XIV. Death- Katja Death Is The Card Of The Inevitable Change That No One Could Stop, Mortality, Corruption,

Had to colour my favourite pose from my most recent comic (which contains spoilers for TotK's Zora's Domain)

Unpopular opinion.

Grow the fuck up and stop accusing real artists of being AI just because your shit sucks ass and you have too much free time.

It ain't cute. You won't get picked. You ain't special. Get a job or a girlfriend. Just shhhhhh. This isn't a moment for you. We're not fixing your mommy issues and the lack of self-respect and manners you have.❤️

We don't need speed paints for you. We don't need sketches. If people want to do that like I do, go right the fuck ahead. It's your blog, it's your life.

The more you attention seeking, whiny babies cry and bitch about artists being AI, the more you're going to make the real people that make the ai art do it more to piss you off, and the real artists to just give up.

Y'all don't want ai to take over art? Then shut the fuck up and leave it alone. You aren't fixing the issue. You're making it worse for the artists who just want to share what took them so long to do. And if you say "they're getting so butt hurt and defensive, they must be ai!" Shut the absolute fuck up. You all make ai art look horrible, that the people making it are monsters that are killing starving artists, how the fuck do you think we'll feel if we made something beautiful and you accuse us of faking it'?

I was accused of being ai when I had just posted two things on this blog. They said it was because of my line weight. It's called "art styleeeeee" ooooo new word! I have that bitch deleted and blocked, but I see this all over the place. People change over time. Regardless of whether it be their appearance, attitude, or what they create.

And if you think I'm being too crude with my language or "misunderstanding it all" go eat a dick.

I once mentioned that while some star seekers have retractable talons in their fingertips, others have retractable spurs or spines in their legs, and I never sketched that concept until now.

Depending on where the spur(s) are placed may have a slight impact on how the individual star seeker might fight, but regardless, spurs or no spurs, star seekers have powerful legs.

Y'all - i swore a while back i saw pictures of Sabine and Khaan in Dark Rider form (updated) like he had flames and she had her helmet on. Does anyone know what I'm talking about/have those pictures?

Hello again. I decided to write another post on Sabine with additional points as well as taking into consideration people’s replies. My original post is here. Since this is a bit of a long one here is an outline of this post and I'll put the rest of it under a readmore:

Personal response to previous post

Sabine

Update on her scar

SSO is diversifying all their characters

Various "what ifs"

Sexualisation of Sabine by fandom

Dark riders

Redesigns of Katja and Jessica (Jay)

Released image of the new Dark Riders

First, I’d like to address why I’m bringing this up. I’ve had it proposed to me that, as a white person, it’s not my place to talk about this as I’m talking over people of colour. As said in my last point this isn’t my intention at all. I’ve spoken with people of colour about the points in these posts. (Thank you to them for taking time to do so) However none of the points in my posts are new ideas by me and have been brought up by people of colour as being harmful stereotypes. I think it should also be noted that I wasn’t copying another post I’d seen by a POC about Sabine and ignored theirs, I wrote the post because I had not seen anyone speak about it. I do also think that putting the burden on people of colour for calling out racism/harmful stereotyping and such is completely unfair and unjust. White people have a responsibility to tackle this. This is not the same as speaking over people of colour, but amplifying their points and their right to exist without discrimination. I don’t feel like I should have to put this disclaimer but I’d also like to make it clear that not every POC/masculine woman/disabled person will agree with my statements. This is just my opinion that I’ve done my best to fact check with various academic sources and speaking with people affected by these issues.

Her scar

A correction on my last post, the reason behind her scar was discussed in the Star Stable book “The Legend Awakens” (thank you @mudpuddlenll ) Her scar is from falling headfirst off a bridge. However the passage raises more points by saying Sabine isn’t even human which is why she survived the fall. I’ll go into detail later about why saying Sabine and the other Dark riders aren’t human could potentially be harmful. But for now to focus on her scar, if Sabine isn’t human and therefore has the physical capability to survive such a fall – how come her face can scar? Is it just to help signal that she’s a villain? I’m aware Star Stable has weak logic behind a lot of things so I’m not particularly interested in trying to justify her scar being there – the point still stands that is it there.

