An Apology

Well, several actually.

So, it seems my post generated some interest from various parties, if only for its blatant inaccuracies. Firstly, my claim about Māori designs coming out of nowhere was false:

“For the Brutor tribe, we were actually inspired by the Maori warriors of New Zealand…” (The Art of EVE. 2007. White Wolf Publishing)

The sketch for Brutor in this book also mentions a mix of the above and African. Though that said, the sketch for Sebiestor says ‘cute and girly’, so how accurate that is, I’m not sure. 😛

The second apology is related to the first. One of my friends (and an ex-corpy) in-game also pointed out that while my example tattoo (of my character) was nice, it isn’t really accurate:

The women were not as extensively tattooed as the men. Their upper lips were outlined, usually in dark blue. The nostrils were also very finely incised. The chin moko was always the most popular, and continued to be practised even into the 1970s.

I think if we’re going with this, we should probably limit the types of tattoo by bloodline and gender as well, since Sebiestor are something different, and women aren’t likely to have more than the mouth region with moko. So… yeah. I guess calling it a beard or stubble is kind of insulting, given what its supposed to represent. Sorry about that!

The next thing to apologise for is confusion surrounding the Ray of Matar tattoo. I got a spike of traffic yesterday because of my post, but for the wrong reasons. Its never my intention to confuse anyone, or to spout ignorant garbage, but considering all the faux pas I made, I really dropped the ball on this one.

My opinion on this specific tattoo is almost certainly false, since its based on a reading of the short story from at least five years ago. In fact, the last time I remember reading it was in 2004, when I was still very involved in Matari RP. One of the images in the story:

A Matari tattoo

This is a tattoo displayed within the text for the Ray of Matar story. It is unmarked apart from some (to me anyway) illegible script within the image itself.

Its probably this that gave me the idea, but when you re-read the text you’re presented with “extending down and side-ways from her left eye were several dark lines, ranging from one to three centimeters in length.” which is entirely different to the pattern above.

But there was more to it than this image. I (mistakenly?) merged the above image with the representation of Karin Midular from in-game, who at the time had a tattoo vaguely similar to the one above. I can no longer find an image of her larger than about 128x128px so its really hard to see, or indeed to prove my crazy ramblings.

Anyway, the point is, I should have re-read a load of PF before making such claims. I also should have done a bit of research on the Maori thing, since I do own the Art of EVE book, and I have got internet access… Hopefully people will forgive me. 🙂

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0 thoughts on “An Apology”

  1. 10th Apr '11 at 8:40 pm

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