Heget's Blatherings

Something I've noticed for awhile now is, sure, K/S artists (and TOS artists in general) have found TOS Kirk difficult to depict forever and mentioned it forever, but nevertheless, if you look at things like zine art of yore, he's usually very recognizable, while SO much modern Kirk/Spock art has a very obvious Nimoy!Spock whatever the style, and then a Kirk who is solely recognizable via paraphernalia, Spock's own presence, and fanon. I've been trying to figure out what makes the modern art look so wrong compared to older attempts, and I think I... basically tripped over one of the most common reasons.

Short version: it's his cheekbones. TOS Kirk actually has a more fine-boned and pronounced, angled slope of cheekbones that's fuller and higher (particularly in relation to the bottom of his face) than artists typically allow, even if in the show, this is sometimes obscured by the general softness of his face, expressions, and alternate ways of shooting him (he has very mobile features, so he tends to look very different with slight changes in focus/angles/lighting, but of course his features have not actually changed). Artists' lowering/flattening/straightening of where his cheekbones are in his face (vertically and in terms of width/depth), and broadening of the bones themselves, is super common in modern K/S art and it makes the shape of his face and even his head look really off (in particular, both squished and more generic than his real appearance), even if you can't immediately put your finger on what's wrong.

To be clear, there are multiple things that art (fannish and professional) often changes about TOS Kirk's appearance, for what I'm guessing are multiple reasons (though there's one pertinent reason* that I think is a major engine for many of the ways in which Kirk is bafflingly misrepresented). It's not only this. But more recent art particularly tends to alter the line of his cheekbones. His aren't as high or angular as Spock's, nor as prominent as Sulu's, but definitely more so than usually shows up in TOS art. Some lighting/angles/make-up/camera lenses in the show make this super conspicuous and at other times it's harder to see, but when I was searching through my manyyyyy TOS screenshots for an unrelated post, I was really struck by the gap between the ... artistic fanon? and his basic facial structure.

So naturally, I went through my zillions of TOS screenshots for a picspam, so you don't have to just trust my opinion:





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I am, of course, referring to my beloved Guild Wars, which rewired my brain back in 2005. My family were early players via a friend of ours and have bought every expansion of every Guild Wars since we started figuring out GW(1) in pre-Searing Ascalon 21 years ago. And now there are actual updates again because the 20th anniversary was so successful last year—it's so fun to see tons of people in pre-Searing Ascalon City again, people chatting and figuring the game out again, etc ever since Reforged "came out". I just saw the anniversary announcement today: they're making GW1 playable on mobile(!!!!) this summer, something I have no desire to do ever and am deeply ambivalent about, but still vaguely support on the principle of doing more with GW1 than maintenance. And they've stuck to the basic principle of once you buy it, You Bought It Forever, even with the mobile game—it has no ads for people who already own GW1 but is F2P with ads if you don't.

Honestly, over 20 years of evading the subscription model for both a MMO-in-name-only in GW1 and the real deal in GW2 has earned a lot of affection beyond my emotional investment in the game and world itself. So I'm glad it's the one that I got obsessed with as a 19-year-old baby gamer. 

A taste of the opening of GW1 while I'm here, actually (open in a new tab for full size, if you want):







And here I'm playing with my parents last February to check out all the new updates, with my mother's character in white and mine in black: