#You do not have to stop enjoying TWST but you should analyze your behavior and consider if you are contributing to a problem

[twistmusings]

An examination of the New Jade and Floyd Cards

CW: Spoilers for the Japanese Release, Talk of the discourse about the cards and how they were handled, discussions of anatomy, very brief mention of animal death (related to consumption and preparation of Moray Eels for eating - no images are shown and it is not gone into in graphic detail.)

TW: Extensive talks about Sexualization and information on the correlation of sexualization and it's impacts in the second half of the post. There is a heading in purple if you would like to skip this section.

I touched on this very briefly in another post, but I honestly really like how the Jade and Floyd card art is handled for multiple reasons when we're talking about how it's handled and I want to give a bit of an explanation why! I am far from a marine biologist, but I was examining the biology of eels and wanted to give my two cents considering that they boys are both in their merman forms.

Of course, the cards have not released just yet, so we only have the promotional images to go off of as well as the other canon materials.

The biggest complaint I've seen over the cards generally speaking is the anatomy, but I also think that's not considering two important facts - 1: this is a dream as a few people have stated, so we're likely seeing the versions of Jade and Floyd that they see as their "ideal" or internal versions of themselves. 2: Jade and Floyd aren't human. Despite what they look like after the potion, I feel like it's important to note this because Moray Eel Anatomy is wildly different from human anatomy and that doesn't get taken into account. The second highest criticism is that these cards are overly sexualized. I will go into more depth about that, but to give my short thoughts for now, I truly think it could have been argued either way though in this instance a lot of the arguments I've seen have been rather bad faith.

So, let's get started first with the anatomy. Both cards have been criticized, for the anatomy of the drawing. Starting with Jade's card, the thing I see complained about most often is how muscular his chest and shoulders are. I think its a bit more of an issue with the clarity of the image than anything else, which yes, is an art issue but allow me to explain my line of thinking regarding this. First, examining Jade's positioning and anatomy by examining the anatomy of the art.

Bone structure is on the left and Muscles on the right

First, let's start by saying that I definitely think the anatomy of Jade's card is sort of correct, but I think what roughly equates to his trapezius muscles are a bit exaggerated for the position he's in. However, what I believe the artist is going for is that Jade is putting weight on his arms and pushing himself up, which is making his scapulae flex backwards. You see this a lot when people push themselves up out of pools using a solid object.

1. Notice how the scapula pulls the muscles of the back out to a sharp point at the end of where the bone rests.

2. Notice the way that the force exerted by pushing has caused a 'ridge line' between the different parts of the deltoid muscles.

3. The pectoral muscles seem a little more convex when the trapezius muscles are pulling them upwards.

Basically, I think the artist knew generally what they were going for, but the trapezius muscle throws it off a bit. Here's a quick edit to show what I feel like would look a little more natural for this card and likely solve a lot of the issues people have with the art.

Left: Edit to follow anatomical structures strictly

Middle: Edit to maintain the "defined" sort of ridge Jade's Deltoids have in the original card

Right: Unedited original

All of this to say, I don't necessarily think that Jade is "extremely muscular" as a lot of people have argued, because I think there's a misconception that his deltoid muscle is his bicep because of the slightly wonky scapula and trapezius and deltoid anatomy. (TLDR, I think the artist just drew his scapula and delts too low, making his neck look unnecessarily muscular because of the lighting in the card.) It's also worth noting that the pitched angle of the "camera" in this card makes his right shoulder look larger than it would if you were looking at him at a lower angle because of the perspective involved.

That being said, I think it's worth considering that Jade is also a hiker and is confirmed to go climbing, so it makes sense for Jade to have broader and more defined shoulder muscles than Floyd does. I also think it's a bit of a strange thing to argue that at 17 he shouldn't be this muscular. Yes, late teens tend to be smaller than people in their twenties because their bodies are still developing, but 17 is not prepubescent - the average 17 year old can build muscle that would be in line with the edit, especially if they regularly engage in activities that use those muscles regularly for things like rock climbing or swimming - two activities that we know that Jade does.

Whether or not this is a dealbreaker for wanting this card depends on the person - personally the anatomy doesn't bother me too much because for me it's still readable what the intention was. I can definitely see why some people might read it as Jade having a very muscular giraffe neck.

Now for Floyd's card, though I think this is relevant to both of them:

The issue I've seen most people have is particularly with his abdominal muscles being so defined. This one I can see either side of the argument on, I must admit, but I think it is worth noting that Floyd and Jade aren't human.

The reason this is relevant is because moray eels are mostly skin and muscle, with very few bones and very little fat. Granted we're taking liberties with this because they're mermen and it's not like we have x-rays of their bones to go off of.

