Is anyone else really angry that Amazon has the rights to LOTR?
Content warning: mentions of genocide, slavery, and sexual assault.
A lot of people have expressed concerns that Amazon’s LOTR TV show will be bad, which I understand, but this is about something else which I haven’t seen any discussion of online. The show could be good—although I doubt it will be—and I will still be angry that Amazon is making it.
Amazon profits from the forced labor of Uighurs in China and has ties to a Chinese company that is directly involved in the Chinese Government’s ongoing genocide against the Uighur people (ASPI,LA Times).
Amazon treats its employees like slaves, forcing them to work in unsafe conditions, paying them poverty wages, preventing them from unionizing, and surveilling them around the clock (The Guardian,New York Times).
Amazon has supplied facial recognition technology to US law enforcement and helps ICE and the Department of Homeland Security track and lock up immigrants (ACLU, The Guardian).
Amazon has a huge carbon footprint that has been growing every year, along with the waste it generates, even as Amazon tries to portray itself as environmentally friendly (AP News,CNBC,Forbes).
Amazon has paid a fraction of the taxes that it should have paid over the past ten years, allowing it to become even richer and more powerful (The Guardian).
Amazon has done so many terrible things that it would take me too long to list them all.
Online discussions about the LOTR show, from what I have seen, have focused on whether or not it will be good, whether or not it will follow canon, whether or not it will have a diverse cast, and to some degree, concerns that it will be like Game of Thrones, with tasteless sex scenes and gratuitous violence. I understand why many Tolkien fans care about these things, and I do, too. We want the source material portrayed respectfully; we want a diverse cast; we don’t want an adaptation of Tolkien that feels like Game of Thrones. But since Amazon is making it, I think focusing on these issues risks losing sight of the bigger picture.
Even if the show is diverse—as many fans have been hoping—Amazon is still harming people of color in real life. Even if the show has beautiful visuals—and it probably will, since it’s being filmed in New Zealand—Amazon is still destroying the earth. Even if the show respects fans’ wishes and refrains from gratuitous sex scenes, Amazon is still helping the US Government lock up immigrants, many of whom are sexually assaulted by guards while in custody (Texas Tribune,New York Times).Even if the show follows LOTR canon, Amazon represents things that Tolkien and his heroes fundamentally opposed: cruelty, violence, destruction, and the acquisition of power to dominate and control others.
When the show comes out, there will be articles about whether it follows canon; articles about how fans are reacting to it; articles making predictions about the plot. There will be controversy about this or that writing choice. Some people will be upset that it’s not diverse enough; racists will be upset that there’s any diversity at all. People will talk about what they liked about the show and what could have been done better. And Amazon wants this. Because these headlines—even if negative—will distract from everything else Amazon is doing.
Amazon wants to use the popularity of LOTR—the nostalgia of it, the comfort of it, the fact that so many people all over the world love Middle-earth—not just to make money, but to make you forget what Amazon is. Don’t we all want to let our imaginations take us back to Middle-earth, just for a little while, and forget about the real world’s problems? Amazon’s LOTR show will let you do that. And no doubt some people reading this are already thinking, “Why can’t you let people enjoy things?” Amazon is counting on you feeling that way. But real life is more important than fiction.
If you understand why the peoples of Middle-earth resisted Sauron, you should see that Amazon is the Sauron of our world: it enslaves, exploits, and dominates vulnerable people, it increases the power of the surveillance state, and it destroys nature, all with the goal of amassing even more power so it can destroy, control, and enslave. That may sound melodramatic, but Amazon invited the comparison by doing what it does. In fact, I find it absurd that Amazon has the rights to LOTR at all, when it is so obviously the villain of the story it is now adapting.
Amazon profits from genocide and slavery and the destruction of the environment, and I find it grotesque that this company now wants to profit off of Tolkien’s works, when he would have abhorred Amazon and everything that it stands for, and when the values at the heart of LOTR are diametrically opposed to everything Amazon does. I am furious that this company, with all the blood on its hands, is allowed to touch the works of my favorite author. And I am furious that Amazon is going to use LOTR as a shield from all the negative press it deserves for all of the issues that I listed above, and more.
