What Color Are The Astronomers And Does It Really Matter? (Yes it does)
I've seen a lot of amazing fanart from some talented artists in the fandom, but like all fandoms, Look Outside is not free from colorism and racism when it comes to skin color choices in fanart.
In the world of Look Outside there are dozens of people that inhabit the apartment complex that the game takes place in. Most people the player as "Sam" encounters are "cursed", meaning they have undergone drastic biological changes after witnessing the Visitor, or interacting with various other things/people that previously changed. Often, this results to their skin color being indistinguishable as their bodies become something entirely different.
There are also unchanged humans with a variety of skin colors, most that reflect our world, and some that don't.
Brown, pale/"white", gray, and blue are skin colors that show up in Look Outside.
Note: we do not know any of these characters specific ethnicities at this time, v 2.1, only their skin color, which is still important. Even those that have pale skin in the game may not be white, but a POC. Obviously, blue and gray are not naturally occurring skin colors in our real world, but are also still important for fandom participation for reasons that will be explained below.
Sam is one of the primary examples of many artists deciding to color him as paler than what he is. This practice is called whitewashing, it is racist, and it is a behavior that is common across all fandoms and entertainment industries. It occurs even when the source material makes it VERY obvious what ethnicity and color a character is.
We know with 100% certainty that Sam from Look Outside is brown.
A collection of adorable images of Sam as shown in achievement art, game play sprite art, and in the Devolver Digital Spring Sale Promotional Video. He is clearly brown.
While it should be obvious that the protagonist of Look Outside is not white, he is still frequently whitewashed at an alarming rate in fanworks. Some artists when confronted with this have defended their color decisions by claiming that "the game art and coloring is inconsistent or confusing". While they might not think they are racist themselves, and they genuinely likely are not white supremacists, this is still participating in racism, and it is violence.
It is also obvious that Sam isn't white so the argument is null.
Sam is not the only character to have this happen to in fanworks in regular intervals, in fact there is another (group) of people from the Look Outside game that are frequently drawn as white with Euro-centric features, perhaps even more than Sam is.
Aster, Jasper, Beryl and Aurelius in their hooded robes, you can only see their eyes, and their faces are in shadows.
For these characters, it can be difficult to parse out what color their skin is supposed to be because they are all hooded in dark robes. You cannot see their faces at all, they are largely featureless, so it leaves a lot of artistic interpretation available for artists for what their faces look like.
Due to the ambiguity of their design at first-glance, it may lead someone to believe that we don't know what color their skins are supposed to be, so any artistic rendering is assumed to be valid, and it would be, but we do actually know what their skin colors are!
And like with Sam, they are not white.
Some of you might have read that and questioned it immediately, but it is a fact, and one that can easily be shown.
The easiest way to parse out these characters' skin colors is to look at their uncovered hands.
Aster, Jasper & Aurelius in full robes showing their uncovered blue hands.
Beryl is the one that had a remake from her first appearance, where as of version 2.0 her hands are covered, but her original design clearly shows her with blue hands.
Beryl version 2.0 vs her original design.
We can also see their hands clearly in the Ritual scene at the end of the game.
Jasper, Aster, Aurelius and Beryl performing the ritual, Aster, Aurelius and Beryl each are shown with obviously blue hands in dim lighting.
In a world where pale skin does exist alongside brown, gray and blue, the astronomers are not merely characters that are dubiously colored and open for interpretation. They are clearly blue. Not white.
So, how is it an issue to color and depict fictional characters that are blue as white when blue people do not exist naturally in our own world? There are no blue populations that are marginalized on Earth, so how can this be a problem?
Because it still favoring whiteness, and it feeds into white supremacy where being white is seen as the default race in absence of one that exists in a fantasy world.
These are non-white characters that are not allowed space to be non-white in fanworks in their own world.
Whitewashing is a very specific practice when a person of color is given white-features or white-traits over their own, like coloring Sam as white - making a fantasy colored character white is debated if it is whitewashing, because again, we do not have blue populations that are marginalized that this can hurt. But it still can be a sign of white supremacy and white favoritism, which can make those who are marginalized not feel welcomed as a person of color when the favored race is always going to be white. For some people this will absolutely be whitewashing, and others it won't be for the above reason.
Xaria flipping someone off, and Jeanne who is in process of changing, both obviously blue.
We also cannot ignore how other characters that are obviously blue like Jeanne and Xaria (above) are never, ever, depicted as white in fanworks. However the astronomers, who are mostly covered up, are assigned white as a default, when they are not.
It somehow has become a fandom default to depict the astronomers as white, when they are blue, likely because their blue hands were not noticed while other obviously blue characters are left in their canon state.
So what does this all mean?
The purpose of this post is NOT to call out any single artist OR to encourage bullying of any kind, but to bring attention to a common problem within the Look Outside fandom and explain why it is a problem.
This is educational, and admittedly, a bit of a vent post on my part.
Coloring Sam as white when he is brown is whitewashing, which is a racist practice that hurts people of color.
Coloring the four astronomers as white when they are blue is a sign of white favoritism and its behavior assists white supremacy. There is no reason to color them as white, at all. At the very least, it is incredibly foolish, and one might want to ask WHY they are making all four white in the first place.
The Look Outside fandom is small and niche and is a fantastic experience to be a part of, most people are exceedingly kind, knowledgeable, freaky, and are all ready to stand up to racism. I do not believe there are many that are purposefully intending to cause harm with their color choices. Most people are genuinely not racist, but that does not mean they cannot participate in racism. I genuinely feel most people who are coloring the astronomers as white literally don't realize that they are blue because they never noticed their hands.
TLDR: stop coloring Sam and the astronomers as white, or the dream gnomes will take your teeth.
Current game version as of writing this post: 2.1
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