(If you would like to see what I mean, there are videos on YouTube of Moray Eels being fileted and prepared for food. I will not link them, since that is graphic for a lot of people, but if you seek them out, it's easy to see that a moray's skin attaches pretty directly to the muscles of their bodies, and they have the epidermis (external), dermis, hypodermis, and beneath that, muscle.)

All of this to say, there's a feature we can't be certain whether or not the eel twins have, which is that in humans, there is a layer of subcutaneous fat beneath the skin, then the abdominal muscles, then a layer of visceral fat, and finally the abdominal wall that hold our organs in place.

Now, we know there's differences between Moray Eels and Moray Eel merfolk, as Jade and Floyd pretty clearly have a ribcage, however we also know that their external bodies in their merfolk form have similar fish traits for obvious reasons. To be as non-graphic about is as I can, there's a reason they're allowed to not wear clothes without this being an AO game - likely because their genital anatomy structures would be more in-line with cetaceans or fish. (It's hard to say which, because we don't really have confirmation if Merfolk are mammals or fish, which has a surprising amount of ramifications for their anatomy in regard to fat placement.) We also can't be certain if they have hip bones or if they simply have muscles that may make it appear that way.

That long and roundabout explanation is to say we can't be sure where their 'human' anatomy ends and where the 'fish' anatomy begins. It's entirely possible that below the ribcage, Jade and Floyd's only other bones are their spine. Regardless, I think either way it's entirely possible that a part of the reason their muscles look so defined is because they don't carry their fat in their bodies like humans do. I would say this is, again, pretty much up to headcanon unless we get some kind of canon confirmation that they have an organ structure from their hips up that is humanoid.

Also for any of my long-time followers, I am not letting you forget - these two still pee out of their butts in eel form. It doesn't matter if they're mammals or fish, the structures for an underwater creature would dictate that they pee out of their ass and that's hilarious. :-)

On Sexualization:

Now, finally onto the part of these cards that's controversial, which is that they are sexualized. I would like to start off by saying that, quite frankly, this is going to depend entirely on how you look at the cards and how you personally feel about them and your personal relationship to sexualization. I'm not trying to tell you how to feel about these cards, but I do want to make a case that if that is an argument that you want to make, you should do it with consideration to making your argument sound, and realize that there are going to be bad faith arguments on either side of this issue. Engaging with people who are making these bad faith arguments is going to do nothing but wear you out - they have no intention of changing their stance on the matter and quite frankly are not worth spending your time on. I would advise for your mental wellbeing to not invest yourself too much into these arguments and instead curate your internet experience so that you're not subjected to having to deal with those bad faith arguments and instead giving your time and consideration to those who actually make a case for their argument with proof.

Sexualization is a tricky subject to navigate, especially when it comes to Jade and Floyd. and I can see how an argument could be made for either side, and since there's not really a way to know the intentions of the original artist for these cards and what their biases were when making it, it's a little hard to say whether or not they were intended to be viewed that way. There are a few things to take into consideration with this argument, and I encourage you to come to your own conclusions and research more into the topic, however here are some of the points that should be considered when taking this into account:

Sexualization occurs in several ways:

A few more passages of note from the sexualization wikipedia and the pages for Pornification and Sex in Advertising:

Note: Catherine Lumby - author that frequently examines gender issues, Patrice Oppliger - has written about impact of media and popular culture on teenage demographics, Audre Lorde - Intersectional Feminist and Civil Rights activist that has written on a scope of topics regarding human-rights issues.

If these cards have a negative impact on someone, that's hard to quantify short of an intensive study or survey. Even then, it would be hard to get a good understanding of it because if you are an English Speaking TWST fan, you are limited to what opinions you would get from the rest of the English Speaking fandom. Similar sentiments go for the Japanese fandom - you will get a limited view because of the language difference, and you would likely get skewed statistics.

The age demographics for the game are older than what a lot of people think in the English-speaking fandom. Though TWST is generally pretty child friendly, the largest parts of the fandom are between the ages of 16-26. It can be surmised based on this that TWST's target demographic is older teens and young adults, and is likely designed around this.

From that same survey, Twisted Wonderland's player base is largely female.

Sexualization is a persistent issue through all types of media and advertising, but has been typically more studied in it's impact on girls who were raised in a sexualized environment.

Fans have been requesting a merfolk card for Jade and Floyd since their forms were revealed.

There should be an understanding that if an argument can be made about Jade and Floyd's cards being sexualized, this same argument should be applied to other cards from the game as well. This would include the tropical wear cards, the birthday jacket cards, several of the halloween cards, etc.

Which are the Effects of Body-Objectification and Instagram-Related Practices on Male Body Esteem? A Cross-Sectional Study

All About Sex: Global Childhood Sexualization and Education