It doesn’t matter if the LOTR show is “good” or “bad” because Amazon is evil. If you want to enjoy things, then reread the books or rewatch the movies. I will not give Amazon a single penny for their LOTR show and I hope you won’t either. I don’t know if boycotting it will make a difference—I just know that I hate Amazon and they don’t deserve the money or press they may get from LOTR. So we shouldn’t give it to them.
I posted this on July 27, shortly before Amazon released their promotional picture on August 2, and it’s been frustrating how the online conversation since then has been exactly what I predicted.
There have been breathless news headlines like “Finally, We Have a First Image From Amazon’s Lord of the Rings Series” and “Lord of the Rings fans react to ‘gorgeous’ first-look image of new Amazon TV adaptation”. There have been an annoying number of articles “explaining” what’s in the promotional image and what it means for the content of the show—and these articles always imply that LOTR fans are unanimously excited to watch it, and that fans will be even happier if Amazon delves into The Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales or parts of The History of Middle-earth.
Meanwhile, from what I have seen, fan conversations and posts about the show have mostly consisted of: 1) People saying how excited they are to watch it or posting memes about how excited they are to watch it. 2) People speculating about the plot and timeline, including what they want to see and don’t want to see. 3) People upset about Amazon’s decision to move filming from New Zealand to the UK.
I wish Tolkien fans wouldn’t buy into this. I’ve seen so many posts saying “I can’t wait to see [place]” or “I hope it will include [character]” or “I just want it to be good” and you know what? It honestly stuns me that any fan of Tolkien’s works would be happy or excited about this show. Where are your feelings of outrage? Amazon is responsible for a myriad of unforgivable things, and the fact that they want to create a TV show set in Middle-earth does not change that. The fact that Amazon has any rights to LOTR is an insult to Tolkien’s name. We should be calling for a boycott, not lapping up the next mediocre entertainment they try to sell us, not even “hoping” that it will be “good”.
And fans who are upset about filming being moved to the UK are also missing the point. Because within every expression of disappointment lies the assumption that if only Amazon were to continue filming in New Zealand, then everything would be fine.
All this hype about the LOTR TV show is a distraction. It’s good business for Amazon, even when they’re not directly making money, because it’s good press. Amazon has been under fire all year (not to mention last year) for preventing employees from unionizing, among other things. Amazon’s huge budget for the LOTR series—$1 billion dollars over five seasons—is only possible because of the degree to which they exploit their workers and avoid paying taxes. And that gigantic sum of money—as little a portion as it is, admittedly, of the entirety of the company’s wealth—looks even more grotesque when you remember the poverty in which many Amazon employees live.
Amazon would much rather you associate their name with something fun, like speculation over the plot of their TV show, than any of their crimes and abuses. So think about that next time you see the promotional image, or whatever Amazon releases next.
I also want to add that Amazon refused to pay medical bills for stuntpeople injured during the filming of this show, so even with regard to this production we already have labor rights violations and worker exploitation.
God, this puts everything I feel about this show into words. At this point I feel like Gale sitting alone in a field and refusing to watch the hunger games. Where is the outrage?
Continuation from these pages.Was looking over thems again, and hey, they’re not too bad. So thought I’d put them here since I have very little to show these days. I’m still drawing my new version of this, but it’s just sketches for now.
Drow city from sometime last summer. It’s also a page from my scrapped comic, but thought it worked well enough on its own. I had never drawn this detailed of a cityscape before so considering that, I’m quite happy with it.
A cross-section of a boat, with very many people laying down in a very cramped manner. It is implied to be a ship transporting slaves in the manner of material goods.
Transcription:
Let’s say it again.
Studying history will sometimes disturb you.
Studying history will sometimes upset you.
Studying history will sometimes make you furious.
If studying history always makes you feel proud and happy, you probably aren’t studying history.
Just learned a friend’s uncle was kidnapped and enslaved for 20 years and just recently has been reunited with his family. Anyone who tells you slavery is an old solved issue and that human trafficking targets only women are wrong.
Leaders who made an unannounced visit to a border Patrol Center in El-Paso found 950 immigrants smashed into a facility that only has a capacity for 125 people.
This is evil. Beyond evil. Completely monstrous! Heartbreaking.
THESE ARE PEOPLE!
