Mortal Kombat 1 Tanya face model found - Sydney Cross

[Dankster Morgan]

Wow, a Black female character that is now animated to be unambiguously Black...what a world we live in!


But aside from that, it seems clear that Tanya's outfit is drawing inspiration from historical African warrior outfits - from which group/time period, I couldn't tell you. Given the fact that she is exactly that - a Black Africanized warrior - I'm happy that,

a.) she's been given a clear and important role in this timeline rather than be a generic, do-nothing, deceptive bad guy and
b.) she doesn't exist as mere exotic eye-candy for the overwhelmingly male audience, a large chunk of whom are sex-starved whether by choice or circumstance


Now, are people allowed to dislike her new look? Certainly!
However, the reasons that people have historically disliked Black female characters' appearance/casting vary from mere boredom to people being dismayed that the character has evolved beyond having Euro-centric features/hair to being outright anti-woke/racist. Plus, all the ancillary reasons in between.

Thus, when a person says that they dislike Tanya's look in this game, there is absolutely a right to apply some side-eye skepticism to them because their reasons might indeed be the worst ones. Or they could be for the same reason(s) that I'm not a fan of Sub-Zero's man-bun - I happen to like my Bi-Hans fully masked!



Now about Tanya's hair....

Frankly, I love it! Finally, we have a well-animated Black woman's hairstyle in a Mortal Kombat game that again, is unambiguously Black. It appears to be a play on her hairstyle from MK4, except far better. Her hair is absolutely beautiful.

Tanya's hair is not only unique and pays homage to African warriors from antiquity, but it just looks damn good - several times better than the two-dimensional-charred-up-mozzarella sticks that Jacqui Briggs had in MK11.

However, Black women's hairstyles have been the subject of vile derision over the years, decades and centuries, even causing some Black women to lose their jobs and disturbing/destroying their self-image.

If you find yourself disliking Tanya's hair for reasons you can't readily explain or because it's not like the Europeanized styles that she's previously had, it might be worth examining to what extent you've internalized negative associations of Black female hairstyles.

These negative associations are present throughout America and the world and can be highly concentrated in various gaming communities on the internet. So, if you, for example, find yourself preferring that Black women have straight hair over braids/twists/locks or other traditionally Black styles, it doesn't make you racist/evil/bad, but it does mean that you have been the product of the society that you live in and haven't yet worked to reject those particular negative effects thereof.


To dislike a hairstyle because it's poorly-animated or because it doesn't fit the character is one thing, but to dislike it for reasons that you know would get you dragged is something else entirely. Tanya's hair fits her new role as a character and is well-made, so there's no issue in that capacity.

Virtually any other reason deserves scrutiny at a minimum and might need to be outright rejected at worst because it is rooted in anti-Blackness.


All-in-all, I've never came close to playing Tanya in any MK game. This time around, her appearance, story lore and most of all, her seemingly mid-screen-centric gameplay make me quite inclined to try her out and possibly make her one of my main characters. I love what she represents, how she represents it and am quite excited to see how else she differs from her past incarnations.

I actually like her hair, but I think the head piece and collar piece are awful and detract from it. The changes I would make to Tanya’s design are

• lose the head piece and collar entirely cause they look bad imo and detract from the cool hair
• choose different shoulder gear and something different than those straps to match the rest of her outfit. Kind of like how Kitana’s silver accents all go together and compliment the blue.
• bring back the white glowing eyes and some tattoos like her Pyromancer variation from MKX.
• I’ll hold back A LITTLE on saying the face should look a little better, because it may resemble her model better in game and they just didn’t put their best foot forward.

 

[mrapchem]

I actually like her hair, but I think the head piece and collar piece are awful and detract from it. The changes I would make to Tanya’s design are

• lose the head piece and collar entirely cause they look bad imo and detract from the cool hair
• choose different shoulder gear and something different than those straps to match the rest of her outfit. Kind of like how Kitana’s silver accents all go together and compliment the blue.
• bring back the white glowing eyes and some tattoos like her Pyromancer variation from MKX.
• I’ll hold back A LITTLE on saying the face should look a little better, because it may resemble her model better in game and they just didn’t put their best foot forward.

I don't mind her collar/headpiece/shoulder gear, but I can rock with all those changes. But, given the fact that you are a fellow Sub-Zero guy, it's clear to me why you'd have a cool head about this.

 

[Dankster Morgan]

I don't mind her collar/headpiece/shoulder gear, but I can rock with all those changes. But, given the fact that you are a fellow Sub-Zero guy, it's clear to me why you'd have a cool head about this.

