Danbooru

'genderswaps' of ambiguous characters

Posted under General

So we have a debate brewing in the comments of post #839951 about whether it is proper to use the genderswap tag. Better done on the forums, yes? Particularly if someone is going to vote down all comments espousing the dissenting opinion.

T5J8F8 added the sentence "A being with not gender depicted as any of these may technically count" to the genderswap wiki, but as far as I can tell from a search this was never discussed.

Quite some time ago I removed the genderswap tag from post #359555 and it wasn't contested, so I figured it would be appropriate to do so in this case as well. The only difference I see is that the pyro is presumed to be either a he or a she beneath the suit, while Lavos, being an alien, may be something else entirely.

Then again, the wiki here also suggests the Pyro could be a robot, in which case being identifiable as a human gender is no given either. (I hadn't heard that one before, but there's no way to prove it wrong.)

What are your thoughts?

Updated by jxh2154

I'd say it should only be tagged as a genderswap if it is canonically certain that the character in question is the opposite gender than the one seen in the image.

If the original character was of androgynous nature, or had no gender at all, it can't be a genderswap because, well... Maths. There's no positive or negative to zero.

I would say that there shouldn't be a genderswap tag on that pic of The Pyro until and unless we get some certainty about the character's canonical gender.

sgcdonmai said:
I'd say it should only be tagged as a genderswap if it is canonically certain that the character in question is the opposite gender than the one seen in the image.

If the original character was of androgynous nature, or had no gender at all, it can't be a genderswap because, well... Maths. There's no positive or negative to zero.

I would say that there shouldn't be a genderswap tag on that pic of The Pyro until and unless we get some certainty about the character's canonical gender.

Are you saying an overtly female representation of post #478353 is not taggable? I respectfully disagree.

Look, I know we pride ourselves on our pedantry. I'm part of that group of people. But if an technicality in the definition of genderswap prevents a female personification of Lavos from being tagged as such in some way, we have a problem.

rantuyetmai said:
The difficult thing is if the canon gender is not specified, even post #478353 might still very well be a female.

Is being voiced by a man and, with few exceptions, referred to with masculine pronouns in official material not good enough?

Alternatively, "tag what you see"? I see no breasts, broad shoulders and large feet. Team Fortress 2 uses an iconified style for its models; according to the iconic indicators we could possibly expect, nothing strongly indicates that this is female. Furthermore, we have precedent that the assumption of gender and sex is based on the appearance of the individual (akizuki_ryou). Is this really so different?

DschingisKhan said:
Is being voiced by a man and, with few exceptions, referred to with masculine pronouns in official material not good enough?

Considering the way the developers have dropped hints throwing The Pyro's gender into question? Also that the mask distorts the voice, and none of the "speakers" of those official materials have ever seen Pyro with its mask off?
I'd say that's fairly ambiguous. Not as much as Lavos, which has absolutely no discernible gender whatsoever, but still ambiguous.

Alternatively, "tag what you see"? I see no breasts, broad shoulders and large feet. Team Fortress 2 uses an iconified style for its models; according to the iconic indicators we could possibly expect, nothing strongly indicates that this is female.

Nor that it is male, thus adding to the androgyny.

Furthermore, we have precedent that the assumption of gender and sex is based on the appearance of the individual (akizuki_ryou). Is this really so different?

I'm not sure what you're getting at, here. Ryou is canonically male, to the point of it being an integral part of his character; he simply fakes being female on stage. There isn't any ambiguity about his real gender.

Depictions of Ryou as clearly, undeniably female (e.g. naked and visibly possessing female genitalia, rather than male) are genderswaps, while his standard appearance is typically trappish.

I'm guessing some of you aren't familiar with Team Fortress 2.

The Pyro's gender is ambiguous due to his suit, but there's plenty of indicators that logically point him to male:

  • Early supplementary materials (e.g. playing manuals) refer to the Pyro with masculine pronouns.
  • The rest of the mercenaries are male.
  • Pyro's VA is male.

Of course, Valve had to end his trading card bio with the line, "if he even is a man", and added a purse in his locker in 2fort, sparking debate among nerds who think too much into it. Valve, cheeky monkeys they are, only fanned the flames by adding a feminine hat for him to wear and a feminine pose during the Humiliation round.

