#slavery cw

[not-terezi-pyrope]

The funniest parts of Hamilton are when in the middle of waxing lyrical about America's creation mythos LMM remembers that slavery existed, and so to compensate has all the characters yell out something like "SLAVERY IS BAD, YEAH, WE SHOULD DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT" and then immediately go back to talking about what a darn great guy George Washington was

Like dgmw it's a good show and I like it but it is. Very funny, and I won't pretend there's no flaws in the framing

#not-terezi-speaks #hamilton #slavery cw

[ladyloveandjustice]

I mean she was literally in a slave market/freakshow and Shuro's dad literally bought her as a slave so hell yeah she doesn't owe them anything.

I was thinking Chilchuck was pretty naive to assume someone "raised" Izutsumi in the traditional way (probably his bias as a parent). She may have been taught basic things and fed, but that doesn't mean anyone raised her.

#nev reads dungeon meshi #slavery cw

[familyabolisher]

hello ave ! i was wondering if you’ve watched the 2022 interview with the vampire series and if so what you thought of it

i really enjoyed iwtv! i haven’t read rice’s novel but as far as i understand it, the show was a pretty significant departure from the original text, at least where rice’s engagement with race is concerned—i think the show seems pretty determined to strike out on its own, and thus far seems to be doing a pretty good job of that. i think what i found most interesting was the show’s honing in on a relationship between the coercive enforcement of normative kinship structures and the social abjection of the slave relative to the white master (i’ve been reading vincent woodard’s the delectable negro which expounds on this idea of like, rape + abuse + consumption extant within models of kinship relations, ‘the ideological infrastructure of childhood in slavery’ as he puts it, which i think has a lot of explanatory power around lestat/louis/claudia…); there’s lestat’s ‘teaching’ vampirism to louis which of course then morphs into physical abuse & that the text makes clear can be read parallel to a relationship between a slavemaster and a slave, and there’s the way lestat functions as a patriarch relative to whom we can read louis as the ‘wife’ and claudia as the ‘child,’ and the networks of [physical, economic, emotional] dependency, violence holding them all together.

i’m also quite interested in this idea of a ‘disciplined’ vampirism, or indeed vampirism as ‘disciplining’ (which is of course to say class-enforcing), because of course the dominant cultural narrative of the vampire (& the one with which i have the most familiarity) is that of a kind of nondifferentiated alterity which can be moulded into any number of metaphors. lestat to louis, of course, but also eg. lestat killing the opera singer who performed badly, the opulence of the mardi gras ball at the end (and something about consumption as disciplining—again tapping the vincent woodard sign but the mardi gras attendees coveting a kind of consumption of louis as a Black man only to then themselves be consumed), louis in 2021 comparing vampires who eat humans rather than animals to slaves (‘slaves to their appetites’ or similar, i forget the exact wording used, but it’s the language of body fascism plus the obvious pertinence with which slavery in the show as a whole is imbued—which ofc then invokes ideas around [un]disciplined bodies and racialisation) … it’s interesting how the show kind of plays both positions at once. the alterity metaphor is there, but so is the hegemony of sorts—vampirism disrupts louis’ position within a traditional family structure where vampirism stands for queerness, obviously, but also the intrusion of lestat (which is to say both queerness and slavery!) as a force that destabilises a Black family. it’s an interesting little balancing act and i’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.

anyway i also just think it’s a well-written show lol! visually gorgeous, erotic, indulgent, well-paced. i had a good time. no idea what happens next (again, haven’t read the book) but my ears pricked up at the idea of travelling from louisiana to europe … a transatlantic crossing, a reverse colonisation of sorts … there’s a lot you can do with that!

