[X] My Assistant

[JonathanC]

It is an Orc. The person who created the artwork in question said so in the description. For all you know she could be a SURGED character with head horns.

*shrug* the illustration almost makes sense if it's an Oni, though. Brightly colored, Japanese (so possibly a fan of the fashion culture)....oh well.

[ravensmuse]

For the love of God.

JohnathanC was the one saying that, apparently, only two forms of characters exist. Either all-black "Matrix" style characters, or this monstrosity of stupidity which is way above and beyond "pink mohawk." And that a van full of guys dressed in black lurking around a secure facility was somehow more suspicious than a van full of heavily armed clubkids lurking around a secure facility. I was the one saying that most runners are closer to the middle of those extremes. He's saying that most runners should look more Strawberry Shortcake here. Which is just absurd.

That's actually not what he was arguing about at all. He's saying that the culture already exists - it's called Decora, and it's something that if you ended up in Harajuku / Shibuya right now and walked around, you'd see people wearing it. Just like a ton of other subcultural fashion trends - of which there exists J-cyberpunk, which might be more up your alley (if maybe a little too neon for some folks).

Yes, if a player showed up at an infiltration wearing that, I would be hard pressed not to nail them for it. But walking around the streets of Seattle, San Fran, LA, Tokyo, New York? Possibly doing work there not involving infiltration? I wouldn't have a problem with it.

Also, the bolded? Very judgmental. Might want to reel that in, seeing that it's as much an expression of rebellion as punk was back in the 70s. Just because you don't understand the language doesn't make it inherently inferior.

JonathanC, you and I need to discuss your knowledge of J-fashion. Someone else with a grasp of it? Awesome.

[CanRay]

Shadowrunners are supposed to shown off as "Individualistic" in direct comparison to the "Drone" that is John/Jane Q. Wageslave. Even the folks that are pure "Ice Cold" professionals probably don't dress that way all the time. Life ain't all biz, Chummer. Hell, even "Pink Mohawks" will toss on an appropriate hat or helmet and blend in when they need to. As for the middle-of-the-road "Black Trenchcoat" crowd, well, they're nice professionals until the coats come off, then the septic pumper-truck full of drek hits the HVAC system.

But the main key is that they are their own people, unique in all the ways that matter, with their own style, flare, panache, and refusal to give in to authority. That's what makes them Cyberpunks. And I think that's what people forget far too often.

As I put it to one of my white trash welfare rapper classmates (Hey, at least he was "White Ghetto"!) many, many years ago, "No, you're not rebelling or being unique. You're in a clique just like the rest of your friends over there. Wearing the same clothing, listening to the same music, and refusing anyone that dares even the most slight difference acceptance. I'm the most unique person in this class, because I wear what I want...", and that's when I got knocked over and the boots to the head and ribs started.

[Ol' Scratch]

That's actually not what he was arguing about at all. He's saying that the culture already exists - it's called Decora, and it's something that if you ended up in Harajuku / Shibuya right now and walked around, you'd see people wearing it. Just like a ton of other subcultural fashion trends - of which there exists J-cyberpunk, which might be more up your alley (if maybe a little too neon for some folks).

Sorry, but if even in the books they talk about this stupid "fashion" trend being localized in some small district in the middle of nowhere, that's direct evidence that it isn't normal anywhere else.

And, yet again, just because there are tiny, isolated areas where some people do walk around dressed like that, it doesn't mean they blend in or that they go unnoticed. It may be a bit more expected in those areas, just like when furries show up at conventions, but that doesn't mean they don't stick out like a sore thumb. Doubly so the moment you step away from those miniscule, insignificant, worthless areas and go somewhere with substance.

Even worse is the logic he was using with the images he was finding. I'm still boggling at the one where he says the ork stands out in the crowd while (apparently oblivious to the fact) that he was supposed to be showing how grotesquely weird monstrosities like Strawberry Shortcake not only blended in, but was the ideal norm for most runners. And the ork in that photo wasn't even that bad unless you were specifically looking for someone with a mildly weird fashion sense. Hell, most of the pictures he pointed out were just people wearing something other than black, as if that somehow proved his point.

Also, the bolded? Very judgmental. Might want to reel that in, seeing that it's as much an expression of rebellion as punk was back in the 70s. Just because you don't understand the language doesn't make it inherently inferior.

I understand the language. It's just a very stupid language. Just like the "language" furries speak.

[Stahlseele]

That is disturbing.


I have to agree, actually.

Deal with it.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHFX_e...440&bih=785

Sorry, Not sure how to copy the link as it was originally posted by Ravensmuse...

Interesting...

[ravensmuse]

I understand the language. It's just a very stupid language. Just like the "language" furries speak.

You've related Vivienne Westwood with bondage porn. I think I can safely step out of the conversation now. If you don't understand the inherent rebellion in the imagery, than it's not for you.

Interesting...

Look up the Japanese design house "Fotus" (don't know how to do the umlauts on here) or beast:beauty. Several nice images, I just couldn't find ones that weren't going to link to, um, less than safe images (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Fabe]

Sorry, but if even in the books they talk about this stupid "fashion" trend being localized in some small district in the middle of nowhere, that's direct evidence that it isn't normal anywhere else.

And, yet again, just because there are tiny, isolated areas where some people do walk around dressed like that, it doesn't mean they blend in or that they go unnoticed. It may be a bit more expected in those areas, just like when furries show up at conventions, but that doesn't mean they don't stick out like a sore thumb. Doubly so the moment you step away from those miniscule, insignificant, worthless areas and go somewhere with substance.

Shibuya is not some " miniscule, insignificant, worthless area" it's a major fashion district in Tokyo.

[Ol' Scratch]

You've related Vivienne Westwood with bondage porn.

No I didn't.

I think I can safely step out of the conversation now.

See ya.

If you don't understand the inherent rebellion in the imagery, than it's not for you.

Again, I understand it. That doesn't make it any less sad nor any less stupid.

But no, you guys are right. When a clubkid go walking down Main Street, no one so much as notices. It's totally the norm. Instead, people are gawking and staring at the people dressed and acting, you know, like normal people. Yes sir. You've nailed it. Strawberry Shortcake is the way all runners should look because it lets them blend in everywhere they go, not just at some obnoxious fetish nightclub or a pitifully small area in Tokyo.

Shibuya is not some " miniscule, insignificant, worthless area" it's a major fashion district in Tokyo.

Yeah, it's ginormous. All 15 square kilometers of it. My bad. And everything that goes on there is so normal in the other 499,999,985 square kilometers of the planet that they didn't need to talk about this outlier of a tiny, insignificant community of 200,000 people, of which the sad little fetish anime fans are a tiny proportion thereof. Screw the other 6,999,800,000+ people out there. They're the ones that draw attention.

I don't know what I was thinking.

[Shortstraw]

Do you really think people would even notice the clothes with all the AR overlays in bright colours everywhere.

[Tanegar]

- Not ridiculous clothing, but page 68 has a female Ork with tiny tusks about the size of the ones in the illustration we were looking at. So apparently tiny tusks are canon? Sad.

Presumably, she has the Human-Looking quality.

- Page 31. Not sure what that thing is, but it's wearing a bikini top made of r ed feathers, and just the sleeves from a red shirt (no actual shirt, just the sleeves).

I don't think it's wearing anything, actually. That artwork is from the cover of Bug City, and the thing in question is some kind of insect spirit.

[CanRay]

Do you really think people would even notice the clothes with all the AR overlays in bright colours everywhere.

That's the problem with the world today, no attention span, everyone suffers from Attention Deficit Disord... OH SHINY!!!

[EKBT81]

Presumably, she has the Human-Looking quality.

IMO SR illustrations differ far too widely in style to presume anything regarding "canon". Especially ork appearance in illustrations has always varied tremendously.