This is uncomfortably reminiscent of depictions of how people were packed into slave ships
Imagine being a black, gay drag queen in the 1800s after being born into enslavement AND having the style and cachè to throw soirées that the girls had to come to! That’s why I don’t want to hear this “we’re not our ancestors stuff.” You’re right!
From The Very Black Project Page- William Dorsey Swann was a gay liberation activist. Born into slavery in 1858, he was the first person in the United States to lead a queer resistance group and the first known person to self-identify as a “queen of drag”. Imagine the queenery of this icon.
He was a slave in Hancock, Maryland and was freed by Union soldiers after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. During the 1880s and 1890s, he organized a series of balls in Washington, D.C. He called himself the “queen of drag”. Most of the attendees his gatherings were men who were former slaves, and were gathering to dance in their satin and silk dresses. William was arrested in police raids numerous times,including in the first documented case of arrests for female impersonation in the United States, on April 12, 1888. In 1896, he was falsely convicted and sentenced to 10 months in jail for “keeping a disorderly house” (running a brothel). After his sentencing, he requested a pardon from President Grover Cleveland. This request was denied, but but he was the first American on record who pursued legal and political action to defend the LGBTQ community’s right to gather.
He was known to have been close with Pierce Lafayette and Felix Hall, two men who had also both been slaves and who formed the first known male same-sex relationship between enslaved Americans.
When William stopped organizing and participating in drag events, his brother continued to make costumes for the drag community. Two of his brothers had also been active participants in his drag balls.
Imagine how intelligent and ambitious this man had to be to come up with drag balls in the 1800s! Imagine how many terrible concepts he had to unlearn by himself to be a confident gay black man who does drag in the 1800s! Imagine how courageous he had to be to fight for lgbt people as a former slave in America in the 1800s!
William Dorsey Swann is the original queen, the original drag mother, the original activist. Tell his story!
Val’s eyelids felt heavy. They couldn’t seem to move… their thoughts were moving at a snails pace. Val opened their eyes to a blurry world.
“Val?”
The voice sounded distant. It took Val several minutes to realize they were looking up at a face. They tried to speak, but their words came out in an unintelligible slur.
“Shhh… you’re alright.”
Val leaned into a gentle touch on their cheek. They didn’t try to speak again, but fell back asleep.
—
“They still sleeping?” Seven leaned in the doorway, looking in at Atlas and Val.
“Yeah… I’m… I’m actually starting to worry. The doctor said they’d only be out for about two hours. It’s almost been three.” Atlas stood from their chair.
“Don’t worry too much yet. I’m sure they’ll wake up soon.” Seven came into the room, looking down into Val’s face. “They’re pretty for a shifter.”
“And you’re pretty for a mutt.”
“Hey! That’s derogatory.”
“So is shifter.” Atlas shrugged. “If you want to be called a werewolf then you’d best call them a shapeshifter. Or, even better, Val.”
“That their name?”
Atlas nodded, sitting back down. “Y'know, when we got to the doctor, they lost it. No reason either.”
“Stress?”
Atlas shrugged again. “I really don’t know. I suppose I just hope they’ll get better with time and some serious therapy…”
“Well… they can’t be any worse off than I was.”
“You don’t know… You didn’t see…” Atlas trailed off. “… Knox— their… the person I bought them from… I don’t know all the things they did to Val or made them do, but it wasn’t good…”
“Human?”
Atlas gave a vague nod.
“Humans fucking suck— except you, of course.”
“Don’t make snap judgements, Seven. There are good humans. There are bad werewolves.”
“Whatever you say, boss.” Seven turned to walk out.
“Hey.”
Seven stopped.
“I mean it. Just because you’ve had bad experiences doesn’t mean all humans are like that. Don’t give up on us that easily.”
Val kept their eyes focused on the ground. “W-what do you want me to b-be for you? Kn-Knox liked elves— I could be an e-elf—”
Atlas calculated their next words carefully. “Well… for right now, I want you to stay in your original form until you’ve healed… after that, I suppose you can be whatever and whoever you like.”
Anger wouldn’t help anyone right now. Val was already scared. Besides, Atlas wasn’t angry at Val. They were angry at Knox. They made every attempt to smother their temper.
Val didn’t have anything to say for the rest of the ride and Atlas didn’t push them.
—
“Where… where are we..?” Val peered cautiously out the window. This wasn’t the house they remembered.
