Don’t really have detailed thoughts about the final two Hololive Justice debuts (Raora and Cecilia), but this is the first time I’ve been blindsided by hearing a VTuber I recognized from a previous life! I know internet detectives will often figure out stuff before they debut (I don’t really follow those rumors), and the ex-corpos are usually known well in advance when they return to indie, but I was surprised to hear the voice of a certain pesto-loving dog during Raora’s debut. Always nice to see some non-Anglo representation!

Looks like Hololive EN finally has a Bri’ish chuuba! She’s got a lovely voice, although she didn’t do herself any favors by picking a song (Daddy Daddy Do) that’s clearly not well-suited for her tessitura so she had to resort to both shouty high notes and unsupported low notes–the song she sang in her lore video showcased her voice much better (was really excited to hear some scatting!) as did Sekai no Yakusoku. I also can’t quite place it, not having a lot of formal vocal training myself, but I think she’s forcing things a bit in general–you hear it particularly in her vibrato, and I wonder if she’s doing that thing where you imitate a voice you like rather than using your natural voice (common untrained singer error which leads to a superficially better sound in the short run but can hamstring you in the long run). She’s clearly got a great instrument though, so I look forward to hearing her forthcoming music and seeing how she improves! Hope Nerissa will take Liz under her wing.

Ngl was kinda zoning out midway through Gigi’s debut (I’m just a bit tired), but her lore video was sick and I loved the choose your own adventure part which culminated in a Twitch Plays Pokemon style interactive Frogger game–never seen anything like that in a debut! Her cover also had some really impressive animation–again, nice to see something different from the usual VTuber cover video direction.

The instances where poor whites helped slaves were not frequent, but sufficient to show the need for setting one group against the other. Genovese says:

The slaveholders . . . suspected that non-slaveholders would encourage slave disobedience and even rebellion, not so much out of sympathy for the blacks as out of hatred for the rich planters and resentment of their own poverty. White men sometimes were linked to slave insurrectionary plots, and each such incident rekindled fears.

This helps explain the stern police measures against whites who fraternized with blacks. Herbert Aptheker quotes a report to the governor of Virginia on a slave conspiracy in 1802: “I have just received information that three white persons are concerned in the plot; and they have arms and ammunition concealed under their houses, and were to give aid when the negroes should begin.” One of the conspiring slaves said that it was “the common run of poor white people” who were involved.

In return, blacks helped whites in need. One black runaway told of a slave woman who had received fifty lashes of the whip for giving food to a white neighbor who was poor and sick.

When the Brunswick canal was built in Georgia, the black slaves and white Irish workers were segregated, the excuse being that they would do violence against one another. That may well have been true, but Fanny Kemble, the famous actress and wife of a planter, wrote in her journal:

But the Irish are not only quarrelers, and rioters, and fighters, and drinkers, and despisers of [N-words]—they are a passionate, impulsive, warm-hearted, generous people, much given to powerful indignations, which break out suddenly when not compelled to smoulder sullenly—pestilent sympathizers too, and with a sufficient dose of American atmospheric air in their lungs, properly mixed with a right proportion of ardent spirits, there is no saying but what they might actually take to sympathy with the slaves, and I leave you to judge of the possible consequences. You perceive, I am sure, that they can by no means be allowed to work together on the Brunswick Canal.

The need for slave control led to an ingenious device, paying poor whites—themselves so troublesome for two hundred years of southern history—to be overseers of black labor and therefore buffers for black hatred.