Anime v Non-Anime Models

[Keene Ward]

I loathe anime face claims.

I've been reading this thread for awhile, and I've been loving it. I love to judge things. I love to sit down with my cup of orange juice and munchy crackers and read about everyone's crazy ol' opinions and laugh and agree and disagree and shake my head at how much I think someone might be wrong or right. It's fun. It's even more fun to let my firm grip on being amiable and friendly to people slip in cases like this and judge the crap out of people I disagree with. It's relaxing to be like, "Wow, that was sucha dumb thing to say" or "Holy moley, so-and-so has no idea how bigoted/hypocritical they seemed just then" rather than to go through the exhausting process of forcing my brain in the empathy mode to be like "I understand both parts of this argument and everyone is presenting valid arguments". But I definitely don't send nasty PMs letting people know how stupid or foolish they are. I have my laugh, I might think a little less or a little more of someone, but in the end it's all just opinion, and the beauty of opinion is it's wholly subjective. Even those people who want to be like, "My opinion is the greatest opinion and the only opinion and all those who disagree are wrong" that's their opinion. Neato.

Mini-rant over. I love anime. I watch it more than probably any other form of visual media, and I get really invested into the stories, the characters, and the universes they portray. However, I just can't handle anime in a "realistic" setting. Anime is great because it plays on tropes and archetypes, taking them to the extreme, throwing in a dose of humor or severity, then taking a hammer and smashing everything so you either laugh like a hyena or bawl your eyes out because it's just so darn beautiful/tragic/horrifying/insert emotion eliciting word here. That kind of stuff doesn't work in the real world. Anime is like a super hyped version of reality, within its own reality it's great - within the reality of everything else... it's not.

When I see an anime avatar, I immediately form two thoughts: "What anime is that from because it looks like it could be awesome/terrible and I should see it/avoid it like the plague" and "Crossing this person off my list of potential partners". In my experiences outside of Miz (and within Miz), the people I have read that use anime avatars have writing styles/characters/general ways about them that I can't handle. Sometimes I can't handle the wild, flamboyant, and all around ridiculous hyper-nature of their PC. Sometimes I can't deal with the way something is always happening for no apparent reason, but it's imperative the random event come to conclusion or the world is going to end. Other times? I just don't like looking at the anime face. I think someone said they could turn anime images into real people in their minds. I applaud you. To me, anime characters aren't people. They're completely removed from my idea of what is real. If I see an anime face, my mind crafts an anime world, because that's where they belong.

Also, the way I create my own characters heavily affects how I view other people's PCs. I spend hours a day looking for the image of a person that I'm loosly forming in my head. It's a ton of work, searching through this flood of images that may or may not be pornographic or so photoshopped the people look liked dolls, but eventually I find what I'm looking for. I honestly don't get how anyone could use an image for their character that they don't view accurately represents their character. I'm pretty sure that happens though, and if I see a picture for a person that doesn't fit in my head, I just shrug and assume they know their own character better then I've been able to glean from the CS. But when someone uses an anime avatar, it's the same thing. In my mind, they've chosen that specific avatar because that is how they view their character, and that is something I can't write with.

I'm wrong a lot. Sometimes, there will be anime avatars that have interesting characters. Sometimes, there will be people with really cool real life models who suck on the muck of a third grader's literary booties. Judging things by their cover and acting on those judgments definitely means that there are good people I'll miss out on eventually. When that happens, I don't have an issue swallowing my pride and thinking, "Well gee willikers, I was wrong about them!" But. Butty but but but. The majority of the time? My intuition is sound. It helps me. It lets me look at something and decide "Yes, I'm going to put in the time to make an effort with this person" or "No. Just no."

And the beauty of this? I don't say anything to them. Is that being a coward or untrue to myself because I'm not sharing my opinions 100% of the time? Absolutely not. I'm using my brain to make my own choices. If those choices are wrong? I have the leeway to go back, admit I was wrong to myself, and start fresh with the person writing. If that person doesn't want to write with em because I turned them down before, then I don't want to write with them because they can't get over their own petty reasons. Every time you interact with someone you leave an impression. Those impressions are taken into account. In my mind, using an anime avatar is like showing up to an interview for a business firm wearing a tutu and horse head mask. You might qualified. You might be over qualified. But I will take one look at you, shake my head, and see the next person because that's how I choose to run my business.

Also? If you write poorly or are an uninteresting writer on your CS, that's way worse. From what people have said, I feel like they probably agree with that. Avatars aren't the be all end all, but a bad avatar is definitely a good way to turn people away from your CS. Bad photo edits, popular celebrities, really crummy CGI, even avatars that are "loose" depictions of your character (the model has brown hair and blue eyes while the character has blonde hair and green eyes) are all just as bad as an anime avatar, but for different reasons. Mizahar is a pretty amazing place with a bunch of amazing writers, but that's the thing. People want to write with those amazing writers. They don't want to write with someone who's going to waste their time, because that's the currency we spend here. Time. And if I can weed out people I know are going to waste my time from the beginning, I'm going to do that so I can dedicate my time to people who are also going to invest in me.

