#same ole same ole

I'm just taking this time to correct a certain anti-Black, (and anti-Romani) sadly typical fandom troll's misogynoir fuckery in the tag and establishing who Greta Danesti is in canon Castlevania animation lore. This is Greta Danesti's official character sheet:

She's the village headwoman of Danesti a few miles away from Alucard's castle. This is what her voice actress, Marsha Thompson looks like:

It's pretty obvious her character design took cues from the actress, who is Afro-British. In show canon, however, her family escaped from the Roman city of Carthage, which today, is located in the African country Tunisia. Alucard correctly speculated where her people are from while conversing with her, here (s4 e5):

Greta then confirms that her people did escape the Romans, but she now fully embraces her "family" in her village who are "from all over" and the responsibility of taking care of them.

This same troll used the g-slur to insist that she is Romani.

She is not. This troll used an early character design here, to make her case.:

And though it does have similarities to Romani clothing... It also looks like it takes cues from Tunisian clothing and likely local and non-local European clothing of the era with "fantasy" elements sprinkled in, as well, which would match the fact of her village's people coming from all over:

There definitely should be more Romani rep in media as it is so often whitewashed, but Greta is not Romani.

FYI, these women actors actually *are* of Romani descent: Fairuza Balk of The Craft, Oona Chaplin who played Robb Stark's wife in GOT (she's also Charlie Chaplin's granddaughter[!]), and Noomi Rapace from the Swedish movie, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo says her father may have been of Romani descent, as well.

And because I can predict it, as people like to find ways of discounting blackness in every way...

Yes, there are plenty of non-Black indigenous POC in North Africa, including within Tunisia. Another fun fact... Africa has more indigenous human genetic variation among its peoples than every other people on the planet has with everyone else on the planet[!]. All this to say non-white POC AND Black people are indigenous to Tunisia.

I feel I have to say that because there is a lot of anti-Black anthropological fetishization of North Africa. Egypt is a major example of that (see: Rami Malek, an indigenous Coptic Egyptian who self-identifies as African man of color and has likely had to clarify that *often* because people keep wanting to mislabel him as an Arab, but I digress...) And sadly, there is a decidedly anti-black movement to totally disconnect certain North African countries' identities from a continental African one, and to largely see it as mainly a part of the MENA world (it is both kiddies, BOTH). Here is an informative article (linked in the image) about that struggle:

So, this got heavy...but between the post insisting that Greta is NOT Black and the one saying she's not bisexual because that same troll is purposefully and maliciously being obtuse about how words go together... I figured clearing some things up and educating folks might be helpful. BTW, the fact of those issues in the article makes her blackness all the more resonant as rep in pop culture. And hey, poly folks have disagreements, just like the het folks do... -Still bi. I'm gonna end here with two images from the linked article of anti-racist Tunisian protesters (MENA and Black):

P.S. I also side-eye those keen to make her muscular... I mean yeah she wields a big-ass hammer and shortsword/dagger, but the tendency to masculinize black woman characters deserves a hardy eye-squint. Especially, given that the show has *no problem* making muscular women look like that and they DIDN'T for Miss Greta.

SPOILER ALERT FOR NCISLA S14E19 (I think).

NCISLA filmed in San Pedro awhile back. One of many such days in the last 14 years. I've been lucky enough to catch a few. I must admit I was tempted to steal one of these signs- after all, I figured they weren't gonna need them in a couple more weeks, right? (I didn't.)

There was no sign of Eric Christian Olsen, but I did watch Chris O'Donnell filming an interesting scene with Jere Burns, who plays Pembrook.

Apologies for the poor photo quality- my phone at the time was approximately 200 years old.

The priests were wrong, of course. The attendants at the Sanctum of the Twelve couldn’t tell signs of divine manifestation from a hole in the ground. They’d treat both the same way, of course. They’d peer with their scholarly, gold or silver plated spectacles and then curtly explain that both of them were unwelcome in the Sanctum.

Malika knew this because she’d been to the Sanctum several times to discuss what she was  certain was evidence of Nymeia’s direct presence and, sometimes, interference with her life only to be treated like a small child who’d just pissed on the floor. Shock. Distress. Asked politely to never bring that behavior to the Sanctum again and to certainly never tell anyone else about it.

When she’d ask about actual details regarding the gods-- anything past the very creation of them was vague, suspiciously chaste, and, frankly, boring as fuck. Who would want to worship these deities that had less bite to them than a generic hero in a lazily written children’s story? They’d strip the gods of their violence and sexuality and relegate them to just pretty pictures on stained glass and suggest the public offer reverence to a caricature. 

Bad guys catch all the good guys.

Bad guy really wants them all to die, but wait they must follow him.

He wants to show them all something first!

Forget the fact that we just spent the whole book with the bad guy trying to kill them all.