#ftlog

starting with my babygurl Jasmine.

Her design hasn't change exept for the fact they now have two gold accesories on her arm and I took off her astrelio's collar on her everyday's design because she doesn't have a main relationship.

okay onto the redesign.

I really like Astraelio's design but I don't like that in comparaison Aurelia looked so human. So I decided to redesign together as a pair ( since they're the first deities of the pantheon and both are opposites ) and changed some little details.

-Lighter and bluer palette because the moon is pale

-Astraelio's sleeve is moon shape and the cape + opening of Aurelia's dress is suppose to be reminiscent of ray of light.

-Made them less human by giving them black eyes

-Gave them matching elements ( forehead decoration, one sleeve decorated the other not, each other's eye color, black under garment )

-Show your knees whores ! In the og game both have scenes where they take bath fully clothed so having the legs open seemed a better idea.

-Made Aurelia's hair light blond to look like a ball of ligh + matching with Astraelio.

-Since they both walk rather than float I gave them no shoes since that would mean the shoes would get dammaged.

Now on the other pair !!

The fact they were birth twins made me uncomfortable since they both go after the same deity they fell in love with so I decided to change that and make them sibling but not in the normal way, in the "You were born from his brain and you were born from his heart" type of mythology sibling.

I liked that both their ending featured an area with water so decided to keep that on their design.

Now on the bigger change : Vidas is canonly the weakest physicaly so I thought why not choping their arm off as a sign that they were once armed in the past + bonus cool cape.

Both of them use their clothes to slightly hide themself. Eerie use their scarf to hide their face and Vida use their cape to hide their missing arm.

Took of Eerie's chall because I thought it was too many tissues for nothing.

Fictif + The Arcana Total Characters:

Female- 50 Male- 53 Non-binary- 8

And of those characters these are the Love Interests:

Female- 10 Male- 20 Non-binary- 3

Technically, there is 12 female love interests (Nahara & Adra) BUT!! Nahara you could only romance in one story & Adra you couldn’t actually romance at all.

(Edit: that’s also not including the major arcana characters)

And going through the character designs & profiles for these characters, while it seems diverse, it also feels like they stick heavily to stereotypes.

For one, all of their characters seems to be weirdly tall. Out of the females the shortest are Volta & Portia, with Portia standing at roughly 5’0 (Volta I’m not quite sure, but I’d say even shorter than that) the majority of the other women are 5’7 and taller. And I know that that isn’t that tall but still. Then the male characters, Felix from what I can find is the shortest standing at 5’6 and Muriel is the tallest at 6’10, all of the other men fall at roughly around the 6’0 mark. And our lovely enby characters fall more on the taller side from what I can find.

As for body types, there isn’t much diversity there either, especially for the LIs. Most of the woman are thinner, with a more hourglass shape and average-bigger breasts. The men are pretty much tall, buff/muscular and really chiseled in their appearances. The non-binary characters seems a little more relaxed to a degree in their physical appearances and seems to be covered up a lot compared to the other characters. (Though they tend to follow the stereotype bodies as well. Like the amab characters having more “masculine features” ect.)

While the characters have a wide range of skin tones,ethnicities, ect. I’ve seen people talk about how a lot of poc characters have features that they wouldn’t necessarily have (e.g. eye colour) and how that they don’t necessarily properly represent POC individuals and going through all of the characters…..all of these characters all seem to be very similar in appearance as well.

So with all of this in mind, it really makes me further doubt nix hydra when it comes to their arguments about being inclusive/diverse and a being all for lgbt+ and women empowerment ect. The way I see it, they use those arguments as nothing but an advertising tool to lure in players who are being promised proper representation, just to constantly let those same people down. How are we as a fandom supposed to believe and support them when they constantly queer-bait and give false representation? What makes it worse though, is that nix hydra is a company run by women and they should know better than anyone what it’s like to grow up with no good representation, what it feels like to constantly have characters that are the stereotype and nothing close to the real thing. And then going as far as to blame us for not showing enough interest? We do show interest! Everyday on Tumblr, Instagram I see people expressing their love for these beautiful female and non-binary characters saying how much they would love stories with them. The beautiful artwork and stories they make for them (…coz you won’t). If you actually took a minute to look past what you want to see, you would find a community full of beautiful people wanting these stories & characters.

Nix Hydra ( @fictifgames) ,you had a great opportunity to break the mould and to be a company/storyteller to give actual proper representation. But time after time you have failed in that. I get that making these stories takes time and effort and I applaud every single writer/artist/developer ect for their work but come on! You need to stop targeting the lgbt community, women & poc individuals if you’re only gonna use us. We are not a marketing tool for you to exploit!! Especially as so many of your fans are younger people who are figuring out their identity, what kind of message are you sending them? And covering all this up with posts about women empowerment and whatnot isn’t gonna change anything. You guys need to learn that it’s okay to try different things! Make smaller characters! Make bigger & curvy characters! Make male characters with realistic body types! Make wlw stories! Give us the representation we deserve and you’ve been promising! It’s really not that hard. I’m sure there are plenty of good people who can give you pointers if you’re struggling to write certain characters properly. Stop buying into outdated stereotypes and concepts! Stop writing women the way we’ve wanted people to stop writing us for decades! You may think it’s nothing but it is harmful especially when we still live in a world we’re we don’t get proper, realistic characters.

Edit: And furthermore, while it’s upsetting not getting proper lgbt, women & poc representation, you’re not necessarily giving your male audience much representation either. You’re writing your male characters through your own fantasies and ideals and what society as a whole has deemed to be the male standard by making them buff and tall and “classically handsome”. That’s not proper representation either.