Yeah that’s fine, more power to you for liking them. Just doesn’t look Tanya to me, especially without the eyes, where most of the redesigns still look very much how I’d expect a re-imagining to look.

I try to have a cool head but I’m not gonna lie, it does piss me off to see racism / sexism weaponized to tell people to just shut the fuck up if they don’t like this design. Nobody in this thread is doing that, but in the same way that some people criticizing the design are doing it as a vehicle to share racist and sexist view points, not everyone calling people out (online in general, not here) is doing it in good faith and just wants to quickly shut people up who don’t like the design, because they do like it.

That being said, I understand why saying you don’t like THIS design that is obviously based on a traditional African warrior, and Tanya herself doesn’t have these features “hidden” (for lack of a better word, I don’t think MKX Tanya was hiding these features - aside from her appearance in the story mode obviously). So I shouldn’t have been so smug in saying that nooooobooooddyyy who dislikes the design is racist or just wants her to be eye candy because there are some who are genuinely like that. A lot in fact. So yeah I get why it raises eyebrows, and rightfully so, but I fully understand why a lot of Tanya fans are kind of disappointed that she doesn’t look more like older versions of Tanya. Most people are originally drawn to their favorite character because of a design they liked in the first game they saw them in, at least I was drawn to the ninja of my favorite color and a cool looking move set.

Basically, comments on any design in this game should be taken at face value but I get that there are more potential implications when dealing with this one in particular. I’m just saying if Liu Kang had idk, a shaved head since that’s what some real life monks do, everyone would agree it looks fucking weird. And not because they have any motives beyond wanting him to look how they remember him looking. I get that it’s not equivalent because we are dealing with a character who used to be hyper sexualized and Liu Kang wasn’t, but I think people should be given the benefit of the doubt unless they do something actually egregious. For people arguing in good faith, it IS equivalent. The comment that kicked off my rant was basically saying that anyone who didn’t like it just wants to get off to a video game character, what losers etc, and that is what pissed me off because I refuse to believe that person actually thinks that. So none of this is directed at you, especially as a fellow member of the Lin Kuei lmao.

 

[Benlo]

I would have loved her not having that deep/loud voice.

For me, she sounds this way older than Mileena or Kitana, and it's a bit weird.

 

[xenogorgeous]

Tanya is fine; NRS chose a more tribal african warrior approach to her, instead of the sultry egyptian one, but, since is a new timeline, they thought that would be interesting to try something different and they went for that regarding her, so, let's see how this develop inside the story and lore of MK1

Personally, I like the sassy , overconfident , and funny arrogant personality that Tanya has, so, if those all are well developed for MK1 about her, so, her apperance is less important to me

NRS always does that, trying new looks and appareance look for some characters here and there; even Kitana , did not have the same physical look since MK9, so, no surprise here .... Kitana looks each time, a differente person in MK9, MKX, MK11 and now in MK1, lol !

I'm more interesting in how they will present a modern Ashrah and Nitara in the new game, with the new engine , and a much more visual powerful tool now being used; in how these old 3D characters will look now .... Li Mei looks good, much better than her story cameo from MKX, so, I'm excited too see how Ashrah and Nitara will look in modern graphics !

 

[chrisisnice]

Wow, a Black female character that is now animated to be unambiguously Black...what a world we live in!


But aside from that, it seems clear that Tanya's outfit is drawing inspiration from historical African warrior outfits - from which group/time period, I couldn't tell you. Given the fact that she is exactly that - a Black Africanized warrior - I'm happy that,

a.) she's been given a clear and important role in this timeline rather than be a generic, do-nothing, deceptive bad guy and
b.) she doesn't exist as mere exotic eye-candy for the overwhelmingly male audience, a large chunk of whom are sex-starved whether by choice or circumstance


Now, are people allowed to dislike her new look? Certainly!
However, the reasons that people have historically disliked Black female characters' appearance/casting vary from mere boredom to people being dismayed that the character has evolved beyond having Euro-centric features/hair to being outright anti-woke/racist. Plus, all the ancillary reasons in between.

Thus, when a person says that they dislike Tanya's look in this game, there is absolutely a right to apply some side-eye skepticism to them because their reasons might indeed be the worst ones. Or they could be for the same reason(s) that I'm not a fan of Sub-Zero's man-bun - I happen to like my Bi-Hans fully masked!



Now about Tanya's hair....

Frankly, I love it! Finally, we have a well-animated Black woman's hairstyle in a Mortal Kombat game that again, is unambiguously Black. It appears to be a play on her hairstyle from MK4, except far better. Her hair is absolutely beautiful.

