So he said it can't be a Black. So I said, "For God's sakes, Judge Murphy, that's the whole point of the Goddamn story!" So he said, "No, it can't be a Black". Bill just called him up and raised the roof, and finally they said, "Well, you gotta take the perspiration off". I had the stars glistening in the perspiration on his Black skin. Bill said, "Fuck you", and he hung up.
Just to add context for those not aware of the impact of this story.
The reason it was so important for narrative purposes, was that the plot concerns the visit of the Astronaut, in his completely opaque spacesuit, to a planet populated entirely by self-aware robots (originally from Earth) who have built their own society and are petitioning to be allowed to interact with Earth again as equals.
They have a democratic government and free choice of careers etc. as the orange robot serving as guide tells the Astronaut.
The Astronaut notices that there are two different types of robot on this world; the orange ones, who are in charge, gifted access to all information and facilities. and the blue robots, who are seen as more limited in function, have less access to information and resources, and are not allowed positions of power or as wide a choice of employment opportunities. Even transportation is segregated.
The Astronaut investigates further and discovers that the blue and orange robots are actually structurally identical, there is absolutely no difference between their potential or capabilities, and it is only because the orange robots are instructed by their Educator system to consider themselves superior, that the difference exists.
The Astronaut tells the robots they are not ready for re-alignment with Earth, until they come to terms with their own unfairness, and how Earth had had to deal with this issue themselves. When that time comes, the robots will be able to ally with Earth.
Then he leaves in his spaceship, and it's only in that one final panel that we see the Astronaut is black.
Not subtle, nor should it be, but for 1950 this was a breathtakingly powerful statement, perhaps the first of it's kind in the genre.
The black character was not a caricature, or comedy relief, he was a main character in his own right, a human who "simply" was black.
When I was a professor I fucking LOVED teaching this comic. You can read the full thing here (and please read the letters to the editor at the bottom as well—including a message from Ray Bradbury).
I drew this for contest, and today was results published: poor dog won nothing. But somehow this is one of my most popular posts on tumblr? Eh. So. Thank you.
Most of it was yapped away through the asks already, but I decided that it's still worth to organise this stuff in a coherent manner. This text also doesn't really touch on the character's arcs and their relationships with each other. This is more about the wider setting.
SHORT VERSION:
Tginf is a horror roadtrip game I'm planning to make. Embark on a terribly convoluted forest car ride with different local creatures hitchhiking your car.
EXTENDED VERSION:
The main character: You (are going to) play as the Nameless, a 20+ year old without a name, a concrete gender or any understanding of who to become to avoid getting crushed by a closing in adult life.
The forest:
The forest they got unlucky to travel through is a strict eco system. Everything not useful to it gets digested by it. Literally slowly disintegrated to at least feed the soil. At least this process takes some time.
The feudals:
Luckily, the forest road is ruled by three higher beings that can save unlucky travelers by giving each of them a useful (in their opinion) role to play.
The names of the feudals are:
the Oxygen, the King of the road, the Mine.
You can easily envision their domains if you split the forest space in three layers. Everything above it, everything that is on the ground, and everything below it. Every forest entity that the Nameless encounter serves one of them.
Because their territories are literally stacked on top of each other, the three don't get along particularly well and have been in a territorial conflict for centuries. For feudals, acquiring new followers through picking up the lost and stranded is another way of getting new resources in it.
The specifics of each feudal and their individual followers:
The Oxygen:
The Oxygen is physically invincible and, because of that, she never had to rely on anyone in her existence. This had a big effect on her personality. Unlike the King of the Road and the Mine, she doesn't really NEED to pick up lost and stranded to make new followers. She can create servants out of thin air, like she did with the Dummy*. She picks up travelers for her own amusement, since entertainment plays a big factor in a lot of her actions, and because the King and the Mine are invested in collecting them.
Her followers are:
The Dummy,
the Diver,
the Time Seller.
* The Dummy was created as a jab at the King of the Road's second hand - the Knight.
* The Diver is there as a statement of ineffectiveness on the King's ruling manner. He does the same type of job his followers do, but unlike them, his mind was in no way altered or modified*
* The Time seller, despite previously being human, was made into a tiger, because the Oxygen wanted to see what would happen if she fully dehumanises somebody. She likes experimenting like that.
The King of the Road:
The King of the road is very physically fragile. He needs protection, and, despite his rather gentle demeanor, time made him paranoid and fixated on the idea of control. He collects the followers to avoid any new and unpredictable variables appearing in the forest.
Through trial and error, he came to a conclusion that love is the greatest source of loyalty and motivation, so he tampers with his followers' brains to make sure they love both him and the work he gives them.
His followers are :
the Tenant,
the Radio host,
(Sorry, don't have a proper picture of her yet, since her main way of communication is...well...radio, and because I ran into Tumblr's picture per post limit, I decided to cut what I had of her imagery away)
the Knight.
*The Forest is full of eldritch, sentient and, most importantly, hungry places, such as the House, the Radio Tower and the Grand Lake. The King aims to station his followers in them, so they also stay in his area of control. The Tenant and the Radio host view their designated places as if they are their marriage partners. They love them, they provide for them.
*The King also prefers to take his time before taking a new follower in. After all, the more he waits, the more the traveler gets digested by the forest, allowing the King to rebuild his new follower to his liking. Sadly, the opportunity to wait long enough rarely presents itself because of the Oxygen and the Mine interfering all the time, thus, the only follower he got to fully reconstruct from the state of blank meat was the Knight. This made him the most predictable and by extension the most trustworthy being in the forest to him.
The Mine:
About a year ago I watched a documentary about mine workers. A part of it was dedicated to the fact, that, in case of that particular mine, people should have been working inside of it 24/7, otherwise the tunnels were guaranteed to slowly become toxic. What caught my attention was the way they spoke about it. They said something along the lines of "otherwise she would start to suffocate". And that unexpected personification never left my mind ever since.
SO, the Mine in tginf sufferers from a constant lack of oxygen, and starts to gradually suffocate if there's is no one performing the maintenance work inside of her. The problem is - she is toxic, thus none of her followers live particularly long inside of her. Which places her in a constant struggle to get herself the new ones. She lets some of her followers out on the road only for one purpose - to promote the service to her to the new travelers. Followers like that are all called Pr agents. Out of the three feudals, the Mine is the most reliant on others to survive.
Her followers are, you won't believe it:
Pr Agent 117
Pr agent 121,
Pr agent 124/178 (the number changes depending on the story route)
*None of them lived long enough to meet the other.
I also made a voice claim post some time ago, you can check it out to feel the characters too
💬 2 🔁 49 ❤️ 413 · Collected all voice hcs I have for my bastard ocs
And Incomplete Character relationship chart :]
💬 0 🔁 37 ❤️ 408 · Tried to make a basic relationship chart for my characters. Wasn't able to put everything in but still
titsay
kaledo-art
vaporwave
annaxmalina
andulkaphoto
germansingergirl
theartofmadeline