I'd imagine that the size of ork tusks is actually a continuous scale from "not externally visible" (i.e. Human-looking quality) to the very pronounced "orky" end of the scale. Maybe tusks are a secondary sex characteristic and male orks have on average bigger tusks?

[ravensmuse]

It's funny to see the couple of Dumpshock names commenting on the original piece, by the way.

[cleggster]

Personaly I love it. I look at that and I got to wonder what her story is. Assuming that she is not a spolied rich girl who is trying to get killed on her fathers dime that is. If not then why is she running the shadows. She dosn't seem to have the "my life sucks so hard I have to" mentality. And, if nothing else, it's different. Different is always good. And I admit to sometimes loving me some pink mohawks.

[Neraph]

Everything except the group on the left in the first picture would stand out like a sore thumb. Just because there's a handful of people walking around dressed like idiots, that in no way justifies that it's even remotely normal or goes unnoticed.

Japan is a nation where most people don't bat an eye about a dancing stormtrooper.

[Fabe]

Japan is a nation where most people don't bat an eye about a dancing stormtrooper.

Does any one else think it would great if some Dancers in Star Trek cosplay showed up and turn the whole thing into a super Geeky-nerd fest version of "You got Served" ?

[Saint Hallow]

Does any one else think it would great if some Dancers in Star Trek cosplay showed up and turn the whole thing into a super Geeky-nerd fest version of "You got Served" ?

It has to happen now. Some Star Trek folks have to goto the Star Wars shows at Disney & start an old fashioned dance-off throwdown.

[Shortcake]

Hello, all!

I am Shortcake's player, and as I've gotten permission to join this forum, I'd love to answer any (non-critical) questions you all may have about my character. First off, though, I'll try to straighten up some of the questions already asked and implied in previous posts.

Shortcake is indeed an oni, a subspecies of ork. This is why she has her brightly colored skin and why she has her horns.

Shortcake dresses in the fairy kei style, one of the many trends in Japanese fashion. In our game, retro styles and trends are coming back with a modern twist to them.

Shortcake, is, as you all pointed out, very obvious. She is not sneaky. She is not intended to be sneaky, and in fact provides a wonderful distraction for the rest of the team. As some of you have said, she would draw fire and likely be shot at first. While some might consider this an insult, Shortcake is the tank of the group. She can handle being shot at and can handle taking bullets, providing a meat shield between the enemies and her more squishy friends. As well, all eyes are drawn to her whenever she walks into an area, and that means all those eyes are now off of her friends, which mean those sneaky-types in the group have an easier time of slipping past guards, getting into a building, etc.

I do not believe that anybody has said that Shortcake's style is how runners should dress. Instead, it's a possibility for how a runner could. When she needs to be sneakier, she dresses more somberly and hides her hair.

With regards to her gun, of course she's not firing it in this pose. When I commissioned the artist, I asked her to give me a playful, energetic, fun pose. This was not a piece intended to show Shortcake firing down a few ghouls. And yes, she has guns like that. She uses her armorer skill to modify the gun until it looks as retro-80's as she wants. Perverse? Yes. But that's rather par for the course, for an ork.

And lastly, the woman I commissioned is a brilliant artist and a very nice person. She has never played Shadowrun and didn't even know what it was until I commissioned her, and I was very appreciative of her being willing to pick up my character and try something new. I never bothered her about the size of the tusks because I never felt a need to. Shortcake is heavily cybered and has done quite a lot with her appearance.

With this all said, I'd be glad to answer any other questions or comments people have regarding my character.

[Kesendeja]

Frankly I'd play her, she sounds like a lot of fun.

[Shortcake]

Frankly I'd play her, she sounds like a lot of fun.

She is indeed a lot of fun (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) I generally enjoy playing quirkier characters, and what's more quirky than a Shadowrunner who's exceedingly good at drawing attention to his- or herself? And then giggling when the bullets do nothing?

