I don't know about Not Sexualizing her, especially with all the current posts on Instagram about her
Hello again. I decided to write another post on Sabine with additional points as well as taking into consideration peopleās replies. My original post is here. Since this is a bit of a long one here is an outline of this post and I'll put the rest of it under a readmore:
Personal response to previous post
Sabine
Update on her scar
SSO is diversifying all their characters
Various "what ifs"
Sexualisation of Sabine by fandom
Dark riders
Redesigns of Katja and Jessica (Jay)
Released image of the new Dark Riders
First, Iād like to address why Iām bringing this up. Iāve had it proposed to me that, as a white person, itās not my place to talk about this as Iām talking over people of colour. As said in my last point this isnāt my intention at all. Iāve spoken with people of colour about the points in these posts. (Thank you to them for taking time to do so) However none of the points in my posts are new ideas by me and have been brought up by people of colour as being harmful stereotypes. I think it should also be noted that I wasnāt copying another post Iād seen by a POC about Sabine and ignored theirs, I wrote the post because I had not seen anyone speak about it. I do also think that putting the burden on people of colour for calling out racism/harmful stereotyping and such is completely unfair and unjust. White people have a responsibility to tackle this. This is not the same as speaking over people of colour, but amplifying their points and their right to exist without discrimination. I donāt feel like I should have to put this disclaimer but Iād also like to make it clear that not every POC/masculine woman/disabled person will agree with my statements. This is just my opinion that Iāve done my best to fact check with various academic sources and speaking with people affected by these issues.
Her scar
A correction on my last post, the reason behind her scar was discussed in the Star Stable book āThe Legend Awakensā (thank you @mudpuddlenll ) Her scar is from falling headfirst off a bridge. However the passage raises more points by saying Sabine isnāt even human which is why she survived the fall. Iāll go into detail later about why saying Sabine and the other Dark riders arenāt human could potentially be harmful. But for now to focus on her scar, if Sabine isnāt human and therefore has the physical capability to survive such a fall ā how come her face can scar? Is it just to help signal that sheās a villain? Iām aware Star Stable has weak logic behind a lot of things so Iām not particularly interested in trying to justify her scar being there ā the point still stands that is it there.
An additional point brought up in the discussion of my first post is that Anneās scar, the other character in the game with a facial scar, is a lot more feminine as well as being unrealistic.
Oh but SSOās diversifying ALL their characters! Sabine isnāt a problem!
If this was the case and also the be-all and end-all of my argument: where are all the āgoodā brown butch women in SSO? Why arenāt they redesigning āgoodā female characters to be muscular? Why donāt they have non-violent butch women? Diversity in characters is a good thing, but you still need to make sure those characters arenāt negative stereotypes.
āWhat if sheās just tan!ā
Then Star Stable is trying to make it seem like theyāre increasing diversity by redesigning characters as ethnically ambiguous/darkening their skintones and not putting actual meaningful representations of people of colour into their video game. I donāt think I need to explain why this is a bad thing. Additionally if this is the case, then many of my points about female characters of colour still apply to Jayās redesign which I further discuss below.
āBut sheās going to become a good character/have a redemption arc!ā
I do not care for hypotheticals. Even if she does redeem herself, the point still stands that SSO has a villain that looks and acts like her and no āgoodā characters that look like her. The game portrays her as a villain.
The continual sexualisation of Sabine by fandom
It is in bad taste to brush off the issues people have with the Sabine redesign by saying things along the lines of ābut sheās hot thoughā. Even more than that, it adds to the over sexualisation of women of colour in media. I am not saying SSO is sexualising Sabine, let me make that clear. I am merely commenting on the reactions of many players of the game which I have seen online. There is an abundance of people thirsting over Sabine. I am not saying this itself is an issue. Iām a lesbian, women are great. But I think that is important to be careful of the ways we talk about female characters of colour, especially compared to how the same people talk about white female characters. If all you can take away from a character design, especially when pointed out potential issues in it, is that the character is sexually attractive ā are you simply treating that character as a sexual object? And how does that reflect your treatment of real people with these characteristics? An additional sub point to this is comments similar to āSabine can step on meā, āI wish Sabine would crush meā which is also prevalent in fandoms when aimed at women of colour and butch women. This enforces the idea that WOC and/or GNC women are inherently violent, are incapable of non-violent romantic actions, and also serves to masculinise them further.
Dark riders
Iāve been told that since Sabine is only one of the villains/Dark Riders so therefore my points donāt stand since thereās a diverse range of villains. So I shall discuss all of them.
While itās true Sabine is the only redesigned Dark Rider released in game, SSE has released the new designs of 3 other Dark Riders on their development blog here. They are:
Katja, who has appeared in SSO and earlier games before. She has always been a white woman.
Jay, who has appeared in SSO and earlier games before. However this was under the name of Jessica and appearing as a white woman.
Chiyo, a new character to Star Stable. She appears to be a young East Asian character. This post by @yasminewestbank goes over some of the issues people have with her character, which I agree with.
While I have less to say about Katja, I find it interesting that the only white woman of the group is portrayed (as a general rule) as the most polite/self-controlled /āwell-behavedā.
Jayās redesign shares many of the same points as I have with Sabine. She is now darker skinned, has an androgynous name, and dresses more masculine. Again, I am not saying these are bad things or that a villain canāt have these traits.
SSE also released this group image of them on the same development blog post.
It makes me uncomfortable for several reasons. It reinforces the idea that Sabine is violent and brutal ā literally holding Chiyo up by the neck ā even towards the characters that are meant to be her allies. It shows that she is much larger and physically intimidating than the others, which as I stated before isnāt really a great thing having the most masculine woman being the most violent.
It additionally reinforces the stereotypes outlined in @yasminewestbanks post about Chiyoās character as an East Asian woman. She appears much more childlike and infantilised than the other characters in being much smaller and picked up in that way by another character. My points about Chiyo are less concrete as we know little about her character ā she may in fact be a child (which is then a point to be said about having the gameās main East Asian character be a young ācutesyā girl), but something just seems āoffā about it all to me.
Of course I agree it is a good thing that Star Stable is creating more diverse characters. But I think there is a need to be careful when redesigning characters that were originally three white women into two more masculine women of colour and a white woman, and then adding an additional woman of colour that you do not fall into using negative stereotypes for them. Especially when you add in the fact that they are the major villains to the game ā the antithesis of the player character(s) ā and are not even human. As mentioned before in this post and my previous, it is common rhetoric from bigots that certain minorities are ālesserā than them, often to the point of them not being deemed human. Ā Therefore it should be taken into consideration when designing villains that look human but arenāt, who are also minorities.
To summarise, I am not accusing Star Stable of doing or even intending everything I said in my posts. I simply wished to highlight issues I found with some of their character redesigns, and then, with how fandom tended to brush off things like this or ignore them. This post is long enough as it is so I shall post my sources in an additional post, but if anyoneās wanting specific reading/resources on a point feel free to ask. Thank you.
This is Gilberto Filipe, who dominated the World Association for Working Equitation Qualifier in Segovia, Spain, in March 2024. I think this is his Lusitano stallion Iranio.
Video from magda_konno on Instagram! Link in the comments.