#ask #iwtv #slavery cw #someone could deffo do a reading of iwtv alongside woodard i'd be really interested in that

[robotgirlfoxears]

prison labor is just slavery and no amount of mental gymnastics about "labor reforming convicts" can change that

#slavery cw

[korechthonia]

Okay so, let's mash up 2 jangobi tropes that spark joy, and:

The Mand'alor always has a soulmark, leading them to their Be'alor, the other half of their soul. It starts without colour, then burns and gets colour when they meet, or something along those lines, and then everyone who's sworn the Resol'nare can sense and will protect the Be'alor. Right?

But Jango after Galidraan is sold into slavery on a spice ship and honestly it is hell and also he is basically always high and also fully attired (in rags, but you know, the important part is doesn't see the soul mark, like, ever. slavery is bad for hygiene.)

And poor obi-wan in one of his stints in slavery (possibly but not necessarily tied to bandomeer, he gets in enough trouble) and ends up on the slave ship and Jango takes care of him because that is an ad and he is suffering. But also because soulmate.

And then they get off the ship and go their separate ways, and then they realize individually that they met their soulmate but they can't go and try and find them because handwavy plot reason. Mad about it, unhealthy, broke, Jedi duty, whatever.

So then Obi-Wan gets to go to Mandalore! And things start going weird immediately. There is a lot of "wtf is a Be'alor" and "but I've never met a Mandalorian before!" from Obi-Wan and "that's literally a Mandalorian plant on your chest clearly you have" and lessons in Mando'a and culture and fighting from some of the Mandos and "trust in the force" from Qui-Gon probably.

Meanwhile the Ha'atade are protecting Satine to protect Obi-Wan and also searching the galaxy for Jango. And also Kyr'stad are infuriating and try to steal Obi-Wan so then Ha'atade are protecting him too.

it takes a while to find Jango, but then they do, and it's just like... "oh. oh. it's you." and then deep desperate clinging hug because it doesn't matter that you hate Jedi, that is someone you went through hell with. (and then some "I should have known" "but you couldn't have found me")

and then they all yell and fight and fall in love and live happily ever after.

#jangobi #kenfetti #jango x obi wan #star wars #this is a star wars tag #slavery cw #i mean you could have the jedi take obiwan's soulmark away and then he doesn't know but I think there's probably enough going on there #drabbles! #adoptable plot bunny

[notfromcold]

Juneteenth is coming up. One awesome idea I've heard for commemorating it is donating to your local bail fund. Abolish the prison industrial complex!

#juneteenth #slavery cw #prison industrial complex

[anneapocalypse]

On Slavery in Occupied Ferelden

Content warning: discussion of slavery and imperialism in a fantasy setting.

With Tevinter as the great moral blot on the face of Thedas, the empire known for the legal practice of slavery, it is easy to forget that the slave trade was in practice in Ferelden during the Orlesian occupation.

Slavery has long been outlawed in Orlais proper, but this seems not to have applied to occupied Ferelden. The Codex entry "History of Ferelden Chapter 2," which describes the Orlesian occupation, declares:

The occupation was a dark blot on Ferelden's history. Our people, who from time immemorial valued their freedom over all else, were forced to bow to Orlesian rule. The Empire declared our elves property and sold them like cattle.

Because of this, I think that the evidence of Loghain selling Fereldan elves into Tevinter slavery might actually carry more weight in the Landsmeet than one would initially believe. I'm not going to argue that most of those nobles care a whole lot about elves for the sake of the elves, but I will argue that it is, to the most loyally Fereldan of them, potentially Loghain's most naked hypocrisy and a betrayal of every value he claims to be upholding. He insists that he is doing what he's doing for the sake of maintaining Fereldan independence from Orlais, and yet he's doing something the Orlesians did to Ferelden that Fereldans find repellent.

It also brings just that much more bitter irony to that sense of superiority upper-class Orlesians feel toward Tevinter. I think a huge part of upper-class Orlesian identity is tied up in thinking of Orlais as the civilized, sophisticated, good empire, not like that other bad empire up north, the one with the magisters and the blood magic and the legal slavery.