Valve has intentionally left the sex of the pyro ambiguous, they have fun with people trying to play the metagame of "what gender is the pyro?"

We should just assume the pyro is neither sex until Meet the Pyro inevitably doesn't reveal anything.

sgcdonmai said:
Considering the way the developers have dropped hints throwing The Pyro's gender into question?

It's called a "joke". Valve noticed all the discussion, and rather than end the debate, they decided to have fun with it instead. They even joked that he might actually be a robot in "Meet the Spy", something that confused 7HS.

Nor that it is male, thus adding to the androgyny.

You missed the part about the feet, shoulders, and (lack of) breasts.

I'm not sure what you're getting at, here. Ryou is canonically male, to the point of it being an integral part of his character; he simply fakes being female on stage. There isn't any ambiguity about his real gender.

When Ryou was introduced, he was assumed to be female because he had all the visual indicators of a female. It wasn't until Konami dropped the bomb about his true gender that we had a tagging retcon.

Log said:
We should just assume the pyro is neither sex until Meet the Pyro inevitably doesn't reveal anything.

I would rather assume the Pyro's male based on current indicators. He obviously has to be one or the other, not zero. Besides, I don't know if Danbooru will still exist 60 years from now when "Meet the Pyro" is released.

Hillside_Moose said:

  • Pyro's VA is male.

Counterpoint: 90% of male anime characters under the age of 20 are voiced by females. We do not assume gender-ambiguous characters are either sex via their VA.

Hillside_Moose said:
Besides, I don't know if Danbooru will still exist 60 years from now when "Meet the Pyro" is released.

We can cross that river when we get there.

Log said:
Counterpoint: 90% of male anime characters under the age of 20 are voiced by females.

While this may be true (I'm not sure about real percentage), I can't remember a female anime character voiced by male VA.

To the best of my knowledge Pyro isn't just an issue of the Pyro being male or female, but he is also referred to as "it." Officially he is listed as "possible male, female or robot"

All signs point that he is male but that the ambiguous nature of his gender is being played for laughs.

The problem with his VA is that it does sound male to me but given that its hard to understand anything the pyro says, so I have no idea what to classify him as.

Suppose for a moment that some time in the future the character is canonically sexed.
Now depending on policy, we can either go back and add genderswap to any picture that doesn't match the new canon, or we might have to swap it — everything that was genderswap now isn't, and vice versa.
Both of those are bad, but one is clearly badder than the other.

You can of course still run into this with the girliest girl and the manliest man depending on author whim, but when there are canon hints at ambiguity we might as well hold off. Even if it's trolling it's still canon.

In the meantime we face the problem that there's no good way to find depictions of the character with a particular gender, or even to find pictures where the gender is clearly indicated one way or another. (Androgynous isn't, won't, can't and shouldn't be well-tagged enough to make negative searches meaningful.)

It doesn't matter much for the_pyro with his/her/its ~50 posts, but there's larger tags, like the Umineko cast (but maybe they're all sexed now? But even so tagging it would be such a huge spoiler...)

Just throwing this out there, but what about a general tag for when artists make guesses about details of characters the copyright holder have been secretive about, like in particular ambiguous character genders?
Thing is, it'd still apply after the reveal, as long as the artist didn't known at the time they drew the picture.
That means no need to edit everything, and no spoilers by itself. (Though other more spoilery tags like genderswap might still be applied.)
Call it, say, fan_guess.

zatchii said:
(snip)
Both of those are bad, but one is clearly badder than the other.

Not to my thinking.

More work, certainly, but bad? I don't think it is.

Just throwing this out there, but what about a general tag for when artists make guesses about details of characters the copyright holder have been secretive about, like in particular ambiguous character genders?
Thing is, it'd still apply after the reveal, as long as the artist didn't known at the time they drew the picture.
That means no need to edit everything, and no spoilers by itself. (Though other more spoilery tags like genderswap might still be applied.)
Call it, say, fan_guess.

I would prefer gender guesswork or something to that effect; fan guess sounds a bit open-ended.

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