An additional point brought up in the discussion of my first post is that Anne’s scar, the other character in the game with a facial scar, is a lot more feminine as well as being unrealistic.

Oh but SSO’s diversifying ALL their characters! Sabine isn’t a problem!

If this was the case and also the be-all and end-all of my argument: where are all the “good” brown butch women in SSO? Why aren’t they redesigning “good” female characters to be muscular? Why don’t they have non-violent butch women? Diversity in characters is a good thing, but you still need to make sure those characters aren’t negative stereotypes.

“What if she’s just tan!”

Then Star Stable is trying to make it seem like they’re increasing diversity by redesigning characters as ethnically ambiguous/darkening their skintones and not putting actual meaningful representations of people of colour into their video game. I don’t think I need to explain why this is a bad thing. Additionally if this is the case, then many of my points about female characters of colour still apply to Jay’s redesign which I further discuss below.

“But she’s going to become a good character/have a redemption arc!”

I do not care for hypotheticals. Even if she does redeem herself, the point still stands that SSO has a villain that looks and acts like her and no “good” characters that look like her. The game portrays her as a villain.

The continual sexualisation of Sabine by fandom

It is in bad taste to brush off the issues people have with the Sabine redesign by saying things along the lines of “but she’s hot though”. Even more than that, it adds to the over sexualisation of women of colour in media. I am not saying SSO is sexualising Sabine, let me make that clear. I am merely commenting on the reactions of many players of the game which I have seen online. There is an abundance of people thirsting over Sabine. I am not saying this itself is an issue. I’m a lesbian, women are great. But I think that is important to be careful of the ways we talk about female characters of colour, especially compared to how the same people talk about white female characters. If all you can take away from a character design, especially when pointed out potential issues in it, is that the character is sexually attractive – are you simply treating that character as a sexual object? And how does that reflect your treatment of real people with these characteristics? An additional sub point to this is comments similar to “Sabine can step on me”, “I wish Sabine would crush me” which is also prevalent in fandoms when aimed at women of colour and butch women. This enforces the idea that WOC and/or GNC women are inherently violent, are incapable of non-violent romantic actions, and also serves to masculinise them further.

Dark riders

I’ve been told that since Sabine is only one of the villains/Dark Riders so therefore my points don’t stand since there’s a diverse range of villains. So I shall discuss all of them.

While it’s true Sabine is the only redesigned Dark Rider released in game, SSE has released the new designs of 3 other Dark Riders on their development blog here. They are:

Katja, who has appeared in SSO and earlier games before. She has always been a white woman.

Jay, who has appeared in SSO and earlier games before. However this was under the name of Jessica and appearing as a white woman.

Chiyo, a new character to Star Stable. She appears to be a young East Asian character. This post by @yasminewestbank goes over some of the issues people have with her character, which I agree with.

While I have less to say about Katja, I find it interesting that the only white woman of the group is portrayed (as a general rule) as the most polite/self-controlled /”well-behaved”.

Jay’s redesign shares many of the same points as I have with Sabine. She is now darker skinned, has an androgynous name, and dresses more masculine. Again, I am not saying these are bad things or that a villain can’t have these traits.

SSE also released this group image of them on the same development blog post.

It makes me uncomfortable for several reasons. It reinforces the idea that Sabine is violent and brutal – literally holding Chiyo up by the neck – even towards the characters that are meant to be her allies. It shows that she is much larger and physically intimidating than the others, which as I stated before isn’t really a great thing having the most masculine woman being the most violent.

It additionally reinforces the stereotypes outlined in @yasminewestbanks post about Chiyo’s character as an East Asian woman. She appears much more childlike and infantilised than the other characters in being much smaller and picked up in that way by another character. My points about Chiyo are less concrete as we know little about her character – she may in fact be a child (which is then a point to be said about having the game’s main East Asian character be a young “cutesy” girl), but something just seems “off” about it all to me.