Tanya's hair is not only unique and pays homage to African warriors from antiquity, but it just looks damn good - several times better than the two-dimensional-charred-up-mozzarella sticks that Jacqui Briggs had in MK11.

However, Black women's hairstyles have been the subject of vile derision over the years, decades and centuries, even causing some Black women to lose their jobs and disturbing/destroying their self-image.

If you find yourself disliking Tanya's hair for reasons you can't readily explain or because it's not like the Europeanized styles that she's previously had, it might be worth examining to what extent you've internalized negative associations of Black female hairstyles.

These negative associations are present throughout America and the world and can be highly concentrated in various gaming communities on the internet. So, if you, for example, find yourself preferring that Black women have straight hair over braids/twists/locks or other traditionally Black styles, it doesn't make you racist/evil/bad, but it does mean that you have been the product of the society that you live in and haven't yet worked to reject those particular negative effects thereof.


To dislike a hairstyle because it's poorly-animated or because it doesn't fit the character is one thing, but to dislike it for reasons that you know would get you dragged is something else entirely. Tanya's hair fits her new role as a character and is well-made, so there's no issue in that capacity.

Virtually any other reason deserves scrutiny at a minimum and might need to be outright rejected at worst because it is rooted in anti-Blackness.


All-in-all, I've never came close to playing Tanya in any MK game. This time around, her appearance, story lore and most of all, her seemingly mid-screen-centric gameplay make me quite inclined to try her out and possibly make her one of my main characters. I love what she represents, how she represents it and am quite excited to see how else she differs from her past incarnations.

I find a lot of this is just reductive and an oversimplification of the issue. Most people don't like her look, because the new model does not even have a slight nod to what she looked like in previous games. Suggesting that the majority of people are racist because they don’t like the model is bullshit.

The issue with Tanya is that she is the only character to have such a massive departure appearance wise – she does not in any way represent what she has looked like in any past game. Even though there are changes to all characters, Sub looks like Sub, Mileena looks like Mileena, Kung Lao looks like Kung Lao.

If this was a new character, she would be great, but she is not. You seem to forget the exact same outrage that her appearance had in MKX. This got to the point that NRS changed the model entirely to having darker skin, white eyes and a slick haircut. People would be just as outraged if Kitana suddenly had a white mullet haircut, no eyebrows and put on 50kgs. While that would be fine for a brand-new character, it would not be Kitana. That is what most people would be pissed – it certainly would not be about being Asian.

It seems like you may be looking at Twitter (or similar) and being outraged. Twitter is not representative of the community at large, it is mainly filled with young trolls just trying to piss off SJWs because they find their reactions funny – usually on topics they have little interest in IRL.

I am a minority in a few different categories. I try to be VERY careful about accusing people en masse of being <insert – phobe/ist of choice> as the terms entirely lose their gravitas and power through overuse.

Are there racist/sexist, homophobic people??? Unfortunately yes! Do we need to grandstand about it in a forum where this has not been a major issue??? No.

Best to keep it to Twitter.

 

[Pterodactyl]

Sometimes I wonder how some of you dudes walk around through life if you think this is somehow ugly



What the fuck does a normal woman look like to you if this is "hideous"?

on what planet do these look better?

 

[Pterodactyl]

Wow, a Black female character that is now animated to be unambiguously Black...what a world we live in!


But aside from that, it seems clear that Tanya's outfit is drawing inspiration from historical African warrior outfits - from which group/time period, I couldn't tell you. Given the fact that she is exactly that - a Black Africanized warrior - I'm happy that,

a.) she's been given a clear and important role in this timeline rather than be a generic, do-nothing, deceptive bad guy and
b.) she doesn't exist as mere exotic eye-candy for the overwhelmingly male audience, a large chunk of whom are sex-starved whether by choice or circumstance


Now, are people allowed to dislike her new look? Certainly!
However, the reasons that people have historically disliked Black female characters' appearance/casting vary from mere boredom to people being dismayed that the character has evolved beyond having Euro-centric features/hair to being outright anti-woke/racist. Plus, all the ancillary reasons in between.

Thus, when a person says that they dislike Tanya's look in this game, there is absolutely a right to apply some side-eye skepticism to them because their reasons might indeed be the worst ones. Or they could be for the same reason(s) that I'm not a fan of Sub-Zero's man-bun - I happen to like my Bi-Hans fully masked!



Now about Tanya's hair....

Frankly, I love it! Finally, we have a well-animated Black woman's hairstyle in a Mortal Kombat game that again, is unambiguously Black. It appears to be a play on her hairstyle from MK4, except far better. Her hair is absolutely beautiful.

