often with more than ten people to each apartment.  People didn’t live in these places long; Steve probably would’ve passed through a lot of these shitty places, growing up.

By the time Steve was born there’d been massive reforms to tenement living, mostly because of OG social justice warrior Jacob Riis, which did help put a halt to the crazy death rate and also gave us some oddities like windows that look into the other room.  

BUT still a good chance Mrs Rogers might’ve contracted TB just from, like, the privies that still might’ve been hanging out in the yard or something.

So yeah, good history, showing that Steve definitely lived in a total shithole and is a crazy person for storing his house key where his literally hundreds of neighbors could totally break in and relieve him of whatever shitty belongings he had.  Consistent characterization for the numbnuts who stored Fury’s flash drive in the super secret location of a vending machine, I guess.

Also yeah if you’re talking about Steve’s address from his cheating the draft file or whatever, that’s a total bullshit address.  It’s like seven digits long, we don’t tend to do that.

i’m gonna give you a big fucking kiss one day.

i’m going with alameda avenue because it seems to also be fictional? this appeals to me.

So yeah, good history, showing that Steve definitely lived in a total shithole and is a crazy person for storing his house key where his literally hundreds of neighbors could totally break in and relieve him of whatever shitty belongings he had.  Consistent characterization for the numbnuts who stored Fury’s flash drive in the super secret location of a vending machine, I guess.

This is 100% Steve Rogers, crazy person.

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…there’s something in the saga of Bucky Barnes that resonates. If you’ve ever felt like you couldn’t escape some horrible piece of your past, he’s a character for you. If you’ve ever been expected to measure up to an impossible standard, he’s a character for you. If you’ve ever had to sit and wrestle with your demons in silence because, for one reason or another, you just couldn’t speak up about them to anyone—here’s Bucky Barnes. 

He’ll match you ghost for ghost, burden for burden, demon for demon, and he’ll still get up again the next morning. He’ll make fun of himself sometimes, and he’ll play the hardened cynic, even though he’s really got a squishy romantic heart that’s far too close to his brittle surface.

post by Rebekah on The Mask Blog, March 24, 2014 (x)

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I never really thought about it before, but this is so very true.