xanykaos

False gender assumptions and stereotyping usually bothers me enough to call it out, especially when it shows up in my gallery. It's a very pervasive problem.

Okay, without punctuation marks, your words are a little confusing.

Pyro isn't fat. Well, Pyro could be, but under a big, heavy haz-mat suit, it's a little hard to tell. But, wow, that's still a pretty offensive statement. Do you mean that women can't be fat, or just that big women aren't allowed in video games? Sorry, maybe I get tired of seeing game after game where all the women have the same measurements, plus or minus a little bit in the chest area. Hell, I don't really care what gender Pyro is (I'm all for ambiguously gendered Pyro anyway), but it would sure be swell to see a female character built like Pyro is--a tough little fireplug without the classical curves. Just for the sake of variety.

Secondly, like the voice matters with gender. It's not like you can hear Pyro's voice all that well anyway, but whatever. Women voice male characters and men voice female characters all the time in animation. It has no bearing on the character's actual gender.

Valve seems content to play the "Pyro's this or that or neither" game, and that's fine by me. I don't care what folk think Pyro is, but it's massively offensive to say: "Pyro must be a guy because he's fat." I'm still a bit surprised by how many people think that picture up there is automatically a guy, because I went out of my way to keep the face rounded and the nose small--traditional cues for a female character.

What?

Eh, actually, when I'm drawing that version of Pyro, I'm drawing a girl. Well, a very gender-skewed person who is physically female.

Maybe Tony just left the Iron Man armor posed suggestively?