Xmas Katarina Animation Stirs Up Trouble

As you can see from this animated gif below, Xmas Katarina's recall animation involves her spinning around a candy cane...like a stripper pole...

Source: Xenitaph

Well apparently this stripper pole reference is upsetting certain people to the point where Riot intends to remove this animation!

According to Morello, the dance isn't being removed for being "too sexy" but instead because "it doesn't fit". I don't know about you guys, but I see candy canes on Christmas all the time!

Here's his official post on it:

Originally Posted by Krimson62  If they remove it i will also ask for riot to implement a maturity feature, like every single game that shows blood or suggestive themes. Haters and overprotective parents can turn it off

I need to be clear about something here: the reason we're removing it (and make no mistake, we are) is because there's a lot of places where we're happy to do that, as you guys have noticed, but this skin was not the right place for this sort of thing.

Nidalee has a spear, easily a pole. She's also generally closely related to "hot night elf chick" and has some innate *** appeal to her - pole dance is awesome here.

Katarina in Reindeer ears with a pole dance is just off. It's not about right and wrong, it's not about sensitivity, it's about "what makes sense with this content?"

If you want to think there's some PC police that guide our hand, I can't stop you, but do a quick search on our thoughts to the contrary of this (go look in the spider queen or Nami threads) you'll find that we normally go forward with it when we believe it's the right choice for the champ or skin. In this case, it's just not.

EDIT: Included more complete reasoning from later in the thread:

Let me slow down and give you a more nuanced explanation herd (I tend to get caught up in the rapid-fire of volume posts coming in and post too quickly to fully communicate the intended thought):

Quote:

Originally Posted by Morello Let's take a look at two sexy female champions, using their bases as an example: Miss Fortune and Katarina. Miss Fortune Over-the-top pirate hunter. Outwardly sexualized to a point of character definition. "****ty" personality, "hot girl." Katarina Deadly, sadistic dagger assassin. Sleek, quick and deadly. Shows cleavage and midriff to make attractive, but not seductive personality-wise. Keeps it sleek and quick - not a lot of adornment. These characters are both really sexy from a proportions and clothing standpoint (equally so in a lot of ways). However, Miss Fortune's base should blast you with sexuality and never conserve on it - it's important to everything she is designed to be. Katarina is generally sexy as an aside, not as a primary motivator. She's a cool assassin either way, having her be hot just makes her generally more visually appealing. Sexiness is secondary to cool. You can do the same thin on Kitty Kat Katarina and the Christmas Katarina skin. Kitty Kat Kat is "that ****ty costume on Halloween" start to finish. Christmas Kat uses more Christmas tropes overall, and that tends to be the theme - it has sexiness because Katarina is sexy overall, but it's a secondary theme. High Command Katarina is the same in this regard (though more serious). We may disagree, and that's OK, but this is the evaluation type we're talking about here. Maybe we sold "sexy" more than intended, maybe it's the read from the animation itself overall, but it's secondary to the character - not primary. Sexuality is more primary on Nidalee too (which is why we didn't change her pole dance on the rework). Hopefully this makes more sense, in context. Gonna put this up front for more visibility.

As it stands it's 100% being removed or changed.

What do you guys think about the change? Warranted or not? Comment below!

Why can't we be sexy together?