Of course, this is mostly just window-dressing. The Orlesian nobility are perfectly willing to spill the blood of the powerless for the sake of gaining and maintaining power; they're just having servants slaughtered for expediency in assassination attempts rather than blood magic rituals. While the outlawing of slavery is no doubt important to the empire's image, clearly exceptions may be made for colonized territories like Ferelden. And this likely feeds an illegal slave trade already operating within Orlais itself (as we know it was, thanks to Fiona's awful childhood).

Orlais's veneer of civility is just another mask.

#slavery cw #imperialism cw #blunders of thedas #orlais #fereldan occupation #loghain mac tir #dragon age origins #dragon age #thedas politics

[aronarchy]

Compare:

Those takes come from a view where racism/antiblackness must result from individual “feelings” or nebulous internal “prejudices” rather than specific systems. That’s bullshit. If someone chose to own slaves under a racial slavery system then he was automatically racist. If someone chose to own a vastly disproportionate amount of property and live a bourgeois lifestyle while others were forced to starve then he was automatically classist and furthering their exploitation. If he's a white person chose to remain aristocratically rich under a system of racialized white supremacist capitalism then he was automatically racist. That’s what racism and classism are. It doesn’t matter whether he had other “ideals” or “feelings.” Clearly he didn’t respect them enough to hold the ideal that he was morally obligated to give up his privileged lifestyle to stop exploiting them. Does he think all this great human progress just occurred just because? Do better conditions appear out of thin air? No; wealth has to be redistributed (or, more accurately, seized back) for there to be more equality.

This is also why “but what about a person with a hypothetical psychologically ‘race-blind’ exploitative antagonism existed, what then” carries a false premise. Even if you, personally, might be “race-blind” in a vacuum, you do not live in a vacuum; if you go with a “default” then in a racist world the default will be racist. The mere ability to hold such a removed, detached individualized “ideology” or nebulous set of “beliefs” distinct from “real,” grounded ethics is already a product of privilege and indicative of privilege (as well as oppressiveness). The oppressors have always had varying “ideologies”/dispositions of this sort; they have the luxury of being able to hold these ~alternative views~ because they have a privileged vantage point where it all isn’t personal, it’s all low-stakes. But liberal “equality” or egalitarianism isn’t actual equality. This is condescending and useless.

It’s gross how many (almost always white) liberals try to justify owning slaves (“historically”). Fuck “it was just a product of their time.” People have ethical obligations no matter what time they’re in. And there will always be at least some people who (actually, radically) resist the dominant narrative, even if they are less visible or not heard. The exploited classes often/usually understand that their exploitation is wrong; they feel the trauma and the outrage themselves. Even some people of the privileged classes will dissent. “But I just had privileged foisted on me against my will I totally couldn’t help it or change anything” is the coward’s way out, is unrealistic, and denies agency.

(These are also the same types of people who take huge offense and clutch their pearls at statements like “all white people are racist” and claim that as justification for promoting entryist racist talking points in return like the specter of Black liberation activism going too far/being extremist/unreasonable now, but at the same time set up their premises so that that would be the logical conclusion from their scenario given a more honest use of definitions and interpretations, which is pretty ironic. Which is it? Was/is it not all white people, or yes all white people they couldn’t help it though it was just a product of their time?)

I mention this although this was said in a context of analyzing fiction because the OPs indicate they believe this is appropriate in any context in general, and people in general do not restrict this analysis to just fictional characters; these are extremely common talking points about real people, real-world situations and scenarios, and IRL oppression, both historically and in the present. These myths are taught in school and peddled in public discourse and sold as policy. They are dangerously wrong and need to be discussed and challenged.

#OP #racism #antiblackness #classism #capitalism #slavery #slavery cw #fandom discourse #the vampire chronicles #media analysis #critique

[gothyanki]

thinking about her (Gith the Liberator)

Thinking about how much I wish she were the deliciously messy, morally complex, and believably motivated protagonist of a Space Lesbians vs. Empire trilogy instead of a flat villain/historical footnote in the Fiend Folio. Unfortunately, DnD.

