Man alive, Quid wrote an incredible synopsis of Harriet Tubman in D&D
It's a proven fact that you can't take one credit hour of American History anywhere in the United States without at least hearing your boring teacher drone on about something remotely connected to the Underground Railroad, yet still to this day many people don't realize how insanely balls-out this over-the-top 19th century liberation movement actually was. A clandestine network of super-secret safehouses and crazy Jack Bauer-type CTU "WHERE IS THE BOMB?!"-type shit, the Underground is well known for having transported thousands of African slaves to freedom, but the commonly-utilized, and decidedly-unbadass term "Railroad" really makes the whole thing sound a hell of a lot less dangerous and life-threatening than it actually was. We're not talking about the fucking Chunnel here, folks - this was dangerous-as-hell work deep behind enemy lines, where the slightest misstep could result in the destruction of the entire Railroad system and capture meant a lifetime of savage beatings and humiliating, backbreaking servitude. This wasn't an enterprise taken up by spineless douchebags, a fact that was never more well-illustrated than by the face-meltingly unbelievable story of Harriet Tubman.
Born into slavery on a Maryland plantation, Harriet spent her first twenty-five years living under the watchful gaze of a number of different jackass overseers and housemistresses. While this five-foot tall woman may not have been the most physically imposing specimen this side of the She-Hulk exploding with 'roid rage, hard work made her tough as hell – she toned her body and her muscles working grueling manual labor twelve hours a day, seven days a week. Out in the unforgiving Maryland sun, she beat the hell out of trees with an axe, hacked up firewood, plowed an endless assortment fields, and drove unwieldy ox-carts. Before long, her physical strength matched her unshakable willpower.
Despite facing a lifetime of cruel bondage, Harriet Tubman never took fucking shit from anybody ever. Her stubbornness and refusal to back down generally resulted in her suffering endless beatings and physical abuse, including one time when she was smashed in the head with a lead weight for defending a fellow slave (a wound that left her suffering dizzy spells and light-headedness for the rest of her life), but she simply refused to have her spirit broken by a bunch of jackass rednecks on a power trip. Finally, one cloudy night in 1849, Harriet Tubman had enough of it. She made a break for freedom. Fleeing into the darkness, Tubman traveled for several days through the unfamiliar Maryland wilderness, and didn't look back until she reached the friendly, we-promise-we-won't-enslave-you confines of Philadelphia.
As awesome as it was to no longer live in slavery, there was still one problem – Harriet left behind her mother, father, and nine siblings. While most people would have just shrugged and said, "fuck it dudes, you're on your own," Harriet Tubman did the unbelievable – she fucking went BACK to the plantation, tracked down her family, and led THEM to freedom. That's just how she rolled, bitches.
Once Harried saw that she was capable of leading a large band of fugitive slaves safely to freedom (seriously, ten kids! Her family was almost as prolific as those crazy nutjobs in Utah who named all their kids with the letter J!) Harriet decided that she couldn't enjoy her freedom while her people remained in bondage. Using the code name "Moses", she returned to Maryland TWENTY more times, each time delivering her people from the chains of slavery to the promised land (which in this case was Niagara Falls, Canada, a 350-mile walk from the Maryland border) where they didn't have to worry about shit like getting whipped for insubordination or not having enough food to eat. Tubman rescued over 300 slaves over the course of 20 years, and was one of the greatest and most fearless heroines of antebellum America.
The Underground Railroad was some serious shit. Deep behind unfriendly lines for days and weeks at a time, Tubman and her crew slept in swamps, hid during the day, and moved under the cover of darkness. Travelling with women and children, young and old, and being pursued relentlessly by police, soldiers, attack dogs, bounty hunters, and slave-catchers barely caused her to flinch. She urged her people on, led them to freedom, and threatened to fucking face-shoot anybody who suggested giving up or turning back (seriously - if one member was caught or returned, it jeopardized the entire Railroad, and she would rather have capped someone in the face than seen that shit go down). Although she was illiterate and uneducated, Harriet Tubman was by no means stupid – she cleverly hid from her would-be captors, outsmarted the entire population of Maryland nearly two dozen times, and told everybody else to get bent harder than Uri Geller's silverware collection. She made her escapes on Saturdays, which bought her a one-day head start because wanted posters could not legally be posted on Sundays – and twenty-four hours was all she needed to leave her enemies in her dust. Despite the fact that there was a $40,000 reward for the "black ghost" (a figure that today equates to a cool $4 mil), she was never caught, never defeated, and never lost a single person she escorted to freedom.
Yeah, but it'd probably be deemed "unrealistic" and/ or "racist"
what
who would call a game about being Harriet Tubman and leading slaves to freedom racist?
The presentation of the characters (with their manner of speech, "-isms" and what else have you that lends realism to their being) will infuriate some people. (Think RE:5, only even less justified)
I meant more along the lines of trying to describe a belief or feeling that's just innate. I can't say "well I woke up one day and decided to be straight because of this that and the other thing". (I imagine it's the same if you're gay or bi or asexual or whatevs, too)
It's also like trying to describe my desire to create, or draw. WHY do I want to do that? I have absolutely no idea. I can't explain it. The need is just there.
Yah it kinda sucked, I was 11, and I was like "hmmmm.. I should be attracted to women by now.. Oh well maybe if I just ignore it" then 8 years later i'm like "OOOOOH WAIT A SECOND NOW I GET IT"
Loomdun on
splat
0
MustangArbiter of Unpopular OpinionsRegistered Userregular
edited May 2009
FREEDOM!
outsmarted the entire population of Maryland nearly two dozen times
Pfft, it's hardly a great claim to fame is it.
Seriously though, she sounds like a steely eye missile man....errr woman.
EDIT: The people of Maryland are going to rape me for this aren't they? Don't worry guys, I come from the most mocked city in the Asia-Pacific region.
Mustang on
0
MustangArbiter of Unpopular OpinionsRegistered Userregular
edited May 2009
God I'd love to spend some time with the designers at Aston Martin, those guys rock my world.
My point though, is that of course you tend to think that your opinion is yours and yours alone, and it's hard to understand the extent to which your friends and your family influence those opinions until you're removed from that situation.
The thing is, most of my family I almost never talk to. They're spread out across the whole country, and into Canada a bit. Those in my family that I do talk to, I still talk to pretty infrequently...my parents, for instance. We disagree on a lot of things. I don't like talking to them, usually. We've got some bad history. I haven't lived with either of my parents in roughly four years. I feel like I've been living mostly "by myself" for at least that long.
I don't often talk to my friends at home while I'm down at school...and honestly, there are other points where my friends and I don't agree, including my friends here at SCAD. I'm friends with a variety of "groups" of people that I'm positive wouldn't have the greatest time if I all put them in a room together. They've all got a large number of conflicting opinions among them, and come from very, very different backgrounds.
I'm not saying my friends have never influenced my opinions on anything, but considering that my "extended" close-contact time with my friends is pretty infrequent.....as well as with any member of my family, it's kind of hard for me to say that any of my long-held beliefs have been influenced by them very much, if at all. I make an effort to try to look at things from a number of different angles, and I make an active effort to think about things from my own perspective, rather than being led along by a friend's beliefs. I mean, yes, there are those hidden-under-the-surface feelings, like "oh god I should be going to college, it's the only way" because I've lived in a family of college-educated people, in a society where going to college is expected of me. That's probably one of the biggest examples of being influenced by my surroundings. However, I kinda feel like much of what I believe is a result of me trying to find my own answers independently. Again, I'm not saying that all of it is - being influenced by your surroundings isn't something you can really get away from - but I just feel like the way I come to my own moral and life-goal conclusions is more of a solitary process.
I know when I was in school I wouldn't have believed it either. That's not to say I was really wrong in what I thought, just that my understanding needed time to grow and mature. You need to have changed to see what you were like before. I'm not saying I have it figured out now, I certainly don't. However, once you put yourself out there into the real world you begin to realize how much is out there that you don't know. How much you haven't considered, and how blurred the lines between right and wrong can be.
I kinda feel like I've already experienced this, to a fair extent. Not so much as a result of my being in or out of school, though. I kinda feel like right and wrong are almost always subjective (or always subjective?) things - they're different for everybody, and can differ based on the situation. I'm also not trying to say that "I know it all right now", either. When I do go through some major "change" in my life, it seems completely independent of my being in school or not. School really doesn't have a damn thing to do with it, in my case.