[CanRay]

So... She's Robin to the rest of the group's Batman.

A colourful layer of ablative meat.

...

Why am I hungry now?

[ravensmuse]

Hello, all!

Love it. Love it love it love it. It sounds like you've got a great handle on both the character and the kind of world you want her to live in.

I am very excited to show your post to my wife (who has started her own account on here and is waiting on validation (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) )

Cheers!

Forgot this -

It has to happen now. Some Star Trek folks have to goto the Star Wars shows at Disney & start an old fashioned dance-off throwdown.

So you've never seen this before then...

[ShadowJackal]

Hey guys. I feel a little silly this being my first post on here but I wanted to speak a little bit about the role I can see fashion playing in Shadowrun.

[ Spoiler ]

I'll give a little background because I understand that many don't have the same background as I do and the world of fashion probably is very foreign. Nuances that I notice aren't apparent to others and instances behind movements are difficult to understand as well.

I've been a fashionphile since my teen years when I did the whole punk thing and found some of the more interesting fashion houses. From there I attended college with fashion students that went on to work with the largest European fashion houses (re: McQueen, Dolce & Gabbana, etc.). One of my classmates even went on to place second on a recent season of Project Runway (Althea Harper). I also own a designer and vintage clothing resale business that helps me to involve fashion in my everyday life. So I understand that my opinion on this might be a bit jaded, but I felt the need to comment none the less.

To me, Shadowrun is about counter-culture, the freaks, the dirt that runs on the street that we can't talk about. It’s about doing everything to not be a corporate number munching zombie. For me, I see an obvious connection between these two worlds.

Fashion is a language all its own. Nearly 100 years ago fashion designers were communicating through their fashions and consumers were buying to tell others that message. The most obvious example of this that I can pull is the flapper style of the 1920's. Women's rights were pushed to their limits when women began to wear these leg-baring designs. An entire generation of women communicated their frustrations in a masculine dominated time by wearing a dress that bared her legs nearly entirely. Without a word these women pushed female rights forward for generations to come. They broke down the society's ideal of women and created their own. If that is not power I don't know what is.

One of the most relatable points of fashion history we can pull from is the London movement of the 1970's. Many people relate this movement to Vivienne Westwood but it actually began with both her and her musician partner Malcom McLaren (Manager: Sex Pistols/New York Dolls). In the early 1970's the pair opened a boutique that focused on selling clothing that took the ideal of what youth was supposed to be in London at that time and completely created Punk as we know it. Throughout the next forty years Vivienne Westwood pushed a counter-culture movement through the United States, Europe and finally into Japan in the 1990's.

Which gets to the adorable foofy ork drawing. The Japanese fashion culture may seem like it’s one of its own but really it’s not. It’s just evolving at a different speed than we are used to. Japan really came into the world as a power in the 1980's and because of the boom of corporate life, there were a large number of suddenly wealthy teens that could express themselves through clothing. Punk style was born out of a culture that expected youth to study, go to elite school and attain a corporate job. Japan had and is still having, a revolution of their youths that is speaking through fashion. Among other brands, Vivienne Westwood is one of the most popular brands for any fashion lover in Japan because of the precedent she set over 40 years ago. If you grab an issue of FRUiTS nearly every person in it will be wearing one piece (If not more) of Vivienne Westwood.

Out of her fashions the Japanese culture evolved a style all its own, from Gothic Lolita to Ganguro to Decora, it’s all just an evolution of the counter-culture in Japan that expected children to be one thing or another. It’s just the nature of a country developing and the youth rebelling. It's just how it works sociologically.

It started in the 1970's but really starting in the 80's and 90's Japan started to become a real world power in the fashion world. With lines like Comme des Garcons, MILK and even the influence of Murakami Japan left a big influence on the fashion world. The touch of Japanese culture in fashion is now so fluid it’s unable to be separated.

