Fred
Retired Staff
This is my look back at how nekos are/have changed in my time knowing them. The point is putting those observation under scrutinery, and giving floor to forum members airing their opinion on them.
Fingers:
Teeth:
Ethnicity:
Ears:
Genetic tattoos:
SPINE interface:
Fingers:
- I'm glad to see fingernails make a return, since I wasn't fond of the froglike-sticky-digits all that much. However, I notice that the human hand has taken prevalence over the neko's distinctive three-fingers-and-a-thumb classical look.
I kind of feel it's chickening out of that feature, just because artists got confused about it. I think we should have kept adhered to it more, correct artists at need, and kept that distinctive trait about nekos. Admittedly, the human pinky finger is mostly vestigial anyways, so I felt it made sense.
Teeth:
- NH-29 nekos had been, on Wes' request, made to have narrower mouths - basically we humans have four incisors between our canine teeth, and nekos were to have only two. This changed back to the 'normal human mouth' in the NH-33.
I don't think the lesser number of teeth actually made much of an impact on people, but is this a bit of fluff we want to lose?
Ethnicity:
- We go from looking japanese with the yamato ethnicity and north-european with the norfolk ethnicity. I think that's fine, though there seems to be a decided tilt toward looking 'oriental' and an undecided feel on how looking 'nordic' would actually look like on a neko.
Just what is 'japanese yamato' like when we write it down? What about the 'nordic-like' norfolk? Is there vocabulary or better cues we can give for those description? To me, being yamato-like means pale smooth skin, dark straight hair, slanted eyes... and being norfolk is about more rugged and tanned features and brighter tones of coarser wavy hair.
Ears:
- Classically, nekovalkyrja ears are like cat-like ears which are positioned at the same place human ears are, rather than the top of the head like a cat's (this is an art mistake that annoys the heck out of me). However, the cat-like feel of the nekovalkyrja has of late dilluted a bit with human ears having significant visibility in major characters in the past (Hanako, Yukari) and elf-like ears coming to the fore as well.
I raise that point... because nekovalkyrja have '"neko" in their name, and the cat ears was the most obvious visual cue about why they might have that name beyond their feline agility and such. With the furred cat ear becoming less prevalent, I wonder if it might not harm the race's visual identity some.
Genetic tattoos:
- Codebars on nekos in some spot. I've never been fond of that idea mostly because it felt unappealing and tacked on. Nekovalkyrja are supposed to be artfully crafted into looking beautiful, and we'd mar them with some codebar labeling in someplace?
it feels kind of useless because whatever codebar information provided could just easily come from scanning the neko and perhaps finding the same information synthetically planted in her cells. We have the technology - why settle for blemishes?
SPINE interface:
- I didn't like SLICS shoulderholes. In my head, it marred "neko beauty" in the same way the codebar did - it was like having nostrils in your shoulder that people could finger over. Eww!
Not to mention I was kind of baffled as to how semi-mechanical connectors there would end up embedded into the deltoid muscles and how the arm would be able to function despite that.
The idea I was allowed to develop them was a connector-less interface that would be associated with ship seats and the backing of power armors. The SPINE interface would be tied to a neko's backbone, boasting lots of secure close range wireless connectors that would allow the neko to have that immersive man-machine interface they previously enjoyed with SLICS without the grossness of shoulderholes marring their beauty.
Visual-wise, I imagined the SPINE interface to have the nanomachine receptors embedding the skin darkening it some. This mental picture went on in my head for some time without really being realized until I actually asked an artist to depict it visually. I wanted some mark which, rather than being some blemish would look more like a natural demarcation of the neko's skin - just like pandas eyes are surrounded with black, raccoons have this 'bandit mask' and tigers have 'stripes'.
Here's the execution of it for Kotori, which I figure can be hit-and-miss for some. Kotori's one of the first NH-29 made, so, there's probably no problem in picture later NH-29/NH-33s 'evolving' the look differently to alternatives such as Hanako's trill-like spots.
I figure I'd put that out there. And see how others would feel about it.