(I won't make a habit of cross-posting to LJ, I am simply in a loquacious mood lately)
As I mentioned to a few other people, I've been drawing my own humanised version of the stuffy floating book in Nier. I haven't got any scans online right now, but he's a kind of weird-looking older man with dilated eyes and a sweeping fringe and a imperious look about him. I was considering drawing him for a while before I started, but the trigger was finding a fanwork I put through Google Translate where the book was portrayed as a young androgynous guy, and I had a giant 'NOOO YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG' moment. Not just because
I prefer roses to lilies if you know what I mean :awes: I find older characters more interesting, but... I mean... well, just look at at this character! Even in the Japanese version where he doesn't have the Rickman-esque accent, he sounds and acts old! What the heck are you thinking!?
As it turns out:
( Non-game-breaking spoilers for Nier's backstory follow )THIS GOES TO SHOW
1) If you're doing anything for a fandom where significant amounts of the background is in another language (or on the scale of Star Trek) you are far more likely to be doing it wrong than the people raised with it, you know, all their lives (this goes for both languages and Star Trek 8D)
2) Making spurious complaints about characters being turned into pretty boys, when said character was likely a pretty boy to start with in a game full of sweeping pale hair and zettai ryouiki, makes you look kinda like a dick.
Other people probably wouldn't worry about point 2 as much as I am now. But, as much as I find non-standard-attractive (and in several cases downright ugly) characters more interesting than the alternative, and as much as I enjoy being flippant over overly pretty things (like I've been doing for the rest of this darn post), the backlash against pretty boys kind of winds me up, every time I see it on deviantART and elsewhere. I've got reasons but as I go over them in my head it's going to take another post (or two). And now I feel like a doofus for going 'what the hell are you doing' at this Japanese fangirl I don't even know the name of because I'm a Google Translating scrub...
Don't be a doofus, I guess the moral is?
(Mind you, I'm still fond of my cranky strange-looking older version. It took fifteen years for me to become enamoured over what is essentially a bloody fan character but it's finally happened! I'm having terrible problems drawing him lately, though, likely because I'm distracted trying to draw the cuter young characters with an art style I'd describe as the Anti-Moe)
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