Now the point where someone said that this is just in Shibuya. I've lived in a few cities in my life, some smaller than others, but I've always seen some extent of counterculture exhibited by the young people. Sure, Shortcake up there is pretty loud colored, but it certainly isn't something I wouldn’t expect to see even today. I've seen plenty of people wearing clothing similar in small mid-western towns, probably just as often as I saw when I lived in Boston. It’s not uncommon.

Here's a blog that a makeup designer in San Fran writes that covers her entire life in the Decora/Lolita world. There are millions of people that wear clothing just like Shortcake every day. I don't know why you don't see it, but honestly, it’s there. It may be varying degrees, but it’s there, and it’s important to notice.

So I see Shadowrunners wearing things like this, maybe not everyone, but certainly to some extent, and fairly often. I can see her going to a club, or hell, just hanging around with friends. It’s just about expression.

There is a huge amount of power that goes with fashion and the expression of it. If you'll allow me to divulge into a bit of conspiracy/grey area I'll talk about the Mafia and fashion.

It’s been long thought that Italian fashion and the Mafia have a strong connection. It’s a perfect pair if you think about it. Producing exorbitantly expensive garments for a selected group of highly wealthy. There is a similar clientele and I think the Mafia and designers alike probably figured out this connection early on.

Strictly speaking, there's been a lot of questions about one of the larger fashion houses in Italy. Versace. You have probably seen the meme that's been around for ages where Donatalla Versace is placed next to the muppet? That tells a small portion of the story. The fashion house has never been hugely successful and in 1997 the then owner/creator, Gianni Versace was killed on the front entrance of his Miami home. Police ruled that they would "Never know why he was killed." A few years ago an ex-Calabrian Mafia member released that he was killed for outstanding debts.

When you look at the deeper picture it’s pretty clear that there were things going on and still are. The theory is that the Calabrian Mafia ('Ndrangheta) was laundering money through the Versace company in partial exchange for providing the family with copious amounts of cocaine (Hence the Muppet photo). Debts outweighed the contribution of the laundering and without payment being made they made their hit.

When Gianni was killed Donatella took seat at the helm (She only owns 20% though, her daughter Allegra is main stakeholder.) and while the company was in financial ruin and has since faced it at least a few more times, they still keep staying afloat. In 2006 it was stated that the company would need to go public to avoid collapsing, to my knowledge this still has not happened. The only reason I can find for this would be private funding in a large way.

The other large scandal in Italian fashion is that of black market goods that filter their way through Italy in various methods. One of the most striking examples of this was one I read about nearly 10 years ago where fashion houses were importing Asian factory workers to work in their factories. This allowed them to pay a miniscule amount for their work and place the ever coveted "Made in Italy" on the label. This was especially popular with leather goods and has been traced to some of the largest fashion houses including Prada.

So, to me, I can see this evolving in a large way in the next 50-60 years. I can see the dirty, black market connections growing ever deeper in a greedy society and I can easily see the youth continuing to express themselves in a way that doesn't quite look right to adults. I mean, sure Shortcake might not be great for covert ops, but if I just wanted to play that, I'd play Metal Gear Solid.

Sorry this got so long. I know I wrote a term paper here but it’s something I’m really passionate about. I hope that sheds a little different perspective on the subject. I do tend to play characters that probably would get kicked out by most GMs but I also play Shadowrun to escape and have fun, while shooting people in the face for money.

Oops! Almost forgot! A neat bit of info that I found last night while researching for my own fiction. A link to an article about how a prison in Palermo (Home of Cosa Nostra) Italy is cracking down on designer fashions being worn by imprisoned Mafia members. She decided to do it because of the level of status the wearers were trying to create through their fashion! Weirdly tangential but it’s neat to see that they were using it to communicate their status’ of wealth even in prison!

[Paul]

The good news is I can hate anime (Or whatever) inspired Shadowrun, and all that goes along with it and you can love it and neither of is wrong. We can each run the game at our own table, the way we want.