I actually kinda dig the animal-kneed legs...but I can't justify changing a race's biological features in a series that's supposed to be about faithfulness to the original canon.

Also, personally, I like both of Nitara's MKDA costumes. At least, as far as the primary goes, I like the concept of it though the execution should have been more detailed. MKDA character designer Luis Mangubat said he based her on Vincent Valentine from FF7, that's what the red jacket and the bandana covering part of her face are about.

Problem is, in practice it actually makes her look more like a pirate captain IMO...but I get what he was going for. The jacket just needed to be more tattered and the clothes underneath should have been more gothy instead of an armored bra and some shiny stockings...

As for the other three, Li Mei, Bo' Rai Cho, and Havik...I'm not sure I see anything wrong with them as-is. Granted anyone that returns in my After-Armageddon stuff will get new duds just for freshness' sake.

I find that for the better. The problem is -like with the fanart link- that peope cannot disassociate vampires from being sexy. Which, knowing the source material in Europe is... well: according to Stoker, Dracula was a gnarly man with palm hair, and with an unsavory face. Now vampire means sex symbol. Fan-fucking-tastic. Please tell me you are not going to give her fishnet stockings?

Btw, was the kahn face done by freehand or did you trace? it looks pretty legit, with the -no disrespect- Did I leave the oven on? look on his face. Iám curious because you seem to have a thing with noses and arms.

The Kahn face was done free-hand.
And I've honestly never gotten your complaint with the way I draw noses because I draw so many different kinds. Could you be more specific, maybe provide an example of how you prefer them to look?

I think the reason why vampires are associated with being sexy and beautiful is because of that eternal youth in undeath has been one of the main foci about being a vampire.

But I think Nitara is being sexy because... well, that's how all the female characters are in MK. Not just because she's a vampire.

As for her pirate theme, I've always seen her as dressed like a victorian noble, but ridiculously sexualized. And her alt is of course a mix of the Chinese Jiang-Shi and gothpunk, again extremely sexualized.

I preferred her alt because of those awesome boots. <3

The eternal youth thing is fairly recent. In fact, Originally they did not have it at all if we are talking about the popular Hungarian/Romanian vampire.

Then aghain, vampires no longer seem to have the following hindrances:
-cross flowing water
-enter a house unless invited
-make noises under the earth (based in reality, graves were usually shallow due to the Trans-Carpathian ground, and decomposing corpses bubbled due to soil composition in one part)
-being able to sire children, called dhampirs.


Imo, it would be nice to see other kind of vampires, like Jiang-Shi, Rolangs from the Himalayas, etc. those have some neat possibilities for specials or even fatalities.

Buffy always used the "can't enter a house uninvited" rule and while not at the forefront of pop culture anymore, still has an official Whedon-plotted ongoing comic (two comics, actually, since Angel has a book too...) keeping the franchise alive.

And as far as Dhampirs, it really hasn't been that long since Blade and Bloodrayne were popular. (Okay, maybe Bloodrayne was never "popular", but gamers at least recognize the name.)

I dunno, maybe it's just 'cause I'm old, but I still think of those franchises before I ever think of Twilight or True Blood when I hear the word "vampire"...

Besides, a lot of this doesn't apply to Nitara. MK vamps aren't mutated humans repelled by religious symbols and blessed water because vampirism is an unholy curse, they're a species from another dimension, her traits and weaknesses are purely biological. For example, the sun doesn't hurt them because they're "creatures of the night", EARTH's sun hurts them because its radiation is different from Vaeternus and Outworld's suns.

Also, I wouldn't mind seeing/designing a Jiang-Shi...but A) Darkstalkers already has one, B) a couple Shang Tsung costumes already borrow elements of the look, C) Western audiences don't understand the significance of the whole "scroll pinned to the hat" thing so I'd also have to invent a priest or priestess character who fights with paper seals as well to justify it, D) if I were being 100% faithful to the lore, they can only move by HOPPING, which is just the silliest fucking idea, and E) if I were creating a character that feeds on other people's chi...well, again, that's already Shang Tsung. Or Kahn. Or I could make a succubus instead, which people might find more interesting. Or I could reveal Sareena IS a succubus, since she's already a demon known for having the power to feed off lifeforce (and for having a job that I think we ALL know consisted mostly of having sex...albeit with Quan Chi and not by choice. Eughhh...)

I don't think that would be too hard.

I genreally avoid Sareena as I see no real point to her character and nothing really outstanding in her, wether MKMSZ or MKDATE -MKA. Also, since this is MK I don't think they ever went that deep about how Sareena gets her jolts. What we imply or see implied in it is a different question altogether.

Not my point.

Kia, Jataaka, and Sareena are clearly concubines. No villain who has an ALL-FEMALE team for their closest henchmen picked them for their fighting skills, they do it so they can order them to bed. Especially given the part about using magic to make them look like hot human chicks instead of monstrous demons.

Hell, Conquest said so outright (albeit with the henchgirls being different characters in the same clothes) 'cause they for some reason felt the need to have some kind of sexual innuendo in every episode.
Now, in theory...if I was a guy who ruled in Hell and could make demons do whatever I want (like Quan Chi is), and I didn't have to worry about them eating my soul because I don't have one (like Quan Chi doesn't because he's also a demon)...then what breed of demon would I pick to make into sex slaves? Probably the succubi, 'cause they'd have the most skill/experience.

I wonder if that makes Reiko an incubus then...

:3

Well Reiko's not a demon, he's undead like Scorp and Noob.

How will Stryker's appearance be influenced? Will he be fully armored like a SWAT commander or possibly be less armored, and armed with a pistol like Bruce Willis and all those other action movie rogue heroes?

