Ian Ousley - Tumblr Posts
I really refuse to accept the bs excuses people give for the ATLA live action. We have seen that a live action adaptation of an anime can have amazingly accurate casting (from Netflix themselves!!!!) with OPLA.
There is no excuse to not check into the backgrounds of the people you are casting when we have had pretendian actors like Taylor Lautner as the most popular actors playing indigenous characters. Not necessarily for tribal membership but literally just give me something! Something that connects you to the culture!
Even when I thought Ian Ousley was native, I wasnโt on the bs train of โhe looks so much like Sokka.โ Where? He looks like a white man! And while indigenous white passing ppl are still valid, that 100% plays into the intense colorism in the entertainment industry! Creating a diverse water tribe with real native actors (and especially Inuk actors!) would have been awesome! But as main characters Katara and Sokka were literally dark enough that many ppl thought they were black or identified with them as black people. So how did we even end up casting him??? Refer back to colorism.
The fact of the matter is they had an opportunity to uplift indigenous actors on a scale never before seen in something that wasnโt about indigenous trauma. But people donโt care about indigenous individuals. You donโt care about our voices.
This community which has claimed to love these characters and their culture, their home, their story, has disappointed me beyond measure. You care so little about others that you couldnโt simply take the time to boycott or even bootleg?! Or to uplift our voices enough to FORCE them to change these things. Itโs shameful.
Zukka shippers come get your juice!
(Dallas Liu about his relationship with Ian)
๐๐ฎ๐ป ๐ข๐๐๐น๐ฒ๐ ๐ง๐ฐ๐ณ ๐๐ญ๐ข๐ถ๐ฏ๐ต ๐๐ข๐จ๐ข๐ป๐ช๐ฏ๐ฆ