Phantastic Panda @phantastic-panda - Tumblr Blog

j0jin-deactivated20210309

theendofenera-deactivated201911

That’s the quality content I’m here for.

panda-ffxiv

Balmung right now.

mischiefandmystics

Dear SE…

At the risk of discussing too much non-rp related things in a row… (I’ll get back to rp things soon, I promise)

In the future… You do not have to mention skin color differences between two clans of the same race, if you’re not going to show an actual difference of skin color between said two clans.

There is nothing “umber” or “dark skinned” about the render associated with the Rava.

The two clan renders are the same fair-skinned rabbit, but between a Winter and Summer tan and a bottle of hair dye. Please cut that out.

What the in-game, character creator options will be is irrelevant when talking about this. If I tell you, “here inside this box are my red apples and here inside this other box are my green apples” and outside of both boxes the apples are shades of green and yellow, that’s… not an accurate representation of your words, now is it?

Words Mean Things!

It is already annoying to have various people running around a shade deeper than a paper plate describing themselves as “dark skinned,” stop adding to that bullshit.

If you do not want to, or are incapable of showing genuinely dark-skinned character types as The Canon, then just stop making that particular distinction. It is so simple.

You do not have to mention skin color at all if all you’re going to do is… What you’ve been doing.

black-song5624

Probably taking all sorts of bait with this one but whatever lol.

They never label Rava as “dark skinned” only umber. Umber describes a wide variety of shades that fall under the “reddish brown, earthy toned” category. Looking at the specific color choice of the Rava skintone compared to Fran (The most common example of Viera no one has a problem with the skin color of) you can see it’s noticeably warmer and features a distinctly reddish hue, making the label of umber correct. Furthermore, compared to the Veena the skintones are quite far from each other.

You can see from this image, at the top right, I put a swatch with the skintone of each Viera. It’s pretty obvious the Rava has a more reddish brown tone than Fran, and is much more brown than the Veena. Umber is a fine term to describe it.

Viera also never passed the paper bag test before so I dunno why people are suddenly up in arms about them not being super dark. Sure, in some of the more cartoony art from tactics advance the viera were darker than this but that can just be attributed to the more simplistic coloring and style.

tiergan-vashir

At the risk of sounding like a pretentious former art-student, when you use the word “Umber” in front of an artist, we immediately think of one thing and that’s “Dark Brown”. This is because Umber is an extremely common pigment for paints. Sure there might be other special varieties of Umber out there that might be lighter than usual, but traditionally, Umber is one of your go-to darker browns if not one of the darkest browns on your palette.

Here’s Raw Umber and Burnt Umber respectively, which are two extremely common oil paints. They’re dark enough that I would actually use these paints instead of black, because pure black tends to flatten out a painting and suck life out of it if you don’t know what you’re doing where as umber is dark enough to be a substitute for black without the same “my painting looks kinda lifeless now” issue.

If we want to go literal dictionary definition:

I’m not saying all of this to be a pretentious asshole about color. I’m saying all of this, because @mischiefandmystics is right: Words have meaning.

They especially have meaning for people who actually live in bodies with skin that actually is “umber” in color. To you, I know this might be yet more grumbling from players who will never be satisfied with anything the devs do, but SE has never been all that great about representing folks of darker skintones. The vast majority of their promotional art features super pale folks. So when you FINALLY have a race that is listed as “umber” in skintone and the example character looks like she just barely has a summer-tan, it reminds folks of racism and colorism, which is something those folks have to deal with every single day, 24/7 by virtue of living in the bodies they are in. They have a right to be annoyed about something they deal with all the time, even if it’s something the rest of us never really have to think about.

And before someone brings up “But SE is a Japanese company and the Japanese just don’t know any better uwu.”:

SE is a big company that makes enough profit to hire researchers and marketers. If they want to market to a global audience, they have to cater to global tastes. Every big company does this. SE has already done this before by allowing gay marriage via Eternal Bonding ceremonies even though gay marriage is illegal in Japan, because they know Western audiences would find it distasteful.

There’s dark-skinned folks in Japan and in Asia in general.

phantastic-panda

I still don’t know what to think about this issue. I’m a darker-skinned Asian as well, Vietnamese, and pale skin is definitely seen as a beauty standard and I get called ‘Mexican’ by other Asians as a joke, but looking at this specific example, I’m not sure if there’s a reason to be offended.

The argument thrown around is color, specifically what Umber is. When I do my own googling and looking around, I see a multitude of shades of Umber, for a variety of uses, from a lighter Umber to a darker burnt Umber. Umber paint for home furniture and housing for example is usually portrayed lighter than what I’ve seen in the examples above. I think the color definition is vague by itself which could be a reason SE used it. What I’m seeing here is both dark and light. SE is most likely using it instead to describe just a brownish hue which I don’t think its their fault. https://m.valsparpaint.com/paint-chip.php?cnum=3003-9B&id=1629

All in all, I’m not sure if this is worth the effort to argue over. Character choice is going to be there, and no doubt we’ll see a bunch of different shades in-game.

paulthebukkit

Art in its purest form

evanbucklley

carnival-phantasm

i hate the meme that nook is evil and greedy sm. he canonically donates 90% of the proceeds from his businese to an orphanage.

I…didn’t know that. I was more than willing to defend Tom Nook for his “loan” with 0 interest, no deadline and no pressure or need to pay, but I’m impressed he still makes cash somehow and just donates it, while maintaining his “slimy businessman” reputation like some sort of furry The Boss…

carnival-phantasm

themageofbreath

@crooked-tarot-rp

crooked-tarot-rp

[[I FEEL SO LOVED AND ATTACKED AT THE SAME TIME.]]

royalharkinian

If we’re all going down I'm going the way I lived, making shitty memes in the face of peril.

sizvideos

jhameia

tonight’s aesthetic: Cookie Monster philosophizing in an art museum

aur-eliaa

This just changed my life.

kurotsuchi-sterling

The lasagne one has opened my eyes

rakkuguy

quarryknightcosplayandcustoms

I made another comic

foulserpent

cooking site, 10th paragraph of page titled “rustic pulled pork recipe”: my grandfather’s childhood was tough. every day he had to work the mines. he was only 6 months old when he held is first pickaxe. As he crawled into the mine elevator, just a little baby boy of one, he-

me, growing frantic: resippy