If I were to design Chalcara today, she’d look quite different. More regal. More powerful. She’d definitivly have more … outfit on her.
But If I were to redesign Chalcara to bring it in line with what I know about character design these days, she wouldn’t be my Chalcara anymore. She, for all intents and purposes, is a legacy character from a time long gone; she’d been concived years before Siendes came around; back then when Mirrough still was supposed to be a whiny, powerless teenager kidnapped from an interstellar highschool. Her outfit irks me, but well, it’s hers. When her made her, I really didn’t know better.
Now, I made a lot incremental improvments during the last year year. Without her armour, her design’s bland enough not to look tittilating, even though I still need to reduce her most common super power a bit. The-without-armour blandness serves both character and plot purposes, so it’s actually intended.
And when she does wear her armour, the focus is on her broad shoulders instead her boobs, especially now that I try to pull her gem out of her cleavage and closer to her neck. She’s got a very shoulder-heavy design these days and I am still looking for ways how to stress that even more.
But no, her outfit’s not really what I do regret creating. I can work with that. Even if it means that now I have to design Pridelord Humar to look regal in a loincloth, not an easy feat, but, well… What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If the ladies dress skimpy, my gentlemen will too. Fair’s fair.
No, what I regret is this panel and it’s less obvious bretheren.
Granted, I felt a bit iffy about it when I drew it, but thought, what the hell. I expected jokes. I got them.
It’s preservence of them, that took me by surprise. And how they coloured perceptions of Chalcara for the last of the chapter.
I shouldn’t have been that fucking naive.
…
It’s hard to make readers respect a character that’s presented as titellating. Fanservice might be pretty, but as a characterization tool it’s more that problematic. Because unfortionally the fuckability of a person is inverse proportional to their respectability. Oh, I wish it weren’t that way, but hey, the ‘good’ ol’ virgin whore dychotomy is still alive and kicking – and whores are to be used, not to be respected.
In the end it’s hard enough to make readers respect a female character even without putting her comprimising positions. While people in general find it easier to grow emotionally invested in a female character than to a male one, those investment do not necessarly command respect. They can. More often than not they don’t. All those numerous “she’s such a slut/frigid bitch and deserves pain” rants usually come from a place of emotional investment, too.
Anyway, I disgress.
Between Chalcara design and those poses, I’m afraid I did quite a bit of damage to how I actually want people to see her. I might be able to fix it, at least for some readers. Right now the best thing I can do is to stop putting her into compromising positions. But after how I portrayed her in the first chapter, I will have a tough time to build her up to the respect commanding, fear inducing powerhorse she’s supposed to be.
Let’s hope I’ll manage it.
In the end it’s just sad that despite all my rants about objectification of women in media, I fell into the trap of doing it myself. *sigh* But maybe it just goes to show how persuavive that shit actually is.