“We’re at the doctor’s house. I just need to make sure you’re okay to go home.”
Val barely heard the last sentence. “Wh… what..?”
Atlas repeated themself, but Val heard even less this time.
“Pl-please— please don't—” Val screamed as they felt someone touch their shoulder. Their mind was already far gone from their body. They screamed and struggled as the person held onto them tighter. They didn’t want this. They didn’t want to live their life drugged. They wanted to go back to Knox.
—
“Hey, hey, calm down—” Atlas was afraid to let go of Val. The way they were thrashing and screaming— Atlas was scared they would hurt themself.
Atlas managed to wrestle Val out of the car and all but dragged them in to the doctor’s house.
Once inside, the doctor helped Atlas get Val over to the examination table.
“I’m going to sedate them. You need to hold them down.” The doctor worked quickly and soon Val was asleep.
“What happened?” The doctor asked, taking a half step back.
“I don’t know. They’re here legally this time, though. They’re my responsibility now.” Atlas looked down at Val with concern. “They just… When we got here, they freaked out. I don’t know what triggered it.”
The doctor ran a hand through their hair, stressed. “Well… I’m assuming this was supposed to be a follow up for last time? I can do that and they can go home with you. I’m not exactly a psychiatrist, but I would recommend they see one. We should move quickly. The sedative I gave them will only last for a couple hours based on their weight.”
Whumpee hadn’t been punished as severely as they had anticipated for their disappearance. They had been punished for accepting help from Caretaker, however. They didn’t even try to explain that they couldn’t have fought back if they tried— Whumper wouldn’t care.
Whumper had carefully and meticulously reopened every one of Whumpee’s wounds. Whumpee didn’t cry. They didn’t dare. “You don’t fucking deserve to see a doctor. Why did they take you there?”
“I-I don’t kn-know, Master—” Whumpee struggled to get the words out without screaming as Whumper pulled the knife across Whumpee’s arm.
“Me neither. Unless they just wanted to scareyou.”
Whumpee’s mind flashed back to when Caretaker had insisted they see a doctor. Even though Whumpee had pleaded not to go, Caretaker had forced them. Maybe it was to scare them. Their nightmares had started while they were with the doctor.
Whumper stopped cutting them, waiting for a definitive answer.
“I-I don’t re-remember… I didn’t… I was un-unconscious after seeing the… the doctor…”
“You were unconscious the whole time after they took you to the doctor..?”
Whumpee nodded weakly.
Whumper didn’t say anything else. They didn’t need to. Whumpee’s mind was already reeling.
They had thought Caretaker was nice. What if they had drugged them..? What had happened while they were sleeping?
When Caretaker had showed up again two days later, Whumpee had felt a worse fear than they had in years. They were used to people taking advantage of them, but… somehow, they felt betrayed.
Whumper went into the side room with Caretaker and Whumpee stood shaking, waiting for them to come back.
“What’s the matter, kitten?” One of the orcs laughed at Whumpee, making them flinch.
“No-nothing…”
“It’s something.” Insisted another orc.
“No— no it’s nothing.”
“Is it because you’re being sold, kitten?”
“W… what?”
“They don’t know yet, idiot. Didn’t you hear boss say?”
“Oh yeah. Oh well.” The first orc shrugged and sat at the table.
Whumpee felt like they were going to be sick. “T-to… to Caretaker..?”
“Who else, kitten?”
And that was it. Whumper hated them. They didn’t want them anymore. Had they not been good enough? Did they do something wrong?
This thought was confirmed when Whumper told them they didn’t care about them anymore once Caretaker came out to take them away. Whumpee was nearly paralyzed with fear, but they had to obey. They had to be good— maybe Caretaker would… no. Caretaker didn’t care about them at all. They just wanted to use them like everyone else.
I am well aware that no one can carry 20 million dollars around with them. The money system is different in this world. Although I am American, this is not meant to be 20 million in US bills
CW: Self neglect, slavery, implied sex trafficking/prostitution
When Caretaker came back, the same orcs— at least they though they were the same— took them into the building. The same human as before sat at the card table. A smaller human sat on their knee. Caretaker didn’t think they had seen them before, but quickly realized it must be Whumpee.
Whumpee’s gaze flickered over to Caretaker’s face. Fear and confusion danced behind their eyes.