When I went from High School to college I had a similar widening of the eyes. It happens again when you leave college. You seem like an observant and intelligent person, so it won't take you long to see what I'm talking about.
I guess this goes with the last bit, too - to be honest, the transitions I've made between middle and high school, and high school and college...aside from geographical changes...have not really existed. They just kind of flow into one another. I've always heard people describing how "OMG HIGH SCHOOL" is *so* different than middle school, and how college is SO different from high school. I've never experienced that crazy difference. A bit more freedom? Okay. People have matured a bit? Maybe - that's more just a thing that seems to happen through time, not through "another four years in a different building". I'm not getting these huge life-changing episodes when I move on to the next "step"...and again, I think I chalk this up to my living a more independent lifestyle, I guess. Even when I took a year off from college, there was no "good god this is so different" feeling going on. Every single academic/job-related episode of my life has just flowed into the next one pretty seamlessly. I can think of maybe two or three big "changes" in my personality or lifeview, and those have just been a result of my own personal searching or realizations, not a result of my going to high school or going to college. I don't really expect a huge "ZOMG" when I leave college, either, save for "oh crap now I have to work all the time for a living" and the bizarre as hell feeling that I never have to go back to school if I don't want to. I'm sure it'll feel a lot different, yeah. That's a big transition to make. I just don't seeing myself getting a huge eye-opening experience from that in itself. Those experiences (at least, in my life) have come on their own, independent from what school I'm attending or my immediate social surroundings.
You have to remember that I moved 3000 miles away from everything I knew, so my opinion on the matter may very well have to do with the influences of more or less two complete years of solitude in Alaska.
As far as core beliefs, well, I've never really had any that I would say are immovable. Time and time again life has shown me how easily such beliefs are eroded, and how it is better to be supple than rigid in how you perceive and how you act on those perceptions.
I think it's safer for me to say "I'm never going to have kids" than "I'm never going to want kids", then. I know that (as I think I mentioned earlier) at age 50, I may have some regrets on never having kids. Still, I won't regret my decision to not have had them, if that makes sense.
And yes, I've had some of my firm beliefs "erode" away too, as you put it. However, those have been more morally-based views, I think. Making a life-changing decision like having a kid is a completely different matter to me. Having a kid totally throws your world upside down. That, and having a kid has a biological timer attached to it. If I don't decide to have a kid in the next 10 years, that's probably it. I'm just not having a kid... even if, for the sake of argument, I DO want one later in life. Other beliefs that don't have a "timer" with them, I feel, are much more fluid, yes, and may warp and change as one experiences and learns new things throughout their life...but it's not like there's something that says "you can't hold this belief at 65". However, there is something saying "you can't have a kid at 65" (not only biologically, but it's also dangerous, and irresponsible in some ways, I feel). Again, that's not to say I'd suddenly not want a kid at 65, but the end result of "me not having a kid" would stay the same. Seeing as how I only have to hold firm on my "not wanting kids" for another 10 years or so, I feel it's pretty safe to say that I will not have kids.
Simply put, I'm just pretty damn sure it will never happen. That's probably one of the top things in my life I feel will never change for me. I feel like morals can change easier than a decision like this. Yes, it's different for some people, and some people suddenly decide they want kids. Some people eventually decide they want kids. I'm just, believe it or not, pretty assured I don't fit into that category. Life is unpredictable...but I know myself, and I know that for me, how I feel about this later in life is very predictable.
Many apologies for the mini-novel. :P
I understand where you're coming from. I think you're simplifying things a bit. I don't think school has a lot to do with it any dramatic changes. Besides, we never realize the dramatic changes while they are occurring. But the transition from one town to the next, from one group of peers to the next, will always have some affect on your life. You may be able to do a lot on your own, but you can't shut the influence of other people out completely without cutting yourself off from other people completely. While up until, and including now, you have really only been in school, save for that small percentage of time you had in early childhood; and it's difficult not to do what my mother used to do and fold her arms and say "we'll see what you think about that in ten years."
The realization that things are different than you once thought they were doesn't come to you as an epiphany. You only notice it in retrospect. You notice in what ways you change. In some areas you change less than in others. You're not a new or different person. You're just in a different place in your life.
