Here are some sketches I did of the kids (but mostly Ben and Darius) when I first started on the show! (I literally did these before reading any of the episodes so these are NOT plot-related!!!)
Sammy watching Yaz compete, wishing her good luck <33
Yasammy fanart, wishing we get to see it in Chaos Theory. I mean, Sammy watching Yaz compete, if that was unclear 👀
I really didn't bother doing the background cool. I never have the patience to draw a background, I usually just have a color or two covering the white background. So, it looks weird, and that's how it is
bi ig highlight : https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/18280848235083086/
+we NEED more bisexuality in media: https://yourartmatters-itswhatgotmehere.tumblr.com/post/746941244472786944/so-alright-here-are-the-moviesmedia-that-make
(Or baby’s first fic prompt that’s more of a ficlette. It’s going under the cut because it ended up longer than a prompt. Sorry.)
Jazz is reincarnated in the DC Universe. Her new family is no longer in the picture and she doesn’t remember her past life at all. She ends up taken in by the League of Assassins. She is named Yasmina.
She grows up there, learning to be a skilled fighter and trains to be Talias bodyguard. Sometimes she helps protect baby Damian, even though she is only a teenager.
She grows up to be a tall girl with a strong build. Not willowy like Talia. She still has red hair but it’s darker now and naturally violet eyes because of a latent meta gene.
Talia eventually switches her to helping Jason during his training, acting as a go between. She occasionally has Yasmina spar with Jason to gauge how his training is going. The two teens get close, Talia sees this as a chance to manipulate Jason. She encourages Yasmina to pursue her interest in Jason, and encourage Jason to do the same.
(Talia is also kind of hoping Jason decides not to leave because she’s started to think of him as her own. Son, apprentice, just something intrinsically hers. She doesn’t want to give him back to her Beloved. She’s also seeing a bit of herself and Bruce in Yasmina and Jason. It’s nostalgic, but painful. She kind of wants them to have a better end than her.)
Yasmina and Jason end up spending a lot of time together. Feelings get stronger. They find a kind of happiness in each other for a time. It might be love blooming.
Then Jason’s training comes to an end. He still chooses to return to Gotham. Yasmina’s heart is broken, but when she looks in his eyes she knows Gotham is his first love. He’s just as Talia described The Bat to her, on one of her vaguely vulnerable days. Too determined. Too focused. The mission will always come first, even as he says he’s nothing like his father.
They fall into bed for the first time, desperate with the knowledge that they might never see each other again; And if they do, it might be as enemies. She sends him off with memories of her, and he ends up leaving something behind unintentionally.
That’s right, Yasmina is pregnant. But she doesn’t know that for a while. She hardly has any symptoms and miraculously, no miscarriage during all her training and any fights she gets into in that time.
Until her luck runs out.
She takes a killing blow for Talia, and earns her first dip in the Lazarus Pit. She goes in complete loyal to the League, she comes out with her memories as Jazz Fenton, and the soul of Danny inhabiting her unborn child.
She gets a medical check up after her Lazarus Spa day and look at that! Pregnant! Talia is kind of having flash backs. At least when She got pregnant and sent Bruce away, she Knew she was sending away the father of her child.
Talia helps Yasmina through her pregnancy and with the care of the baby; all with the understanding that this child will become Damian’s right hand. A couple years pass. Damian has gone to live in Gotham, and now 5 year old Danny (who kind of remembers his past life) is showing sighs of having suspiciously Lazarus water adjacent powers. Ra’s is getting nosy, uh oh. So Talia sends Yasmina away to Gotham.
Armed with the knowledge of her past and the skills of her present, Yasmina is determined to introduce her son to his father. Weather or not Jason will help convince The Bat to let them stay is another matter.
She also has to deal with her dip in the Lazarus pit activating her meta gene. Now she has her own Liminal powers to deal with on top of Danny’s ghost powers resurfacing.
(I know that was long. I know it’s practically a fic. I have no intention of writing more myself. If you want to, go ahead. But Tag me please I want to read a fic like this. This premise has been swimming in my brain like soup for days.)
Is it just me or has the card illustrations (specifically the groovy) been kinda bad lately? Like don't get me wrong most of the pre groovy are absolute bangers, but the groovies? Not so much. But lately there has been an obvious decrease in quality with anatomy, and even 😐 a whitewashing problem.
