AWKWARD ZOMBIE

She's a bit tanned from playing outside a lot at best. I know it looks darker considering most other characters look like they spent most of their lives in a basement, but she's definitely not brown skinned.

So Nintendo's making characters that players can relate to?

Onderwerp is dutch for subject.

I just had to make an account after seeing the site flooded with the same French treads and then spambots in my native language (dutch), from Australia/France with russian links XD

EDIT: The spambots have terrible grammar, and am I the only one experiencing MASSIVE lag only on this site?

You're not the only one; I accidentally triple-posted a comment this morning because of this lag, and it took me about half an hour to delete two of those comments. daisies spambots...

Right now, I don't know if its just me or everyone, but the lag seems to have stopped.

The lag's still there for me.

I used to only observe these forums for the funny edits, but the imcomprehensible russian-to-Dutch spambots convinced me I should explain what an onderwerp is.
Unfortunately, I could only see that that had already been answered by a likeminded Dutchman.

To not make my first post completely useless, here's the guilt version of the comic.

Welcome, Fratriarch, Zelonod, chasesClouds, hope you guys will stick around while this shit gets sorted! And chasesClouds, Katie tends to respond to people but she's been super busy lately so idk.

Whitewashing is a strong term. It's a big deal. And it hurts me. That's why I went out of my way to come here to say something about it. In the comic she is drawn as the same shade as Selena, in the game she is definitely darker. Why can't a caricature be drawn with her correct skin tone? Whitewashing is still whitewashing. It still hurts me whether it's a cute cartoon or a detailed-semi-realistic fan work.



What makes you so sure she isn't brown? Brown people can have brown hair and green eyes if that's what you're getting at (not to mention that this is a game where you can easily change your eye and hair color anyway, and also there are people who have purple hair...).

Plus there's no indication that she is brown because of a tan, and everyone spends a lot of time outside. So as far as I'm concerned her skin tone should be considered, well, her skin tone, and respected as such. (and actually this sort of thing is exactly why whitewashing needs to be addressed and talked about.)

Anyway I didn't come here to discuss whether or not Shauna was whitewashed. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Shauna was whitewashed in the comic. I came here because I want Katie to be aware of that. I've been following her work for a long time and she seems like a reasonable person. I respect her, and I understand if it was a mistake. (I'm an artist too, we all flub up, it happens.) I hope that this can be resolved. I would have contacted her personally if I could, but she's pretty busy, so I can understand why she doesn't have means to do so like just out there for everyone to bombard.

And thanks Blitz Walrus.

Wow I'm black myself and I honestly did not even notice her skin color was non-white at all through the entire course of the game.

Obviously I understand if you're perturbed by her appearance in the comic if it's not the correct skin tone, and it was good of you to address your concern in a polite and patient way. Katie is hard to reach sometimes, but you can definitely try her twitter, email, or sending her a PM. I'll also try to reach her and tell her about it.

As a side note, Omni is right in saying that this isn't really "whitewashing" in the traditional sense, as that would imply (or straight up suggest) that Katie had purposely done it knowing full well that she was misrepresenting her skin color, which I'm sure she wasn't. This was just an honest mistake and has little to nothing to do with race at all (especially considering it can't even really be proven that race is even really a thing in pokemon. Race and nationality is something that's left pretty ambiguous in the games, I feel.)

Thanks for welcoming me, Blitz, I'll try to blend in using a large quantity of low-quality edits

OKAY I think the forum situation is under control; I still have to clean up a ton of bot barf but LONG STORY SHORT the healing can begin now. Before I do that, let me address this!

I'm sort of in the same boat as Vax -- I played through the entire game without realizing she was a little darker than the other main characters, and I didn't notice it until I looked at pictures of everybody on the same screen after reading this thread. When I draw comics, I typically keep reference images of each character open in separate tabs, so I didn't see them side by side, and I managed to overlook it. I'll post a more accurate version of the comic later today, after I finish dealing with the forum stuff.

OOPS

Katie used Heal Pulse on the forum.

Okay then, I guess we don't need the 9 different mercenaries with their own unique skills I hired.

AwkwardSkeleton that was actually pretty funny. As for you new posters, I welcome you, so long as these comic edits are not precursor to a much more sophisticated SCP incursion. That would be terrifying and entertaining!

For a change of pace, let's try a reverse Nowi edit.