Tanya's hair is not only unique and pays homage to African warriors from antiquity, but it just looks damn good - several times better than the two-dimensional-charred-up-mozzarella sticks that Jacqui Briggs had in MK11.

However, Black women's hairstyles have been the subject of vile derision over the years, decades and centuries, even causing some Black women to lose their jobs and disturbing/destroying their self-image.

If you find yourself disliking Tanya's hair for reasons you can't readily explain or because it's not like the Europeanized styles that she's previously had, it might be worth examining to what extent you've internalized negative associations of Black female hairstyles.

These negative associations are present throughout America and the world and can be highly concentrated in various gaming communities on the internet. So, if you, for example, find yourself preferring that Black women have straight hair over braids/twists/locks or other traditionally Black styles, it doesn't make you racist/evil/bad, but it does mean that you have been the product of the society that you live in and haven't yet worked to reject those particular negative effects thereof.


To dislike a hairstyle because it's poorly-animated or because it doesn't fit the character is one thing, but to dislike it for reasons that you know would get you dragged is something else entirely. Tanya's hair fits her new role as a character and is well-made, so there's no issue in that capacity.

Virtually any other reason deserves scrutiny at a minimum and might need to be outright rejected at worst because it is rooted in anti-Blackness.


All-in-all, I've never came close to playing Tanya in any MK game. This time around, her appearance, story lore and most of all, her seemingly mid-screen-centric gameplay make me quite inclined to try her out and possibly make her one of my main characters. I love what she represents, how she represents it and am quite excited to see how else she differs from her past incarnations.

You said it all, and I agree. I didn't want to get into it but I feel the shadow of a greater bias when hear some people's complaints about her new look. She like everyone MK11 and beyond, has more ethnically defined features(not to say she had zero before, but the face modeling tech is just so good now). I see a lot of people complaining about the way she look but none of them are being specific as to what they think is wrong with her appearance.

 

[Dankster Morgan]

I see a lot of people complaining about the way she look but none of them are being specific as to what they think is wrong with her appearance.

I actually like her hair, but I think the head piece and collar piece are awful and detract from it. The changes I would make to Tanya’s design are

• lose the head piece and collar entirely cause they look bad imo and detract from the cool hair
• choose different shoulder gear and something different than those straps to match the rest of her outfit. Kind of like how Kitana’s silver accents all go together and compliment the blue.
• bring back the white glowing eyes and some tattoos like her Pyromancer variation from MKX.
• I’ll hold back A LITTLE on saying the face should look a little better, because it may resemble her model better in game and they just didn’t put their best foot forward.

 

[Pterodactyl]

I'm talking about the face, the one thing you didn't really go into detail about.

 

[mrapchem]

Yeah that’s fine, more power to you for liking them. Just doesn’t look Tanya to me, especially without the eyes, where most of the redesigns still look very much how I’d expect a re-imagining to look.

I try to have a cool head but I’m not gonna lie, it does piss me off to see racism / sexism weaponized to tell people to just shut the fuck up if they don’t like this design. Nobody in this thread is doing that, but in the same way that some people criticizing the design are doing it as a vehicle to share racist and sexist view points, not everyone calling people out (online in general, not here) is doing it in good faith and just wants to quickly shut people up who don’t like the design, because they do like it.

That being said, I understand why saying you don’t like THIS design that is obviously based on a traditional African warrior, and Tanya herself doesn’t have these features “hidden” (for lack of a better word, I don’t think MKX Tanya was hiding these features - aside from her appearance in the story mode obviously). So I shouldn’t have been so smug in saying that nooooobooooddyyy who dislikes the design is racist or just wants her to be eye candy because there are some who are genuinely like that. A lot in fact. So yeah I get why it raises eyebrows, and rightfully so, but I fully understand why a lot of Tanya fans are kind of disappointed that she doesn’t look more like older versions of Tanya. Most people are originally drawn to their favorite character because of a design they liked in the first game they saw them in, at least I was drawn to the ninja of my favorite color and a cool looking move set.

Basically, comments on any design in this game should be taken at face value but I get that there are more potential implications when dealing with this one in particular. I’m just saying if Liu Kang had idk, a shaved head since that’s what some real life monks do, everyone would agree it looks fucking weird. And not because they have any motives beyond wanting him to look how they remember him looking. I get that it’s not equivalent because we are dealing with a character who used to be hyper sexualized and Liu Kang wasn’t, but I think people should be given the benefit of the doubt unless they do something actually egregious. For people arguing in good faith, it IS equivalent. The comment that kicked off my rant was basically saying that anyone who didn’t like it just wants to get off to a video game character, what losers etc, and that is what pissed me off because I refuse to believe that person actually thinks that. So none of this is directed at you, especially as a fellow member of the Lin Kuei lmao.

