Also Like To Mention How The Director Said That The Queen Making Basliter A Knight Was The First Crack In The Wall - Tumblr Posts

i keep seeing (hopefully mostly unintentional) whitewashed fanart of Ballister from the Nimona movie and i’d just like to remind any white people who may be doing fanart -

Ballister being brown is a very important part of the film. i know his skin is much lighter in the graphic novel, but as a brown person who watched the film it’s pretty obvious that they cast a Pakistani man to play him because on top of being a trans allegory, it’s also an allegory for racism. it’s intrinsic to the story told in the film.

same thing with Ambrosius being Korean. the story being told with the casting of Riz Ahmed as Ballister and Eugene Lee Yang as Ambrosius is of a brown man being framed to keep the power in the hands of white people, and of those in power using east asians (see: the model minority myth) to prop up white supremacy.

i could go on but i think you get the point. all that to say - the color of Ballister’s skin wasn’t just a choice made in passing to make the cast more diverse. same with Ambrosius. please make sure you’re representing that in your art.