Of course I agree it is a good thing that Star Stable is creating more diverse characters. But I think there is a need to be careful when redesigning characters that were originally three white women into two more masculine women of colour and a white woman, and then adding an additional woman of colour that you do not fall into using negative stereotypes for them. Especially when you add in the fact that they are the major villains to the game – the antithesis of the player character(s) – and are not even human. As mentioned before in this post and my previous, it is common rhetoric from bigots that certain minorities are “lesser” than them, often to the point of them not being deemed human.  Therefore it should be taken into consideration when designing villains that look human but aren’t, who are also minorities.

To summarise, I am not accusing Star Stable of doing or even intending everything I said in my posts. I simply wished to highlight issues I found with some of their character redesigns, and then, with how fandom tended to brush off things like this or ignore them. This post is long enough as it is so I shall post my sources in an additional post, but if anyone’s wanting specific reading/resources on a point feel free to ask. Thank you.

This is generally most of the most beautiful pieces of art I've ever seen and the thing that it was made in ibisPaint is insane

Here's the process of my latest Starscream drawing! There might be some flashing in the time-lapse, so please be careful!

“It’s not as hard as it looks,” Cody admitted. His hand tightened around Obi-Wan’s: he didn’t mean the footwork.

“A good partner makes a great difference.”

Obi-Wan turned his cheek into the weathered ridge of Cody’s knuckles: a roll of sensation, like the deck pitching with a wave. Cody didn’t think he was talking about footwork either.

for @elwenyere’s pirate AU | dream version and sketch under the cut

posting random crap again because idk what to do with my life. :')

when one chooses to walk the way of the mand'alore, one is both hunter and prey. how can one be a coward if one chooses this way of life?

Sabtja hc; Sabine is actually a good body language reader. Sabine and Katja casually walking in Jorvik City's busy streets until they decide to stop at a café. Jay and Erissa are gone to the nearby Purple Pony store, so it gives them a bit of time to breath and not think about their missions for the time being. Sabine and Katja barely ever talks, only if needed during a mission. But, they understand each other with a simple look. And it was clear that Katja didn't feel comfortable right now. Her eyes darting around, every sound around them was making her more and more overwhelmed. That annoying pop music keeping on and on in the café, not helping her at all. Sabine wanted to ignore it at first, but it quickly made her annoyed that Katja couldn't control any of her emotions or senses. Her huge hand placed on Katja's laps, she let out a sigh. "Stop bouncing that damn leg before I rip it off." The scowl on Sabine's face made Katja snort, but it kinda worked, making her snap out of her thoughts and focus back on the menu, reading it slowly and multiple times. The only thing that was weird was the fact that Sabine wouldn't move her hand from her laps. "Sab'" The girl started, her eyes shifting from the menu to look at Sabine's face once more. She observed every little detail, her dark brows always frowning... Her scars near her lips. They were not that pretty, but it always intrigued Katja, and even if she knew how she got them, she probably had a lot of questions. 'How do they feel' was the only question that really got Katja looking back at her menu. "Sab', your hand" Katja finally said, trying to push Sabine's hand lightly, but it didn't budge, at the girl's surprise. "Uh. Please ?" Katja pleaded, getting annoyed. Sabine didn't bother answering, simply letting out a scoff and giving the stare to the Ice Witch. It made Katja clear her throat, her eyes darting between Sabine's hand and face, frowning deeply, it made her annoyed, but also comfortable, having a little presence around. She stopped worrying about the hand, but quickly got flustered when she felt the hand wrapping her laps, giving a death glare to Sabine before slapping her hand forcefully. "Stop that !" She let out a bit too loud, making a few patrons look at them in confusion. Sabine took off her hand before letting out a hearty laugh as the people got back to their occupations. "'T's alright, at least you forgot about the people around, didn't you." Damn, she was right. Katja forgot she was overwhelmed a few seconds ago. It made her snort, throwing the menu right in Sabine's face. "I hate you" The girl mouthed, even if she was grateful. Sabine answered back by doing the same thing, crossing her legs and reading the menu without much conviction.