About her eyes - she actually does have glowing eyes during some of her gameplay, so it appears as though they kept that part of her lore, just with a twist.

But I will say this, considering the fact that people have taken to Twitter to harass the very face model that this thread is originally about, I can certainly see why certain people are considering race when hearing others complain about Tanya's design. There is obviously a reasonable limit to how much/often that should happen, and there are definitely some that are weaponizing it against Tanya naysayers but considering the numerous racial occurrences that have happened over the years, I can understand peoples' heightened sensitivities. Also, there are literal videos of people calling Tanya ugly due to her Africanized features, which only serves to further peoples' ire.

None of that applies to you though thankfully. You seem to dislike aspects of her design merely because you want her to resemble more of her classic look (more yellow and white eyes), which I find completely reasonable.

As I've looked at the discourse around Tanya's looks, it appears to be more of the case that people are calling her ugly or disliking her hair rather than people wanting her to look like a sex worker or something. Some of it is what you described - people getting worked up because she's not what they remember her to be. But there is a bit of the discourse that is anti-Black in nature - I saw someone put a straight-haired wig over a picture of Tanya in an effort to 'improve' her look. To give them the benefit of the doubt, they might have been trying to recreate her classic look, but it's little coincidence that for them, straighter hair somehow is better than African hair - for an Africanized warrior.

 

[chrisisnice]

I'm talking about the face, the one thing you didn't really go into detail about.

It is worth noting that eyes are a part of people's faces. A pretty important part actually.

 

[mrapchem]

I find a lot of this is just reductive and an oversimplification of the issue. Most people don't like her look, because the new model does not even have a slight nod to what she looked like in previous games. Suggesting that the majority of people are racist because they don’t like the model is bullshit.

The issue with Tanya is that she is the only character to have such a massive departure appearance wise – she does not in any way represent what she has looked like in any past game. Even though there are changes to all characters, Sub looks like Sub, Mileena looks like Mileena, Kung Lao looks like Kung Lao.

If this was a new character, she would be great, but she is not. You seem to forget the exact same outrage that her appearance had in MKX. This got to the point that NRS changed the model entirely to having darker skin, white eyes and a slick haircut. People would be just as outraged if Kitana suddenly had a white mullet haircut, no eyebrows and put on 50kgs. While that would be fine for a brand-new character, it would not be Kitana. That is what most people would be pissed – it certainly would not be about being Asian.

It seems like you may be looking at Twitter (or similar) and being outraged. Twitter is not representative of the community at large, it is mainly filled with young trolls just trying to piss off SJWs because they find their reactions funny – usually on topics they have little interest in IRL.

I am a minority in a few different categories. I try to be VERY careful about accusing people en masse of being <insert – phobe/ist of choice> as the terms entirely lose their gravitas and power through overuse.

Are there racist/sexist, homophobic people??? Unfortunately yes! Do we need to grandstand about it in a forum where this has not been a major issue??? No.

Best to keep it to Twitter.

Ironically enough, I don't even have a Twitter, so I haven't looked at or gathered very much from there, other than hearing about how the same Tanya discourse that is happening on here, Reddit and YouTube is also happening there.

Also, let's not straw-man what I said, which is:
a.) people's reasons for disliking the appearance of a Black female in a game/show are varied and do not necessarily have to do with race, though sometimes they do
b.) disliking a Black woman's hair for reasons that you can't readily explain might need that you need to do some self-examination
c.) if you do indeed tend to disfavor more Black hairstyles on a Black woman over more Euro-centric ones, it doesn't make you racist/bad/evil

If that sounds accusatory to you, I don't know what to tell you.


Also, Tanya is definitely not the only character that has had major departures of their looks in this game. Raiden literally had his entire ethnicity changed, along with a drastic reduction in stature and black hair. Goro went from looking the way he did in MKX with little clothing to being brown-skinned and wearing Reiko shoulder pads, armor and pants. Li Mei more or less looks like her MKX incarnation, which is a dramatic departure to her debut in MKDA.

Somehow none of these characters received any of the derision that Tanya - and her actual voice actor - received. This is not merely about people wanting nostalgia.

 

[mrapchem]

You said it all, and I agree. I didn't want to get into it but I feel the shadow of a greater bias when hear some people's complaints about her new look. She like everyone MK11 and beyond, has more ethnically defined features(not to say she had zero before, but the face modeling tech is just so good now). I see a lot of people complaining about the way she look but none of them are being specific as to what they think is wrong with her appearance.