That's my take on things. I get riled up when I talk about stuff I have strong opinions about, so if I was offensive to anyone please just know that I probably do think you suck, but my opinions of you are pretty fluid. There's this weird thing (and I suppose it's probably more of a good thing than a bad thing) where people seem to have this idea that they deserve equal opportunities in terms of writing partners.

Mizahar is a writing site. Mizahar is also a pretty darn serious game. If you think that people should judge you solely off of your writing, I shake my head at you - unless you really can maintain a small enough OOC presence to achieve that, then more power to you. Your avatar, your boxcodes, your font choices, and the way you conduct yourself outside of the main roleplaying forums all heavily affect how people view you. If you're using bright pink font on a puke-grey background, I will judge you. If you're using Hugh Jackman for your Isur who was banished from Sultros for being too gosh darn awesome, I will judge you. If you're posting three lines to my one thousand word post, I will judge you. Anime avatars are just one of the many cosmetic factors that can affect how people view you, and from what I'd read and seen, it would seem the general opinion of them isn't high. It isn't necessarily low, but if you want to be taken seriously off the bat, it looks like anime is out.

And, really, that's the endgame, isn't it? I'd hope we all want to have interesting, impressive characters who are reflections of the roles, ideas, and natures they embody. We want people to know we've spent time crafting them, thought molding them into who they are. No. You don't have to conform to what people generally think or are naturally inclined to support. You can have an anime avatar. You can make a starting assassin. You can have an Akalak who's two halfs are literally good and evil. These are your choices, your decisions, and you can make them awesome. But there's something that people always seem to forget: You're not as unique as you think you are. These things have been done by many many people before you. Anime faces have been used, and they have been abused time and time again. Same with anything else that has a bad rap. You can reclaim it, you can change it, you can show people that you're actually the illest assassin ever with a deep and meaningful backstory. You can play up the good vs. evil Akalak and make him a tormented or beautiful individual with a rich stretch of wonderful character development. You can bring your anime face to life through the well thought out, intricate plots and realistic reactions and actions to those plots.

But when it comes down to it, you have something to prove. You're not starting out on even footing. You have a hill, a mountain, a world, to conquer before you are something that people look at and think, "Dang that's a cool PC". So, ultimately, people are entitled to their opinions. You should do what you think is best and what you want to do, because nothing sucks more than trying to write for a character you don't like or don't want. But you should also take into account the opinions of others. This is a community, not a place where everyone is required to give you smiles and pat you on the back. You will get out what you put in. And you know? Mizahar isn't for everything. It isn't. If you can't accept that Ichigo doesn't work in Mizahar or that kawaii-desu moshi-moshi baby doll would probably have died as a toddler for being so gosh darn vapid, you should probably go play on an anime site. It's not because people don't want you, or can't handle what you're doing, but the very nature of Mizahar rejects the character.

That was a super long tangent. Basically: I think anime avatars are dumb. I think you put yourself at a disadvantage by choosing something like that from the start, and it's just going to make your life that much more complicated.

On that last note that Cae made about templates and such: I judge poor artistic choices. If you can't make a boxcode, that's fine, just use the regular forum text because it's actually not that bad. If you have to make a code, do a frame pic with a readable font and pleasing colors. If you do something that looks awful, and your excuse is "I don't know what I'm doing" no. No no no. Black and white is crisp. "But it's so boring" You don't know what you're doing, remember? There are plenty of people who are happy to make codes. There are also plenty of ways to make a basic, nice looking code. It's the same thing as it is with anything else, if you're trying to put on a tutu when your only other options are a business casual outfit and going naked, please just put on the business casual because it will make things easier for everyone. And if you're going to put on a tutu? Be ready. You're not wrong, but there are going to be people who look at you and think, "Wtf tutu."

#rantover

[Zhol]

Point of fact... there's honestly no inference on someone's age. It's pretty much a fact that combined with an Avatar, a CS review, and a glance at a few posts I can absolutely tell with fairly good accuracy, what age group someone falls into; juvenile, tweener, teen, young adult, adult, old fucking fart.

And truthfully, I sit here and shake my head at all you people who say you DONT judge. Stop lying to yourselves. We are humans. We judge EVERYTHING and form an opinion on things in split seconds. That's a scientific fact that marketing research spends billions on annually to unravel in order to get their products or brands seen in the most favorable light. You can give a pile of photographs to children and all the good looking people in the photographs will be categorized by them as 'good' and the asymmetrical faces and odd off-the-norm appearances will be seen as 'bad'. Its built into our genetics to do so.

Remember the recent commercial about the good looking male actor standing by a 4x4 truck then a economy electric car and what women had to say about him? Oh yea... every one of them said the truck photo guy was a hell of a lot more fun and the other guy was boring. That's based on fact. You JUDGE you liars. You always judge.

So before you remain on your high horses about 'I don't judge'.... I call you out on bullshit right now. You do judge. We all do. The difference is some of us are willing to be honest about it and some of us just want to look good to the general crowd, even if its obvious that its utter lies your talking.

Not everyone thinks about the world in the same way. For me personally, I was brainwashed by a science degree, so my default setting is to be sceptical of everything, including first impressions.