The orcs and the human finished playing through the deal while Caretaker waited patiently. At last, the human set Whumpee aside and got up, leading Caretaker back to the same side room.
“I drew up the contract.” The human passed the papers to Caretaker, who read over them carefully.
Caretaker’s eyes darkened as they read. “This is double the amount we agreed on.”
The human— Whumper, as the contract stated— shrugged. “Must’ve slipped my mind. It’s drawn up now though.”
Caretaker took a steadying breath, so as to not knock off Whumper’s head. “Fine. Unfortunately, I anticipated something like this. I still have the money to pay you right now.” With a flourish, Caretaker signed the contract. “I want a copy made up for me.”
Whumper’s expression was dumbfounded.
“Now.” Caretaker insisted.
Quickly, Whumper rushed out of the room with the contract, returning a moment later with a duplicate.
Caretaker checked to make sure it was the same, then paid Whumper and went back to the main room.
“Whumpee?”
“Y-yes..?” Whumpee squeaked.
“Show me it’s really you.”
Whumpee looked to Whumper, who stood in the doorway to the side room.
“Well, don’t look at me. They’ve purchased you. I don’t give a shit what you do anymore.” Whumper waved the words away as if they meant nothing.
Reluctantly, Whumpee shifted to their true form. Wounds and all. Except they seemed worse than two days ago.
Caretaker bit back their anger. “Come along. We’re leaving.”
“Y-you really… boughtme..?”
“Yes. Come with me.” Caretaker’s tone softened a little, but not too much. They weren’t too fond of the idea of Whumper hearing them show Whumpee kindness.
Obediently, Whumpee came to Caretaker’s side, although they stared at Whumper the whole time.
“Stop looking at me.” Whumper snapped, sitting back down to play cards.
Caretaker led Whumpee out to the streets again.
“You r-really bought me..? Like, for l-longer than just one… o-one day?”
Caretaker could slow down now that they were away from Whumper. In Whumpee’s eyes they saw some confusion, but mostly raw terror. “Yes, I did. Forever. You’ll not go back to them again, alright?” Their voice was soft now as they tried to comfort Whumpee. “Are you strong enough to keep walking..? Is it okay if I carry you?”
“I-I can walk—” Whumpee stuttered quickly, their voice shaking. “I-I can do a-anything you want— I pr-promise I’ll try to be g-good.”
Caretaker tried to keep their emotions in check. They were angry, but they couldn’t show it. Whumpee would assume it was directed at them. It wasn’t.
They simply nodded and led Whumpee down the streets. They let Whumpee set the pace, not waking faster than Whumpee did, but still guiding them down the right streets.
Whumpee’s pace slowly deteriorated until they were hardly moving and Whumpee was out of breath.
“I’d like to carry you now if that’s okay.” Caretaker said, making Whumpee stop.
“I-I can keep going— I can—”
“Unless you wantmenot carry you, I’m going to pick you up.”
“I-I… O… Okay.”
Caretaker gently swept Whumpee into their arms and carried them the remainder of the way to the car.
She was born to a rich plantation family in the American South during the time of slavery. She owned a slave, Hetty, a girl her parents gave her when she was a child. She was absolutely the sort of person whose racism you could justify as being ‘of her time’ and ‘just the way she was raised’.
And she cited the injustices she saw growing up on the plantation as the motivation for her becoming an abolitionist as an adult.
When she was a kid, she tried to give bible lessons to the slaves on her Dad’s plantation, and taught her own slave to read and write. As an adult, she and her sister campaigned for the end of slavery. When she found out that one of her brothers had raped one of his own slaves and gotten her pregnant three times, she welcomed her nephews into the family and paid for education for the two that wanted it.
This was a woman who was raised in a culture of slavery, looked around her as a child and said “hey, wait a minute, we’re all assholes!” and spent the rest of her life trying to put things right.
It absolutely was a choice.
This is something I’ve been forced to learn in the past two years. The world around me is turning into something I was raised to believe could only happen in history books, or maybe in other parts of the world that sort of belonged in history books.
The more I see this happening–and the more I learn about the past and how hard people did fight to stop Hitler from initially rising to power, or to point out the humanity of slaves–the more apparent it becomes that we have always had these choices, and they’ve always been the same.