#mother gith apologia #but SERIOUSLY #they really created this leader of a successful uprising that freed a people who'd been enslaved so long their original name had been lost #and made her a one-dimensional villain with no real personality/motivation #not only does she not get to be the centre of her own story #she barely even has a story #it's all just grist for the “eeeevil-aligned species” mill #we don't really know why she decided conquering the planes would be a great idea #or why vlaakith i betrayed her #because the big assumption underpinning those plot points is “this is what happens when oppressed peoples become Too Liberated” #where's my chonky book series about her + vlaakith i + zerthimon fomenting rebellion together and developing irreconcilable differences? #in the right author's hands it could be so good #let Gith be an actual character 2k23 #githcourse #slavery cw #oh dnd lore #as with all their historically “evil” species: there's a lot to unpack here #and I completely understand why some people would rather throw away the whole backpack #sorry about the giant tag essay rant. it will happen again. #I started essaying in someone else's tags and then realised it would be more polite to just make my own post #githyanki

[fictionkinfessions]

(This isn't directed at anyone in particular, just some general frustrations about something that keeping coming up for some reason)

Stop saying "not all of us can be canon compliant" when you're told about something that doesn't align with your personal headcanon. Just because something isn't explicitly stated by source doesn't mean it's contradicted! By that logic, every xiaoven rememberer is canon divergent and if that would be rude to say surely you can understand why saying it about someone's individual story is rude.

Of course it's fine to be canon divergent! I think all of us are in some way or another, some more than others. It's totally normal and no less valid or real than being closer to canon. But me not being the slave of the God of Dreams is not canon divergent and saying that it is sounds an awful lot like you mean it in an invalidating way. Canon specifically and intentionally does not specify *anything* about my former master save that they were evil. Domain, element, age, territory, strength, personality, fighting style, gender (at least in the English translation) is all left vague. People assume that it was the god of dreams, because they don't have anything to go off except for the very little they know about my trauma, but that doesn't make it canon- and even if it was, it doesn't change canon in any meaningful way. There are only two or three things in my life canon contradicts and none of them change much of anything. We all have details like that.

To be clear, my issue is not with being canon divergent. It's with labels being projected onto me instead of letting me explore and define myself as feels right. Many of my lives are canon divergent, just not this one- and that may change, as canon's story isn't even close to over. But if it does, that realization is mine to have and my decision to make, no one else's.

Xiao #🥀🖌️

x

#fictionkinfessions #fictionkin #🥀🖌️ #xiaokin #genshinimpactkin #canoning issue #headcanons issue #fandom nono #slavery cw #mod party cat

[skelkankaos]

not to talk about how much I love the Captive Prince series again but man I love a biased POV character. Like in the first book Damen's perception of reality is so at odds with both the readers' and with the actual reality of the setting. That's I think why Erasmus's whole thing was such an impactful part of the book's for me because we go through the whole book with Damen asking for the readers' empathy (and to be fair he does go through horrible horrible things) while holding himself up as better than the Veretians, more forward thinking and gentle, and then it's like. Oh right. This institution which you hold up as superior brainwashes people from childhood to accept abuse. Your happy slaves aren't a product of kindness, they're a product of power imbalances and manipulation. And I think in like, the hands of a different author this series could have been really stupid but thank goodness these ideas came to someone who knew how to use them

#Capri #This series is sooooo good so much to think about #Slavery cw #Child abuse cw

[ladyloveandjustice]

Well that's a horrifying thing that apparently exists in this setting. I guess at least the slaves are getting some free cash.

