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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026

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https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1j1ye6n30no

(Non pay wall link)

Tragic end.

I feel bad for the dude - honestly a hearty laugh is all I want when people violate social norms like this and show us how frankly evil our institutions can be.

Sure I can blame the dude for every lie told but it only permeates my life several levels deep … the association of someone like Arday and my life only really touches when the walks start crumbling down.

What gets me mad is the institutions.

It’s their fault! Every step of the way someone, anyone, could have stepped in and stopped folly.

But things snowball and here we are.

I don’t even know what I’m supposed to learn from this, and I don’t know how I can help make the world a better place than I left it. People used to change the world I feel like, and I’m only changing the people around me … which is something!

I’m 100% reading the biography about this.

Tragic, and @faceh's sign needs a lot more tapping. The demand for diversity exceeds its supply, with awful consequence.

I'm reminded of the casting of Domino in Deadpool 2 (2018). In the comics, an image search shows her on covers in a variety of pale tones ranging from Caucasian-white to body-paint-white. The movie cast a woman with mixed German/African-American ancestry and gave her a big Afro. Then, they had to find a stunt double and tried to match the actress's sex and ethnicity. They went with Joi Harris, a motorcycle racer with no previous stunt experience. Domino's Afro meant Joi was performing stunts without a helmet, and during a take she lost control of the bike, was thrown through a plate glass window, and died.

Uh, Domino was well-cast, that actress has good physical presence and doesn't, to my knowledge, race-bait.

Uh, Domino was well-cast, that actress has good physical presence and doesn't, to my knowledge, race-bait.

To an extent I agree, but it doesn't change the fact that almost certainly she was cast because of her race. It reminds me of when Billy Dee Williams was cast in "The Empire Strikes Back" back in 1980 in response to criticism that the Star Wars universe was too white. Unlike a lot of DEI movie characters, Lando Calrissian had a lot going for him: He was an interesting character, he wasn't a race-swap; he didn't follow the usual tropes of being wiser and/or more brilliant than any of the white characters around him. But the problem is that these sorts of casting choices normalize and legitimize diversity casting. And suddenly producers are inserting so-called "magical negro" characters everywhere, even in productions which are set in medieval Europe type settings.

In my view, accepting a race swap of this Domino character is accepting the camel's nose a little bit into the tent.

I liked the Vitiligo forming the domino mark on her face, and I'm just not attached to the canonical race of marvel E-listers. I'll save my ire for Black Aragorn.

First they came for Marvel E-listers, and I did not speak out—because I'm just not attached to the canonical race of Marvel E-listers.

Then they came for Ariel, and I did not speak out—because I'm just not attached to the canonical race of Disney characters.

Then they came for the Velaryons, and I did not speak out—because I'm just not attached to the canonical race of some characters in a spinoff show of an unfinished book series.

Then they came for Rings of Power, and I did not speak out—because I'm just not attached to the canonical race of populations in a non-canon TV series that takes place thousands of years before the main novel.

Then they came for Aragorn—and there was no one left to speak for me.