I feel like MK9 pretty much nailed it with Stryker's costumes. You gotta have some variation of a blue t-shirt and hat for the primary because it has to look like an MK3 remake, and you gotta have a SWAT-armor outfit in there as his alt to fit the story, because Kurt was on the clock trying to control street rioting when the invasion started.

Ssshh sshh sh... Let me be with my fantasy...

The thing is I do not see Quan Chi as a person who would indulge in such matters. I think he is a pretty singularly driven, take a look at his MK4 Baraka ending thing. The maniac essentially wants complete rule over everything and no one around (ok, Baraka was allowed to sulk around, but even he was killed without a backthought). To use them on others? Likely.

Quan Chi kinda doesn't have any motivation beyond power and more power above some power which is more power than the already achieved power he has.


Though I don't know. And I am not preoccupied with what goes on between Quan Chi's balls.

I've always had a problem with Quan Chi's character in that we don't know enough about his desires and motivations.

You brought up Baraka's MK4 ending where he says he doesn't care about ruling mortals, he's happy to rule a realm with no one in it as long as he's the most powerful person there...but that's the exact example I'm thinking of about in my complaint here.

A) What GOOD is power if you can't exert it over anyone? What would you USE it for?

and B) EVERY other game he's in, he's entirely about taking slaves and reveling in manipulating people, so clearly he DOES enjoy having people around to control and do his bidding. His whole thing seems to be getting into a person's head and figuring out the exact things to say to make them do whatever he wants. Which means the Baraka ending is wrong.

And WHY is he the way he is? All we know about his origin story is that he used to be an oni and he somehow taught himself sorcery and evolved into what he looks like now. So presumably, his motivation in life is to be the smartest, most important person in the realms because he started out a lowly, insignificant dumb monster. But that's all we've got.

So he's a little underdeveloped and inconsistent. The only thing about him that seems constant is that he appears to be the textbook definition of a sociopath, not HAVING the empathy and positive emotions normal people have, but being an expert in faking them or studying human nature to twist people to his advantage.

Given that, I can totally see him being interested in personal satisfaction enough to have a harem, or at the very least using sex/rape as a tool to exert dominance over a character who hates being in Hell and serving him like Sareena.

I could be totally making this up, but I thought Quan Chi's transformation was granted to him by Shinnok after he saved the fallen god from other oni in the Nether Realm.

No, Quan Chi freed Shinnok from the Netherealm Prisons and helped him overthrow Lucifer, and recieved some power from Shinnok for that, but he was ALREADY a sorcerer beforehand.

Canonically, Quan's as old as the Netherealm is and him becoming a sorcerer is one of the earliest points in the MK timeline because he's one of the sorcerers who the Elder Gods had build the very first portals that interconnect the realms, the ones that lead to the Nexus so their champions could hunt the Kamidogus.

Conversely, Shinnok's war with Raiden and fall to the Netherealm is fairly recent, it happened AFTER Shao Kahn conquered Edenia 10,000 years ago.

Fair point, and it does seem like NRS is going wth the shitmixer attitude what he has. On a sidenote, since he generally dwells in the Netherrealm, the MK4 ending ight be the logical conclusion to his plans. Everyone is dead and thus in the netherrealm or the heavens. In the first instance he probably runs the place now, and the heavens might have been defeated by the baldie so, yeah,he may run the show there too.

Except we do not know what his ultimate endgame is. Or he might be like the god Tzeentch who creates contradictory events just because it can and has no end plan.

So basically he could be a troll of cosmic magnitude.

He's not Havik. Chaos for chaos' sake would be inconsistent with what we do know about him, which seems to define his alignment, in Dungeons and Dragons terms, as Lawful-Evil. Hell, just look at the all the circumstances that led to the creation of Scorpion as a spectre and Noob Saibot. He's the chessmaster type of villain for sure.

The suggestion that he wants to kill everybody because he rules the dead makes more sense, but his MK4 ending was not presented in that context, it was presented as "I don't mind living in a completely empty world with no other beings in it, I just want to stare at my glowy hand and feel like the strongest guy in the universe."

Personally, I prefer to say "fuck Baraka's ending, it wasn't canon anyway."

Also, if there are no people to play with, there can't be any form of chaos. Chaos comes from life, so killing everyone would just mean there's complete order.

Well, once we are extinct the universe would still possess an uncanny abiilty to play ball with everything. The whole concept of chaos and order is I think flaw: it is usually dynamic and static enviroments.

In real life the first one is law. IN MK it is emphasized that Seido is a dictatorian unchanging regime.

We're not talking about theoretical physics in the real world.

We're talking about the morality-axis that controls a fictional universe where the word "elements" always refers to Air, Earth, Water, and Fire instead of what's on the periodic table.
More importantly...we're talking about the morality of characters in a thread about a fan fiction universe I write and have final say over. But maybe that's just my way of saying "I'm bored of this particular train of thought, let's get back to using the costume designs thread to talk about costume designs."

I hope you'll soon be done with the MK2 main costumes so we can see some alts! :D That is if you plan on making alts for the MK2 roster, or would rather go straight to the UMK3 ones...

Oh I still plan to start MK2 alts when I'm done with Blaze & Hornbuckle. Those UMK3 sketches I posted are a few years old, I shared 'em just to breathe a little life into the thread and that's all I had laying around. I'd like to get an MK1 NPC done here or there though if I can find the inspiration, hence the Hsu Hao sketch, which I only did a couple days before the post.

Are you very busy with other things since there's a long wait between updates? Or is it just because it's a side hobby you work on whenever you feel like? Or maybe something completely else? :P