Pay To The Piper
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Who Framed Roger Rabbit
12 min read
This story is clearly a dark homage to/commentary on the 1988 film that pioneered the concept of cartoon characters ('toons') living alongside humans in Los Angeles, with similar themes of cartoon-human legal conflicts and noir atmosphere
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Anthropomorphism
18 min read
The story explicitly names its cartoon realm 'Anthropomorph' and features anthropomorphized animals (deer in suits, pig cops, Chief Toad) - understanding the history and psychology of anthropomorphism enriches the satirical elements
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Rotoscoping
16 min read
The story's references to celluloid smell and ink blood evoke traditional animation techniques - rotoscoping was the key technology that allowed realistic human-cartoon interaction in films, directly relevant to the story's premise of humans entering cartoon worlds
I.
The first indication that he had gone past the boundaries of reality was when he felt the loud thud of running over something with the front wheels of his car, followed by an abrupt, loud cry of pain, and then, just as abruptly, silence.
Ravenscroft stopped the car as soon as he heard the collision of solid matter that was not road with the best tires to come out of Akron, Ohio (as he had been told they were weeks earlier by the used car salesman who sold him the vehicle). He assumed that it was simply some dumb animal who was not familiar with cars or what they could do to them, and had blundered onto the road.
He was right, but only after a fashion.
It was such an animal, a white-tailed deer, in fact. But it resembled a man in appearance and bearing, with a vertical spine and hooves that protruded out of its body like arms and legs. More to the point, it was wearing a carefully tailored suit- not unlike the one Ravenscroft himself was wearing at that moment.
A closer examination of the corpse revealed the full truth to Ravenscroft. Where red blood should have flowed onto the two-lane blacktop highway, black ink, not visible until it obscured one of the white markers on the road, flowed instead. And the typical fecal smell that occurred when a dead body voided its bowels was replaced by that of several freshly opened cans of paint, along with the equally pungent smell of burning celluloid.
He could not have known it then, but he was no longer in the world that he knew and understood.
Instead, he was in a place where simply being a human being would not be nearly enough for him to be treated in the manner to which he was accustomed.
He had crossed the boundary of the mysterious, unpredictable realm in which the beings his world knew as “cartoon characters” (or, pejoratively, “ ‘toons”) resided. And he was about to discover exactly how much his “kind” were truly “liked” there.
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The first clue that he was in trouble came soon afterwards, when the police, or a facsimile of same,
drove up in the opposite direction from where Ravenscroft had come.
Great, he thought. Just what I need.
By trade, Ravenscroft was a lawyer. He specialized in entertainment law, a natural
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