As I said, I definitely have opinions (maybe it's a matter of semantics, and you're calling those "judgements"), but I don't put any stock in them until I have more evidence to go along with it. The fact that someone has an anime avatar tells me that they like anime, and that is all - that's one point of data, and my scientist brain can't form a hypothesis based on that. Yes, they could be a young person with an uninteresting character and not-so-great writing skills. Or, they could be Brandon Blackwing, who is fun to write with, fun to chat with, and is an all-round nice guy. It's not an effective criteria for assessment, so I don't use it.

I'm not trying to look good for the crowd like you're suggesting: I don't think my way of looking at the world is any more valid than yours, it's just different. I do resent the accusation that I'm lying though, to myself or otherwise.

Maybe you're right though, Goss - maybe this just proves I'm not human. It would certainly explain a lot.

[Khara]

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Like most people have said already, I really have enjoyed reading this thread. It's interesting just how strongly some people feel towards a certain style and their reasons for it and how they feel it effects their choices on who to write with. I'm not saying any of it is bad by any means, I rather like seeing how different people look at different things.

As for myself, I'll fully admit I judge people on their avatar (Or not having one at all, actually.) As far as the anime character thing goes, I'm definitely hesitant to write with anyone with an overly stylized bubbly eyed anime character just because yeah, for the most part I do associate them with "younger" writers and for the most part I'm just not interested in writing with them. Though I also make the same judgement based on overtly sexual looking models as well where I've sat back and had to seriously wonder if their face was cropped out of a pornographic image (Also, I'll be totally horrible and admit that I seem to have this reaction to females far more than males.)

My pet peeve when it comes to avatars - and the thing that will completely make me disinterested in a person within a split second - are those with pictures that are poorly cropped/squished/horribly photoshopped. I guess I figure that if you aren't putting effort and time into the picture you choose, you probably aren't going to put any effort into what you write either. I'm not expecting someone to be a photoshop master by any means, but I'm a highly visual person and I know for a fact that there are people in chat who have the skills that are willing to help those that don't. I know it isn't fair, but I definitely will write someone off in an instant if they can't even be bothered to notice that their image has been distorted because they couldn't crop something to proper proportions and instead chose to squish the image to fit.

Though as far as all the negative stuff goes, I also have a strange "oh my god!" excited reaction to some people's images as well. I do this with models I don't recognize but that someone has beautifully edited to include race features and as much as I hate to admit it I really do it with people who use actors I recognize in a good way. I'll pick on Rewyn now since they started the thread But yeah, when I saw your avatar it filled me with a horrible sense of glee because I recognized who it was but saw you weren't actually using images of Mads in the role I'm most familiar with. I love that sort of thing. On the flip side this can also make me shy away from someone's character if I recognize the actor/actress from something that makes me roll my eyes and groan either because they've been used to hell and back or they look exactly like the role I associate them with and I can't stand that character/show/etc.

All the rambles above aside, I will try and take a look at people's writing before I fully form an opinion of them if they approach me and want to write together. I've had my opinion entirely change on someone in the past and it certainly could happen again. Just don't be surprised if at some point I'm offering to help you find a new avatar.
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[Yra]

Amen, Keene. That was lengthy, but a damn good read, and I'm very happy with seeing the thoughts and ideas represented in this thread.

[Nal'reim Qyan]

Personally I do not like nor dislike anime/cartoon/drawn avatars. I have yet to use one since I personally think of every character (even those who use cartoon based avatars) as real people. Thus I use real people (maybe a GCI picture here and there).

[Lisana]

My mind just typically transfers them into human form, or something like that. I've threaded with relatively good writers who used both anime-based models and boxcodes. I may judge them, as Goss said, but I do my best not to judge them negatively.

[Marina Agamand]

I find it appalling that so many people would refuse to interact with me solely based on my display picture.

[Yra]

There are so many more who would interact with you, though!

[Nivel]

Yah I think that this thread taught me that everyone has their bias and not to worry too much about about who does and doesn't want to thread with you. As Yra said there are plenty who would thread with you, if you like your avatar just keep it and thread with people who ether appreciate it or don't mind it.

Edit: I actually kind of like your Avatar. Mostly because I love the colour of the eyes and hair.

[Branimir]

Oooh I've been itchinh to pitch in on thia but I didn't want to stir the horse's carcass. But I'll keep this one brief.

I pretty much don't care for anime or manga one bit. I plain dislike the aesthetics or the storytelling devices they tend to employ. If I saw someone with such an avatar I'd probably not look at their stuff with a hollow eye socket simply because I'd assume they enjoy aforementioned aesthetics and devices and thus presume a basic incompatibility. As it is I can't read everything out there and only post so much. I wouldn't want to waste my time. So I have to do some sorting and avatars are an easy visual cue to sort by.

At base that puts me in the 'wouldn't thread with people with anime avatars' camp I guess. And I frankly dare anyone to find fault with that. If the first cue I take from a given poster isn't appealing to me why should I make the effort to bother? If I look at the menu in a restaurant I've never been to before I pick the dish that sounds most appealing and ignore the ones that don't. Same principle really.

Just my 2 generic currency.