And we’re always going to have genuinely appealing opportunities to make the worst possible choices again, no matter how much more modern the world appears.
George Washington owned slaves right? Most of the founding fathers did, and in grade school, to smooth over that abuse of humanity by an American hero, we as children were told “Yes, George Washington did own slaves but he freed them when he died.” And you infer that he didn’t like slavery but it was an economic necessity.
And then you’re in your mid twenties watching a food show on Netflix and you learn that because Pennsylvania was a Quaker colony, they led the nation in emancipation and if an enslaved person was in Philadelphia for more than six months, they automatically became freed. And the young nation’s early capital was in Philadelphia, where Washington brought his household of enslaved people with him. And he took them back to Virginia every five months for a time so as to start that clock over and keep them enslaved.
There’s a trend with historians to want so badly to maintain the prestige of George Washington and an exceptional and morally pristine figure. And true, there are many instances in his writing where he sounds like his opinion on slavery as an institution is turning and that he knew slavery was wrong. But his actions. He literally had to do absolutely nothing to free his household staff, and took great pains to keep them enslaved.
It’s important to remember that too. That there were people in positions of enormous power, who know what they’re doing is wrong, and choose to do it anyway.
Do not let anyone tell you his teeth were made of wood.
there are documented cases–journals and diaries–of women who would marry into slave-owning households. and they would start out wanting to treat their slaves well, educate them, free them if they could. they kept diaries, records, logs, account books. and over the years their opinion of the people they owned would change. they’d start to say that slaves deserved their enslavement and nothing could be done. they couldn’t be educated, healed, freed. sometimes the women who married in would end up incredibly cruel and vengeful, raving about how much punishment these slaves forcedtheir masters to dole out. these women who started out uncomfortable with slavery but just willing enough to marry a slave owner and live on the proceeds of slavery would end up zealously denying any possibility that their slaves could be human beings, just to be able to live with their own complicity in the system. to be able to hang on to the idea that they were a good person, that nothing could be done, that no one could change any of it.
sometimes you make bad choices. and you cant stand the idea that this could make you a bad person. so you decidethat the people you’ve hurt are the bad ones. and you can’t find a way back so you just keep making more and more bad choices, picking up speed, gaining this horrible kind of momentum, because to ever stop would crush you flat.
but it doesn’t change the fact that slave owners were wrong. they did wrong. and they had to spend their whole lives deciding, over and over again, not to do what was right.
just to be able to live with their own complicity in the system. to be able to hang on to the idea that they were a good person, that nothing could be done, that no one could change any of it.
Fucking this. Everyone needs to read this as the key to understanding the mindset of people in positions of power who have, over time, deliberately starved their own sense of empathy, because the only alternative was not being able to live with themselves and actuallydoing something about it.
Similar to the slave-owner example; You’ve heard that statistic about how rich people have a lower sense of empathy. They didn’t start out this way. But when you’re in a position of unjustified power over others, you either give that power away (and thus no longer fit into the statistic) or convince yourself that you actually deserve that power, or the ones that suffer from your power deserve to suffer. This is exactly how those statistics are formed.
see my past glimpses at the capri fandom made me think that that iconique TM line “a kingdom or this” would be in some sappy romantic scene where laurent and damen finally realized that they loved each other on equal footing for the first time, blah blah, violin music golden light and shit but. they are literally just fucking. that man said
my kingdom
my people
my duty
my freedom
the chance to ask my beloved brother why he sold me into slavery when ive never done anything to hurt him
vs.
mean blond twink who tortured me but is bottoming for me rn
Brown Girl After the Bath by Archibald John Motley, 1931.
Motley was the first African-American artist to earn a Guggenheim Fellowship for his artistic prowess and the first to be given his own show at a New York gallery. Despite this pioneering, his personal attitudes toward race were inconsistent and often troubling.
In an interview for the Archives of American Art recorded in the late 1970s, he recalls his grandmother’s experiences as a slave:
She said they treated her just lovely. She got nice clothes, nice shoes. They made them take good care of themselves. They made them bathe. They had good food to eat; they had the same kind of food as the master and the family had. So she said it wasn’t difficult at all. She said she liked it. She loved her master and mistress.