#too many isekai flashbacks man #but to my memory dungeon meshi doesn't do anything with this either way #oh i guess we already knew that because of itzutsumi #nev reads dungeon meshi #slavery cw

[naranjapetrificada]

Alternate history novel idea free to a good (black) home:

Enslaved Africans literate in Arabic use fables to teach enslaved children the script and write it in relevant shapes a la:

Calligraphic lion by Ahmed Hilmi,  April 19, 1913. Empire of the Sultans: Ottoman Art From the Khalili Collection. x

And they convince white people it's "harmless" like capoeira or coded spiritual songs so they can continue to pass it on. Something something a significantly larger corpus of African diaspora literature survives and documents slavery in much more detail. Ideally an African script would be utilized but Arabic seemed the most likely to me (glad to be wrong!)

[Bonus points if this led to the survival of more creoles in North America. I regularly lament that (beyond examples like Gullah/Geechee) our vernacular(s) isn't more impenetrable to outsiders.]

#free to a good home #because I'm not gonna write it #at least not for decades #writing prompt #african american history #african diaspora #african american literature #slavery cw #cw slavery #just tell your agent you saw the idea on tumblr so they can send me a small check #mostly I just want this novel to exist #did something like this maybe happen in The Book of Negroes? #I had to return it to the library before I got very far and haven't picked it up since #historical literacy

[familyabolisher]

I find that what we get, in part, through [Frederick] Douglass’s depictions of rape is his understanding of rape as definitionally linked to a culture of consumption. From Hester being tempered and flesh tendered in the Anthony kitchen to perpetrators depicted as tigers and wolves, Douglass emphasizes how rape and sexual violence are a means of satiating a cultivated white appetite for black flesh. Southern slavery apologist George Fitzhugh explained the political economy of slave consumption in the following manner: "The use of an article is only a proper subject of charge when the article is consumed in the use; for this consumption is the consumption of the labor of the lender or hirer, and is the exchange of equal amounts of labor for each other." Thought of as an object of labor, as labor itself, in the mind of many slave owners, the slave could be completely consumed with no moral repercussions. Rape in this context serves as an index for a larger culture of consumption, the sex act being a means to take self from the slave and ritualistically consume this taken self.

Vincent Woodard, The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism in US Slave Culture

#currently reading #slavery cw #rape cw #this is so good

[spidey-bie]

I debated posting this but here we go.

Fic Idea:

18th century AU where Hobie got bitten and uses his powers to free slaves as an agent on the underground railroad and fight for freedom.

#idk where my brain got this either y'all #im just here #yes i know the is very Americanized #yes i know this wasn't a British thing #i just don't care #tw slavery #slavery #slavery tw #cw slavery #slavery cw #jay and the spiders #fic concept

[deanmarywinchester]

absolutely stupid that the way black sails engages with pirates’ complicity in slavery was the whole thing with jack and the fort rather than flint, while trying to ally with the maroons, reckoning with the fact that his crew, like all pirate crews of the time, would have considered enslaved people just another part of the value of a prize ship. (at that time pirate crews freed and took on some english-speaking enslaved people if they could work but that would’ve been a small minority of the enslaved people on captured ships.) I can understand that the writers might’ve thought that was a line they couldn’t cross with someone who’s ostensibly the hero you root for, but eliding it just feels strange to me. at the very least I needed to see flint reckon with the fact that he was not always as ideologically motivated as he is in s3-4 and would have been complicit in nassau’s return to english rule if the plan with peter ashe had gone through, + what that would’ve meant for the people he now calls his allies

#slavery cw #like I understand that the jack thing was meant to show us jack in an impossible position and the lines that jack but not vane would cross #but it doesn’t even do a good job of that And it makes jack and vane the only ones complicit when every crew and the guthries would have #been too #my posts #black sails tag #RELATEDLY absolutely stupid that joshua or literally any Black sailor on flint’s crew wasn’t a pov character #i think the different treatment of a Black sailor who spoke english and an enslaved person who didn’t speak english and couldn’t sail #is important to have seen and reckoned with as we looked at the maroons and pirates forging their alliance