I sense a deeper and more pernicious bias as well. But also mixed with that are people that want that proverbial old thang back.

She is literally a part of a warrior group named after a Zulu word for 'Guardian', complete with African warrior garb that is clearly inspired by Black Panther - yet she is the only character being called ugly. The only character whose voice actor is being harassed over the internet as we speak, and the only one that has been compared to Baraka. Also, she's the main character that people want her hair to be changed - in a game where Sub-Zero and Scorpion both look like Salt Bae and Smoke's hair makes him look like his name is Billy.

 

[chrisisnice]

Also, let's not straw-man what I said, which is:
a.) people's reasons for disliking the appearance of a Black female in a game/show are varied and do not necessarily have to do with race, though sometimes they do
b.) disliking a Black woman's hair for reasons that you can't readily explain might need that you need to do some self-examination
c.) if you do indeed tend to disfavor more Black hairstyles on a Black woman over more Euro-centric ones, it doesn't make you racist/bad/evil

If that sounds accusatory to you, I don't know what to tell you.

So basically all this boils down to is that you believe people have the ability to be racist. OK.

Also, Tanya is definitely not the only character that has had major departures of their looks in this game. Raiden literally had his entire ethnicity changed, along with a drastic reduction in stature and black hair. Goro went from looking the way he did in MKX with little clothing to being brown-skinned and wearing Reiko shoulder pads, armor and pants. Li Mei more or less looks like her MKX incarnation, which is a dramatic departure to her debut in MKDA.

Somehow none of these characters received any of the derision that Tanya - and her actual voice actor - received. This is not merely about people wanting nostalgia.

Tanya's was much more extreme and yes, much of it was nostalgia rather than racism. You are just reading in to it. People were equally outraged and vocal that she was not dark skinned in MKX - they wanted something that resembled Tanya back. You would be lying if you said the new model represented Tanya in any way apart from having dark skin. If she was announced with a different name, no one would realise it was meant to be her.

Raiden on the other hand...



I would argue that Raiden still has the same essence as he always had. He had the same iconic hat, it wearing similar clothes to always, has electricity on his fists. He does not have red frizzy hair, an orange bubble skirt with green mist coming from his hands.

Goro looks essentially the same with a reasonable update - he has 4 arms, a ponytail, armor etc. You can clearly see it is Goro.

Li Mei is based on MKX - almost exactly which was her first update in 15 or so years.

In comparison, Tanya looks nothing like her former self apart from having dark skin.

I am not saying that the new model is ugly, she is not, but she does look like to be an entirely new character. This is jarring to fans.

 

[Ilthuain]

The comment that kicked off my rant was basically saying that anyone who didn’t like it just wants to get off to a video game character, what losers etc, and that is what pissed me off because I refuse to believe that person actually thinks that.

I... uhh... didn't say that.

I said this:

The model is very pretty and she looks cool in the game.

I have no idea wtf some of you are on about. Not every female character in every game exists solely to sexually excite you personally.

You added the "anyone who didn’t like it" and "what losers etc".

I stand by what I said, too. If someone thinks this character looks like she's related to Baraka or is disfigured, I think they have a very narrow acceptable beauty standard for women. People don't say things like that if their real problem is the delta between a previous iteration of a character and the current one, they say "she doesn't look like Tanya to me".

Your critique seems to be a bit more nuanced, so hey, cool beans and the above doesn't apply to you.

 

[Rude]

Is TanyaGate still going on? Y'all need to get a life, for real.

Or at the very least talk about the gameplay shown.

Those spinkicks she did in the air looked cool as hell. I'm very curious what the glowing looking halo thingie is about. Seems like her foldable weapon has Hella range. Could be a midscreen/sweep range focused character?

Just...please. Please. Shut the fuck up about her face. For the love of God. Everytime I read Tanya "discourse," parts of me I thought long since gone die inside. How do a man's insides die twice? That's how inane this shit has gotten.

 

[Cicada 5]

Tanya is fine; NRS chose a more tribal african warrior approach to her, instead of the sultry egyptian one, but, since is a new timeline, they thought that would be interesting to try something different and they went for that regarding her, so, let's see how this develop inside the story and lore of MK1

Personally, I like the sassy , overconfident , and funny arrogant personality that Tanya has, so, if those all are well developed for MK1 about her, so, her apperance is less important to me

NRS always does that, trying new looks and appareance look for some characters here and there; even Kitana , did not have the same physical look since MK9, so, no surprise here .... Kitana looks each time, a differente person in MK9, MKX, MK11 and now in MK1, lol !

I'm more interesting in how they will present a modern Ashrah and Nitara in the new game, with the new engine , and a much more visual powerful tool now being used; in how these old 3D characters will look now .... Li Mei looks good, much better than her story cameo from MKX, so, I'm excited too see how Ashrah and Nitara will look in modern graphics !

Even in the Midway era, Kitana's appearance was inconsistent.

 

[mrapchem]

So basically all this boils down to is that you believe people have the ability to be racist. OK.



Tanya's was much more extreme and yes, much of it was nostalgia rather than racism. You are just reading in to it. People were equally outraged and vocal that she was not dark skinned in MKX - they wanted something that resembled Tanya back. You would be lying if you said the new model represented Tanya in any way apart from having dark skin. If she was announced with a different name, no one would realise it was meant to be her.

Raiden on the other hand...

View attachment 20100

I would argue that Raiden still has the same essence as he always had. He had the same iconic hat, it wearing similar clothes to always, has electricity on his fists. He does not have red frizzy hair, an orange bubble skirt with green mist coming from his hands.

Goro looks essentially the same with a reasonable update - he has 4 arms, a ponytail, armor etc. You can clearly see it is Goro.

Li Mei is based on MKX - almost exactly which was her first update in 15 or so years.

In comparison, Tanya looks nothing like her former self apart from having dark skin.

I am not saying that the new model is ugly, she is not, but she does look like to be an entirely new character. This is jarring to fans.

I'm not going to continue going back and forth with someone that won't read, especially about race/racial issues with peoples' perception of Black women, whether fictional or real. And I won't be repeating what I said, because it's already there - you are the one projecting things that haven't been stated without actually reading what was said and not said.




Anyways, Tanya has been re-written to be a much more important character with an entirely different role in this timeline to what she's been previously, and it's a vast improvement.

She is literally a part (seemingly the leader) of an Africanized guard of royal warriors that is named after the Zulu word for "guardian" and has the outfit, hair and temperament to match it.

Even with this, Tanya still looks - and plays - like Tanya - from her yellow outfit, to her weapon, which is a combination of her MKX variation weapons, to her gameplay, which elevates her MKX move-set and seems to add lore/mechanics to her glowing eyes, to her ever-changing hairstyle that has never stayed the same in any game that she's ever been in. Literally, every reaction video of the trailer featured the person having the reaction being instantly able to recognize Tanya before seeing any gameplay footage.

Very few people are calling her a new character - they are either calling her ugly, bemoaning her hair or they are trying to change her design. Once again, they are even harassing her voice actor on Twitter citing the character model's ugliness, which did not happen to any other character in this game or the last or the one before that.

If you cannot bring yourself to acknowledge the possibility that in this world we live in - especially in the United States, where anti-Blackness is not only more rampant than in years past, but is becoming less opaque every day - there might be subconscious racialized impulsions behind many peoples' disproportionate disdain for Tanya's appearance in MK1 after having been remade to be not only unambiguously Black, but Africanized, then you are being willfully ignorant and thus do not have the range to discuss this with the seriousness that it deserves.

Reply if you must, but I won't be - at least not to you.

 

[Cicada 5]

Hahahaha. She looks ugly. Now go write.


Honestly though, I feel most people here, or who knows, maybe it's just me, but anyways, complaints are not done in a vacuum, if this lady was wearing a brown outfit, had been named Kamilla, and didn't have that drill move, 90% of the people wouldn't complain.

Yeah, they would. How do I know this? Because Jacqui, who has similar features to this new Tanya, got similar complaints. It is incredibly naïve to assume that no one would complain about this character design if it weren't given to Tanya, especially given the illuminating responses we've been seeing from video game fans over the past decade.

I personally would think she looks great. The thing is, she's not Kamila, she's Tanya, so all complaints go tied to the fact that she doesn't look anything like Tanya.

Where were these complaints when Mortal Kombat Deception gave her blank eyes and longer hair? This is not the first time Tanya's look has received an overhaul.

It's not a "look how ugly this chick", it's more like "why is Tanya ugly, when she used to be pretty,

"Why is Tanya ugly, when she used to be pretty". This is what the kids these days would call "playing yourself".

why is she old when she used to be old,

What?

why is she loyal when she was selfish and treacherous,

Tanya being treacherous was a surprise twist in Mortal Kombat 4. She wasn't revealed as a disloyal opportunist until her ending in MK4.

why is she serious when she used to be playfully bitchy?"