How does Motley miss the paternalism and infantilization at the core of that recollection? In one of his paintings, in gratitude to his grandmother’s owners, Motley actually added an image of the mistress as a tribute.
Motley does acknowledge that not everyone had the same experiences of slavery, but overall he seems to downplay the impact of racism on African-Americans, even hinting that inequality is partly self-inflicted. His rationalizations are difficult to hear, especially from someone whose breaking of barriers helped make the Harlem Renaissance possible.
His art, however, leans toward the progressive, with Motley demonstrating a moral obligation to uplift African-Americans through positive representations. Often he was preoccupied with skin tone, bringing to the forefront values of diversity and self-determination. In part, this was to subvert stereotypes. He wanted white audiences to appreciate the individuation within ethnic minority communities. Of the people in his paintings, he said:
They are not all the same color. They’re not all black. They’re not all, as they used to say years ago, high yellow. They’re not all brown. I try to give each one of them character as individuals…
Two of his most famous works, Octoroon Girl and the Mulatress, embed this message of diversity within their titles–though Motley’s terminology sounds like fingernails scraping a chalkboard from a 21st century listening post.
The description of the bather in the selected painting as “brown” is easier on the ears. Motley is very respectful of his nude figure. There’s an open curtain, an invitation to look, which mitigates the sense of voyeurism. Her confidence makes her more subject than object, and she is staring back at us, affirming her humanity, asserting her beauty as a person–which Motley, through his attention to detail, shows is enhanced, not mitigated, by the brown hue of her skin.
Working on a Poe x Fem!Reader smut fic where you’re both spice runners (I know it’s a controversial topic in the fandom, like- so much so that I don’t think I’ll use my regular tag-list) but this is a gift for a friend and I’m really fucking stoked on it: here’s the first 500 words, It’s going to come out on the 17th lmk if you want to be tagged.
~~~~~
Spice. Not ryll, not polstine, and certainly not fucking gliterstim. Sansana Spice to be more accurate. Highly prized, highly expensive, and highly illegal. A useful crime world currency. Crime. Ha! The word has no meaning in a galaxy where planets are being vaporized and the war doesn’t seem to have a single thing worth fighting for. The so called Republic, who would gladly toss you in a cell for the rest of your life for finding a dusting of Sansana on your flight suit, doesn’t do shit about the slavery and sentient beings abuse that’s been taking place on Kessel for the past 500 standard years. Wonder why that could be. Couldn’t be because the planet-vaporizers and generals of the planet defenders alike are hooked on the stuff. Not hooked, like, medically. Well, sometimes that’s the case. But they’re hooked on the money. Every currency has gotta be backed by something, and credit where credits are due… you can find the Fort Knox of the galaxy on the northern hemisphere of Kessel; with the droids and the slaves with their vibropicks and short life expectancies.
You’ve seen them. The slaves. Droids and mammalians nearly indistinguishable from one another- cloaked in the red dust of the deep mines. Children. Of every species. Probably born into the shit. You can’t care, you can’t afford to, so you turn a blind eye like everyone else in the galaxy, you get your shipment and get the hell out. You fucking hate Kessel and you’re glad to be on the ship leaving the ugly bubbling rock. You’ve heard the southern hemisphere is nicer. Plantations inhabited by the most intolerable people you could imagine. It does turn your stomach to think about it too much, hence the getting the fuck out of dodge, but even if you stopped, even if you quit, it wouldn’t matter. The boring and drilling won’t end on your account and there’d be a new runner to replace you. So it goes. It’s the lifeblood of the galaxy, Sansana. A tidal force. And some folks want to virtue signal and talk down to you just because you’re riding the wave instead of getting dashed on the rocks. Whatever. They can drown if they like, not your problem.
In short, it doesn’t matter what you do. Bakers, gunmen, artists, and thieves. If you’ve got credits in your pocket- then baby you’ve got blood on your hands. So what? You’ve cut out the middle-man. You’re closer to the root, to the seam; you’re a spicerunner. Hell, spending most of your life in a tanker ship dodging the Reps is probably a helluva lot safer than building a life on a planet somewhere, waiting for the day Kylo fucking Ren has another tantrum and decides he wants to blow up your home-world because his daddy left him or whatever the hell that little fucker’s problem is.
add me to the fucking taglist now!! GIRLIE IM SO EXITED NOW!!!!