I'm not trying to convince you that you should have kids. I'm just trying to point out that ideas change frequently and you could miss a lot, in the general sense, if you're holding onto a decision that you don't believe in anymore.
I think, for the most part, we agree with one another and I'm sure you know what I mean. There are going to be some things that you will change in your life, these include ideas. There will be some things that will probably stay the same, too. I guess it just bothers me that I perceive your stance as putting limits on your future life, without your future self having a chance to weigh in on the matter.
God I'd love to spend some time with the designers at Aston Martin, those guys rock my world.
One-77
For some reason I find this design awesome and just a little bit hideous at the same time. It's a bit too overstated for what it is it seems to me...to get away with those looks I'd expect to open up the hood and see a little glowing hemisphere of pure energy some other crazy sci-fi bullshit in there, not something as down to earth as an internal combustion engine.
But then, complaining about the worst looking Aston in recent years is like talking about the worst Pixar movie...yeah you can nitpick but they're still miles ahead of pretty much everybody.
God I'd love to spend some time with the designers at Aston Martin, those guys rock my world.
One-77
For some reason I find this design awesome and just a little bit hideous at the same time. It's a bit too overstated for what it is it seems to me...to get away with those looks I'd expect to open up the hood and see a little glowing hemisphere of pure energy some other crazy sci-fi bullshit in there, not something as down to earth as an internal combustion engine.
But then, complaining about the worst looking Aston in recent years is like talking about the worst Pixar movie...yeah you can nitpick but they're still miles ahead of pretty much everybody.
Posts
e: I think owning an opossum would actually be pretty cool. I don't believe a word you say.
I like to be understood, okay
and understood well
through excessive elaboration
man, on another note, my roommates like taking all my analogies literally. It's annoying as hell.
"But...why would you say that if pigs can't actually fly?.....they...they can't fly, right?"
rgahrghagrha
(also my dad owned a raccoon as a teenager, he's got pictures. Pretty cool. Its name was Scamp.)
That's fine. I don't really care if you read it or if you don't read it.
Should I just have a baby right now and get this whole thing over with
I should probably tell Bacon to call off that bet beforehand, though
Born into slavery on a Maryland plantation, Harriet spent her first twenty-five years living under the watchful gaze of a number of different jackass overseers and housemistresses. While this five-foot tall woman may not have been the most physically imposing specimen this side of the She-Hulk exploding with 'roid rage, hard work made her tough as hell – she toned her body and her muscles working grueling manual labor twelve hours a day, seven days a week. Out in the unforgiving Maryland sun, she beat the hell out of trees with an axe, hacked up firewood, plowed an endless assortment fields, and drove unwieldy ox-carts. Before long, her physical strength matched her unshakable willpower.
Despite facing a lifetime of cruel bondage, Harriet Tubman never took fucking shit from anybody ever. Her stubbornness and refusal to back down generally resulted in her suffering endless beatings and physical abuse, including one time when she was smashed in the head with a lead weight for defending a fellow slave (a wound that left her suffering dizzy spells and light-headedness for the rest of her life), but she simply refused to have her spirit broken by a bunch of jackass rednecks on a power trip. Finally, one cloudy night in 1849, Harriet Tubman had enough of it. She made a break for freedom. Fleeing into the darkness, Tubman traveled for several days through the unfamiliar Maryland wilderness, and didn't look back until she reached the friendly, we-promise-we-won't-enslave-you confines of Philadelphia.
As awesome as it was to no longer live in slavery, there was still one problem – Harriet left behind her mother, father, and nine siblings. While most people would have just shrugged and said, "fuck it dudes, you're on your own," Harriet Tubman did the unbelievable – she fucking went BACK to the plantation, tracked down her family, and led THEM to freedom. That's just how she rolled, bitches.
Once Harried saw that she was capable of leading a large band of fugitive slaves safely to freedom (seriously, ten kids! Her family was almost as prolific as those crazy nutjobs in Utah who named all their kids with the letter J!) Harriet decided that she couldn't enjoy her freedom while her people remained in bondage. Using the code name "Moses", she returned to Maryland TWENTY more times, each time delivering her people from the chains of slavery to the promised land (which in this case was Niagara Falls, Canada, a 350-mile walk from the Maryland border) where they didn't have to worry about shit like getting whipped for insubordination or not having enough food to eat. Tubman rescued over 300 slaves over the course of 20 years, and was one of the greatest and most fearless heroines of antebellum America.
