Not The Hex Codes - Tumblr Posts
Hello! I've noticed a racism problem within the Our Life fandom, particularly Our Life: Now and Forever. I won't name names, but there is an overabundance of fanart where the artist has HEAVILY whitewashed Qiu. It's pretty upsetting to see them overwrite Qiu's identity as a person of color. Given that you are the game dev, I was hoping to see you speak out about this problem and condemn the act of whitewashing your characters. Thanks
I'm sorry that is happening. There's no reason for it and I don't agree with anyone who has chosen to do it.
To try and be helpful, here are the base skin tone colors for the OL LIs (besides Tamarack and Baxter who don't have this problem).
Cove: f2b795 Derek: d29e77 Qiu: e0a48a
I could do this for every character in all our games, but if people are getting the hair and eyes and clothes right, they shouldn't need to be told what the skin tones are. Popular white guys can be drawn thousands of times and it's always the exact right shade of pale somehow, isn't it.
If people are thinking white is "neutral" and can just stay as is, but once a character has a darker skin tone than it's fair game to start making tweaks to their color palette so you can "get creative" or have "dramatic lighting" or to bluntly have it be more to your preference in appearance or whatever, my answer is no. That's not for you to decide and it's not harmless. Don't whitewash our, or any, characters.