Take Lilia's dorm groovy for example— the piece is gorgeous, but whenever I zoom into his face the way they draw his face looks so off.
As for the whitewashing issue, I've noticed that Leona's beastly garb groovy had him very ashy looking (but some may argue that it's just the lighting casted on him)
Right now though the one that's been bothering me the most is the obvious whitwashing on Kalim's tsum groovy. We really can't argue that it's a lighting issue there, cause Jamil's firework card had a similar setting and he didn't look that light.
Personally, I think TWST’s Groovy illustrations have always been hit or miss since the beginning. I have similar issues with the faces in Lilia and Leona’s Dorm Uniform Groovies, and the anatomy seemed slightly off in a few others. I can’t find the original post anymore (I think OP didn’t tag it??), but I clearly recall an artist having spoken about how the pose in Epel’s initial Dorm Uniform art looked weird; they included drawings of how Epel’s spine and limbs looked vs how they should look to illustrate what they meant. Those are just a few examples of then and now though, and we have to keep in mind that if we include ALL available cards then the funky faces and weird posing/proportions only make up a very small percentage of what’s out there.
The more important issue at the moment is the coloring choices that were made for a few recent SSR event Groovies: Beastly Garb Leona and Tsumsted Kalim. They are pictured below with a few other card illustrations I pulled that have similar lighting (or as similar as I could find). You’ll notice (especially for Tsumsted Kalim’s Groovy) that the characters’ skin colors are much lighter than they should be.
Now I’ll be honest here 💦 I actually can’t tell (even when eyedropping the colors to compare; I don't even know if eyedropping is an accurate way to compare colors since the lighting and environment in every illustration is never EXACTLY the same) if Leona’s Beastly Garb Groovy is just the strong sunlight or if it has been whitewashed. I don’t have enough knowledge and/or experience with color theory and in real life to know for certain. However, as the Anon has said, that same argument cannot be made for the Scarabia duo. It’s particularly bad for Tsumsted Kalim because Yasmina Silk Jamil also had fireworks in the background, and his skin color is fine there. Sometimes artists purposefully use an altered color palate to achieve a different feeling in their pieces (for example, pastel colors for a soft, soothing look). I don’t think that was the case for Tsumsted Kalim because everything else in the Groovy art looks pretty true to color for the lighting (but again, I'm not an expert in coloring so I could be wrong). When taken in conjunction with Leona’s Beastly Garb… it could indicate a troubling pattern.
There’s been a lot of speculation going around for why this has happened, chief among that speculation being the TWST team has likely hired new staff and/or colorists (and Japan, being Japan, is pretty homogenous; it may be difficult to find artists with an understanding of how to color and shade darker skin tones). Again, these are just guesses circulating in the fandom. Nothing is confirmed, and nor does this excuse what has happened.
This has, very understandably, caused a lot of hurt and upset in the TWST fandom and community. So now the question is…
What can we do about it?
You can communicate your feelings to the TWST team! They have a form to collect thoughts and opinions from the playerbase, which can be accessed here.
PLEASE NOTE:
Be polite and professional. Nothing good comes out of anger, especially if the anger is directed at others; if you are rude and/or curse at the staff, they will be much less likely to hear you out.
Communicate in Japanese. The staff you are sending your complaint to are Japanese, and the game itself is Japanese (Beastly Garb Leona and Tsumsted Kalim are not yet out in the EN server, which is staffed by totally different people).
If you don’t know how to write in Japanese, this Twitter user has created polite templates to communicate our concerns with the whitewashing. (Their whole thread is great; please reference it if you need additional assistance!!) I would not recommend adding extra text, especially if you would be relying on a translation program to do so. Speaking in broken Japanese can be perceived as rude and will only detract from your message.
A similar situation to this occurred during the initial run of Fairy Gala; TWST had used “exotic” in its text, and after receiving an influx of feedback from the players, the devs went in and changed the dialogue to no longer use the term. It’s possible to make the change we want to see a reality if we respectfully make our thoughts known.
"None of us are free until we are all free. Tag the white feminists in the comments it’s time for some accountability. You can be a white feminist and not be white. It’s an ideology. And today, I say fuck this shit." from Yasmina Benslimane, 08/Mar/2024: