Back in the days, when I was a freshly graduated history master, unable to find any decent job, I worked at a commercial TV channel. Friends and family where thrilled - TV! In reality I was the assistant to an assistant and spent my days brooding over excel charts, trying not to mess up the formulas that projected the company’s profits and losses.
Last sunday afternoon I actually intended to write a post on the Alchemical Society in our Game Sky Alchemist. Instead, I lazily browsed around tumblr and found the image of the baby-smashing Renaissance lady. First thought: WTF?
Second thought: This is a FAKE, some sort of brutal remake of this one. Then I actually read the description and found, it is real. After some research I suddenly realized that the hammer lady had brought me in a kind of circular movement back to my real subject: The Alchemical Society…
When making a game in the Steampunk genre: how do you dress your female characters? Squeeze them into corsets? Then we rather should have a “Hand me the smelling salt”-button in the game…
Imagine a fat, black, hairy spider sitting in your bathroom. Reason might tell you that spiders are useful, harmless animals, hunting flies and mosquitos, but then there are images of demonic giant spiders stored in the back of your unconscious that will not allow you to come on friendly terms with the little occupant of your bathtub.
If you are a woman you might be able to send a man in and have him exile or kill the monster. If you have no male hero to send to the front, you have to be brave yourself or make your peace with spiders. So spiders clearly need some image polishing. I will step in as a spin doctor.
