alisonli:

heres my hot take: people who complain about “bad character design” act like theyre the only ones who know how to ~design characters properly~ when theyre not actually creating distinct, recognizable designs themselves. they’re only recognizable designs individually because they follow the norm of widely accepted headcanons of what a cat looks like. is that an indication of quality?

another hot take: theyre cats from a book and people can draw them however they want without worrying about some weird objective scale of “I Can’t Recognize That so It’s Bad.” it’s one thing to say something is not a recognizable design (and let’s be real: almost none of the cat designs I see are immediately recognizable because they are *cats.* from a book series. they can only get so different); it’s another thing to say that different design is Bad Character Design because.. what? it wasn’t described like that in the book? then why are some other popular headcanons okay and suddenly recognizable?

Like it’s really weird that y’all see some cat described as thin in the book drawn as pudgy or give them a flower accessory and that’s “creative and innovative” but if it’s drawn as a calico or something y’all be like “that’s too far I’ve never seen that before so it must be bad”. this is really not what character design is (while we talk about good character design, how’s that silhouette technique working out?) . that’s just following conventions.

**theyre recognizable because they’re popular designs.** If i had never been on Tumblr and imagined the cats differently… none of yalls designs would be recognizable either !