The Underground Railroad was some serious shit. Deep behind unfriendly lines for days and weeks at a time, Tubman and her crew slept in swamps, hid during the day, and moved under the cover of darkness. Travelling with women and children, young and old, and being pursued relentlessly by police, soldiers, attack dogs, bounty hunters, and slave-catchers barely caused her to flinch. She urged her people on, led them to freedom, and threatened to fucking face-shoot anybody who suggested giving up or turning back (seriously - if one member was caught or returned, it jeopardized the entire Railroad, and she would rather have capped someone in the face than seen that shit go down). Although she was illiterate and uneducated, Harriet Tubman was by no means stupid – she cleverly hid from her would-be captors, outsmarted the entire population of Maryland nearly two dozen times, and told everybody else to get bent harder than Uri Geller's silverware collection. She made her escapes on Saturdays, which bought her a one-day head start because wanted posters could not legally be posted on Sundays – and twenty-four hours was all she needed to leave her enemies in her dust. Despite the fact that there was a $40,000 reward for the "black ghost" (a figure that today equates to a cool $4 mil), she was never caught, never defeated, and never lost a single person she escorted to freedom.
what
who would call a game about being Harriet Tubman and leading slaves to freedom racist?
I can explain why i'm not
Quid should retell all the under-appreciated history stories.
The presentation of the characters (with their manner of speech, "-isms" and what else have you that lends realism to their being) will infuriate some people. (Think RE:5, only even less justified)
anyone can get something out of reading about the most badass figure in the American abolitionist movement
seriously, old man, read it
I meant more along the lines of trying to describe a belief or feeling that's just innate. I can't say "well I woke up one day and decided to be straight because of this that and the other thing". (I imagine it's the same if you're gay or bi or asexual or whatevs, too)
It's also like trying to describe my desire to create, or draw. WHY do I want to do that? I have absolutely no idea. I can't explain it. The need is just there.
http://www.badassoftheweek.com/list.html
Pfft, it's hardly a great claim to fame is it.
Seriously though, she sounds like a steely eye missile man....errr woman.
EDIT: The people of Maryland are going to rape me for this aren't they? Don't worry guys, I come from the most mocked city in the Asia-Pacific region.
One-77
Also don't worry ND - I'm sure they'll come out with a pill to fix that someday.
Tumblr Behance Carbonmade PAAC on FB
BFBC2
The realization that things are different than you once thought they were doesn't come to you as an epiphany. You only notice it in retrospect. You notice in what ways you change. In some areas you change less than in others. You're not a new or different person. You're just in a different place in your life.
I'm not trying to convince you that you should have kids. I'm just trying to point out that ideas change frequently and you could miss a lot, in the general sense, if you're holding onto a decision that you don't believe in anymore.
I think, for the most part, we agree with one another and I'm sure you know what I mean. There are going to be some things that you will change in your life, these include ideas. There will be some things that will probably stay the same, too. I guess it just bothers me that I perceive your stance as putting limits on your future life, without your future self having a chance to weigh in on the matter.
Ryan M Long Photography
Buy my Prints!
For some reason I find this design awesome and just a little bit hideous at the same time. It's a bit too overstated for what it is it seems to me...to get away with those looks I'd expect to open up the hood and see a little glowing hemisphere of pure energy some other crazy sci-fi bullshit in there, not something as down to earth as an internal combustion engine.
But then, complaining about the worst looking Aston in recent years is like talking about the worst Pixar movie...yeah you can nitpick but they're still miles ahead of pretty much everybody.
And I ain't reading any of these long spoiler posts except ones featuring historical badassry.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqzUI1ihfpk
Twitter
Tumblr Behance Carbonmade PAAC on FB
BFBC2
Are you being serious now?
If not, I may have to hurt you.
INSTAGRAM
I was a helpless victim, browsing the website finding the worst possible baby images.
INSTAGRAM
I'll buy.
in pesos.
I need to stay up for 5 more hours and I'll need some sweets.
INSTAGRAM
That was awesome.