Who says she can't be both?

 

[Marinjuana]

I'm a pro-Tanya supporter with anti-unibrow views

 

[JGillette]

So basically all this boils down to is that you believe people have the ability to be racist. OK.



Tanya's was much more extreme and yes, much of it was nostalgia rather than racism. You are just reading in to it. People were equally outraged and vocal that she was not dark skinned in MKX - they wanted something that resembled Tanya back. You would be lying if you said the new model represented Tanya in any way apart from having dark skin. If she was announced with a different name, no one would realise it was meant to be her.

Raiden on the other hand...

View attachment 20100

I would argue that Raiden still has the same essence as he always had. He had the same iconic hat, it wearing similar clothes to always, has electricity on his fists. He does not have red frizzy hair, an orange bubble skirt with green mist coming from his hands.

Goro looks essentially the same with a reasonable update - he has 4 arms, a ponytail, armor etc. You can clearly see it is Goro.

Li Mei is based on MKX - almost exactly which was her first update in 15 or so years.

In comparison, Tanya looks nothing like her former self apart from having dark skin.

I am not saying that the new model is ugly, she is not, but she does look like to be an entirely new character. This is jarring to fans.

thats exactly what im trying to say but people love labeling each other just because they cant accept no one has to agree with them

and i wasnt among the people who were outraged because of tanya’s skin issues in mkx before it was reverted back to original because in some way she had things that represent her outside of yellow/gold outfit (kobu jutsu, fireballs, bang on her hair, the black icon on her skirt and the eye make up in the story mode)

 

[theotherguy]

In comparison, Tanya looks nothing like her former self apart from having dark skin.

Dark haired, dark skinned character that wears black/yellow/white/gold coloured clothes and has a weapon. Sounds like Tanya to me.

Last i checked, she's gone from using a boomerang, to kobu-jutsu, to naginata, to a 3-sectioned staff in this game. So it's not like there's any continuity there to say that she has a defined weapon or style.

Only reason kitana/mileena are more defined is because of the whole ninja mask schtick and iconic weapons. Take away those and they become rather generic as well.

But this thread...wow!

 

[Dankster Morgan]

I... uhh... didn't say that.

I said this:



You added the "anyone who didn’t like it" and "what losers etc".

I stand by what I said, too. If someone thinks this character looks like she's related to Baraka or is disfigured, I think they have a very narrow acceptable beauty standard for women. People don't say things like that if their real problem is the delta between a previous iteration of a character and the current one, they say "she doesn't look like Tanya to me".

Your critique seems to be a bit more nuanced, so hey, cool beans and the above doesn't apply to you.

Well I owe you an apology, I honed in on the last sentence. I’ll eat my own words here, I should have treated your comment with the same nuance I’m asking for when answering the critiques. My bad dude!

 

[Dankster Morgan]

About her eyes - she actually does have glowing eyes during some of her gameplay, so it appears as though they kept that part of her lore, just with a twist.

But I will say this, considering the fact that people have taken to Twitter to harass the very face model that this thread is originally about, I can certainly see why certain people are considering race when hearing others complain about Tanya's design. There is obviously a reasonable limit to how much/often that should happen, and there are definitely some that are weaponizing it against Tanya naysayers but considering the numerous racial occurrences that have happened over the years, I can understand peoples' heightened sensitivities. Also, there are literal videos of people calling Tanya ugly due to her Africanized features, which only serves to further peoples' ire.

None of that applies to you though thankfully. You seem to dislike aspects of her design merely because you want her to resemble more of her classic look (more yellow and white eyes), which I find completely reasonable.

As I've looked at the discourse around Tanya's looks, it appears to be more of the case that people are calling her ugly or disliking her hair rather than people wanting her to look like a sex worker or something. Some of it is what you described - people getting worked up because she's not what they remember her to be. But there is a bit of the discourse that is anti-Black in nature - I saw someone put a straight-haired wig over a picture of Tanya in an effort to 'improve' her look. To give them the benefit of the doubt, they might have been trying to recreate her classic look, but it's little coincidence that for them, straighter hair somehow is better than African hair - for an Africanized warrior.

Yeah I can see all of that and unfortunately it doesn’t surprise me.

All I can say at this point is yes I wish she more closely resembled old Tanya, but this new design could be way better than I’m thinking it is and the costume pieces I don’t like might look better in the context of the full game. I hated like half the injustice 2 designs but they didn’t bother me in the full game. So who’s to say. Still think that argument should be judged on an individual basis, which nobody in here is arguing against so I’m good.

And she more than likely has a classic Tanya alternate regardless.