I do have to say, I completely understand about Thunder’s classic costume, although I do still hope it gets made someday. But I do have to ask…If being a respectful representation of native Americans is the goal with Thunder, how does making his retro a tattooed street thug biker bar low-life respectfully represent native Americans? I’m sorry but that just seems to be a HUGE contradiction of views there.
Honestly the first time I saw his retro I thought to myself: Ok, so you’re saying that you think that when native Americans aren’t in full war paint & headress going on spirit walks, they’re hopping back & forth between a bar & jail on their Harley’s?? That was my honest to goodness first impression.
One other thing I do have to ask about Thunder…when the Nez Perce tribe was worked with…did anybody hand them a picture of KI1 Thunder & say “What changes could we make to this guy’s outfit to make it look as close to this as possible without being offensive?” My guess is that would have resulted something everybody would have been satisfied with.
That’s about all I have to add that hasn’t already been said. I do really like those KI classic mockups. Out of all of the classic costumes I honestly think Spinal & Glacius are the only ones that wouldn’t really need tweaking, though having his KI1 shield, as simple of a design as it is, would be a nice addition. The Argonaut octopus one is pretty cool, very reflective of his source.
Not all are, I know some that are the same way & are genuinely nice guys, but on the other hand there are reasons why stereotypes like that come into existence. But my point is the decisions say something about the impression they want to present when attributing costume choices to these tropes, & in Thunder’s case it’s not a very good impression.
My thought is that although stereotype is a thing they had to account for, Stereotyping a generic native Indian into a hodgepodge of native Indian tropes instead of something of a particular tribe is worse than the stereotype that native Indian are trouble maker biker dudes, which is less disrespectful considering the derogatory term is that biker dudes are not looked at in a positive light rather than ALL native Indians are biker dudes which is obviously less believable.
I think this about covers it. Thunders original design is not respectful of Native American culture. Whereas whatever your opinion on bikers is, the new design is about Thunder as an individual and not dragging every Native American group with him.
[quote=“WrathOfFulgore, post:185, topic:2071”]
how does making his retro a tattooed street thug biker bar low-life
[/quote]Emphasis added by me. I don’t think that everyone is going to look at Thunder’s current retro and come to this conclusion. I wouldn’t say having tattoos and wearing a bandana makes you a “low-life.” We know that Thunder is a “good guy” in the KI universe (at least relatively speaking). But I don’t think it’s so much about whether Thunder, as an individual, is an awesome or medicore (insert Mad Max Gif here) person. It’s just about not co-opting and distorting real pieces of Native American culture.
Maybe Thunder’s retro costume has a bandana that he wore while busting down the door of a hospital and carrying out the sick, injured children and their puppies because the building was on fire, and he wore the bandana on his face to protect him from the smoke.
Nobody gives Thunder credit for nothin’. TeamTribe.
It’s like walking by a Chinese or Korean person speaking in their respective language and then coming up to them talking about how they are Japanese and that you think they are speaking Japanese and that you like to eat their fried chicken.
You would probably get slapped at best. Doing something like that is insanely disrespectful to them. The same applies to the native Indian tribes that back In The day considered themselves to be each many different Individual nations.
Stereotypeing them all into one “trope” is worse than making thunder a biker dude.
Thunders retro gives me the option to rock 2 different excellent Mohawk options. That’s all I asked for when I was waiting for his retro, so I’m satisfied. Plus his weapon options are pretty great.
I’m still holding onto a vague hope that one day I’ll be able to use the wood axe weapons on default Thunder. I like them so much better than anything default Thunder has access to.
It’s not ok for Thunder to have a feather mohawk because he’s representing a particular native american tribe, but he’s an individual so if he likes to go full-on hell’s angels in his attire that’s ok, because he’s his own person & doesn’t represent anyone but himself, & that’s better than having a feather mohawk because the native american as a biker is only disgracing one tribe as opposed to all native americans everywhere…
But whatever…it’s not happening so all anyone can do is sit around & complain about what is & what isn’t.
Still, I would like to know if this could have been a possibility:
It resulted in what you see on screen… as his default costume.
When you design a character, you tend to concentrate on key reads - there’s generally three on every KI character. So for example, one of Thunder’s is his “hair” / headdress. The discussion around it went something like: “We had this Mohawk thing before for a headdress - what would the tribe use for something on his head that fills the same role in telling the story of his character?” and that leads you to accurate answers.
I’m not going to nitpick and rehash the whole thread, but I think you are deliberately mischaracterising the discussion.
As far as your proposal:
Who’s to say that’s not what they did to end up with Thunder the way he is in KI 2013?
It’s built on the assumption that the original design is not really all that offensive and you could walk into the room and not make everyone hate you by just holding up a picture of old Chief Thunder. Imagine walking into a NAACP meeting and saying “Hi guys, we have this idea for Aunt Jemima meets the tar baby and little black Sambo and we just want your help updating the characters so they are not offensive to you.” Or taking one of those racist Dr. Seuss cartoons he drew as anti-Japanese propaganda in the 40s and heading over to Japan to say “Alright fellas. Help us tidy these up just a bit so we can make a new children’s book.” In both cases, after they finished kicking you while you rolled on the ground, neither group is going to be super thrilled to help you out. If they do, chances are good they are just going to tell you to throw that crap out and start over.
The idea of having a friendly chat along the lines of “help us tweak this offensive racist caricature to the point where it doesn’t bother you and we can put it in our game in order to satisfy the nostalgia of KI fans who really dig this racist caricature,” is a bit of a non-starter don’t you think?
EDIT: Dang, scooped by Adam while I painstakingly spelled this out on my phone…
Sabrewulf retro are lame. We know when he’s using instinct. No need to show skinny to bulky to see if instinct meter are on or not. So you could make him bulky all the time just like retro Cinder. Kinda beating a dead horse on Sabre’s retro but its just a tiny fix you guys could do for us.
I don’t think it does. I’ve always thought that since Thunder’s retro was off-limits for obvious reasons, he got a retro from his lore. He was temporarily jailed after a fit of rage, fled the reservation and was on the run for about a year. Probably what he wore during those times to lay low.
For the record I like Adam’s answer better , but I get what you’re saying. Doesn’t mean I fully agree, but I understand. I still don’t really care for the retro outfit.
[quote=“DoobyDude23, post:199, topic:2071”]
I don’t think it does. I’ve always thought that since Thunder’s retro was off-limits for obvious reasons, he got a retro from his lore. He was temporarily jailed after a fit of rage, fled the reservation and was on the run for about a year. Probably what he wore during those times to lay low.
[/quote]That makes sense.
That’s fine. I sometimes get carried away with hyperbole. It doesn’t always translate well into text - but if we were sitting together having a beer we would be having a good time.
If you’re not Nez Perce then it doesn’t concern you enough for you to be Offended. If I was Lakota I wouldn’t be upset about a Dine (Navajo) character especially if it was made with the collaboration of Navajo Artist and cultural consultants.
, but I get what you’re saying. Doesn’t mean I fully agree, but I understand. I still don’t really care for the retro outfit.