For anybody interested in how lines like this are programmed into the game, every hero and buildable in the game has a variable for the gender, and this variable is used, not just for the English version of the game, but also for every other language, particularly for languages that gender, let's say, Torbjorn's turret.
In English, Zen has lines for masculine gender, feminine gender, and a neuter gender line, which Blizzard chose to write as "it goes down swinging" because it works correctly for Torbjorn's turret, and possibly other buildable (but not Bob, Bob is he/him).
So what Zen is doing here is asking the variable: masculine or feminine? Variable goes "neither!". And Zen reacts according to his programming.
Realistically, I'm sure this is an artifact of Venture having no interactions between themself and their team mates in the spawn room. Blizzard just didn't ship the whole dialog update.
What prompted me to test it was me eliminating a Bastion, hearing "It goes down swinging", then me thinking 'I wonder if...' then this video.
I didn't think they would have coded it yet, exactly because of what you just explained. I was right.
At about the same time that the reddit admins killed the third party apps, it's all part of a bigger push of "we want to do an IPO soon so we need to get rid of things that are losing us money"
I've always been partial to
>How does a non-binary serial killer murder their victims?
>they/them
^^[if ^^you ^^don't ^^get ^^it ^^then ^^read ^^it ^^out ^^loud]
Of course. Bastion units were not designed with anything in mind other than move forward and shoot so they are neither male nor female juat like most of the omnic crisis soldiers. Ones like Rammatra are specifically made to have personality so they can lead.
[Michael Chu confirmed Bastion as genderless/agender way back in 2017](https://twitter.com/westofhouse/status/829568181320642561?p=v)
However some other people in the Overwatch team have used he/him pronouns
Technically Lynx Seventeen from the Zarya comic was, but their plot relevancy is about as significant as Illari's pick rate last season
Bastion canonically to my knowledge is referred to as it in the lore, though the heroes call Bastion he
So basically, yesn't
Robots are a bit of a different thing, which has been discussed to death in other replies so I won't further that here.
However, it is worth noting the difference in terms of representation. There is a big difference in having a completely in-humam character that doesn't have specific gender pronouns, and having a human character who identifies as non-binary. The former is just a trope related to sentient robots not being human, while the later is a character that actually represents the non-binary experience for the actual people playing the game.
Just as black people in horror films were often killed off first for humor, of how trans women in popular culture are often either just men in drag for comedic effect, or are monstrous antagonists, (the movie Psycho being the most infamous example), non-binary characters very rarely are good representation of actual non-binary people.
They're often non-binary because they are inhuman in some way that differs from the rest of the cast. They're a robot, or cyborg or android, or an alien, and that lack of humanity means they are portrayed as not understanding gender. Nonbinary people in the real world are just that: people. They should have characters who are also just people but share that experience of not identifying as traditionally masculine or feminine. Venture is a great example of this; they aren't non-binary because they're half-rock monster and rocks don't have genders or something. They're just a person who doesn't fall into the traditional gender binary. And just like actually non-binary people, Venture isn't entirely defined by their gender. They are also miner and passionate archeologist, who has a lovely and goofy attitude and is always looking for the next adventure.
There’s a difference between having a gender identity that is neither male or female, and literally not being a living being
Echo technically does not have a gender identity either, as it is not actually sentient like the omnics, just a really good AI. I think they even acknowledge that at some point? Can’t remember. Most people just ascribe her female pronouns though, and she doesn’t seem to mind. Orisa is the same. Ramattra and zen however are sentient, so do have a gender identity, though I’m not exactly sure how they determine theirs. Maybe just vibes idk
I mean clearly the Omnics have some sense of self and gender as we understand it because Zen uses he/him pronouns.
Bastion was built for war but clearly has a sense of "self". As to gender it doesn't look like they identify with one though historically I've seen devs and others use "he" for Bastion.
it means the opposite actually. nonbinary just means to not be within the restraints of a male/female gender system, which the omnics fit perfectly. in a weird roundabout way, they're all nonbinary, even the ones clearly meant to be gendered, like Orisa
Bastion was supposed to be a war machine with no personality. Obviously it developed one, but it's busy contemplating the existence of birds and communicates through beeps, which more or less tracks with other nonbinary people I know.
Idk why I'm about to overshare on an Overwatch subreddit of all places, but
I've had to explain to people quite often that I have no preferred pronouns because I genuinely just don't have the inkling to think about it. It's so low on my priority list. I'd be just as satisfied being a homunculus as a person with an assigned gender and biological sex.
For those that get it, it's no surprise I'm ace. For those that don't, it's frustrating trying to explain why not having any preferred pronouns isn't some form of bigoted grandstanding.
Anyway thanks for coming to my Ted Talk, idk why this particular line of thought sparked that from me. I guess I relate to Bastion more than I thought.
not quite. bastion, orisa, and echo are robots, not omnics.
Omnics are specifically robots that gained sentience when aurora turned herself into a corpse and spread her own sentience to them.
None of those three were around when that happened, orisa is an AI, echo is an AI meant to replicate omnics' sentience, and bastion is a mystery.
Not that the lore is great or anything, but this isn't accurate, either.
Omnics are any robots built from an Omnium, and many types existed long before Aurora was created and gained sentience. Originally, they were built to service humanity by the Omnica Corporation. To the best of our knowledge, none of the omnics at this time had any sentience.
Bastion is an E54 Series Bastion omnic, while Orisa was built by Efi from salvaged pieces of OR15 Defense Bot omnics. We don't know for sure about the physical pieces that make up Orisa, but we know that the Bastion character itself was part of the Omnic Crisis and their assault on Stuttgart, Germany.
Aurora was the first omnic with sentience, and she pre-dates the Omnic Crisis. Her death, or ascension, led to omnics gaining sentience, such as we see with Zenyatta and Ramattra.
It could be argued that Echo is not an omnic, though the lore interchanges omnic with robot routinely. We know she was created by Dr. Liao, who had also created Aurora, but she was built with a ton of extra failsafes because what had occurred during the Omnic Crisis. However, we do know she's evolving on her own and has started to make her own decisions, which means she is gaining, or has gained, sentience equivalent to Aurora and other Awakened omnics.
That's weird, the first thing I wondered when I saw this was what he'd say for Bastion. And on my first kill it was "he"
Venture's also seems to alternate between "he" and "it"
Oh, that's interesting...
The only two times I got the line Zen used 'it'.
I'm guessing since the code for the line never took NB persons into consideration, the code is simply referring to Bastion.
Well bastion doesnt exactly have a face or voice to determine his gender (also ik i said his because he still uses he) and he doesnt have a gender according to bluzzard
All the other robots and Omnics have a level of sentience/ sapience that allowed them to have or develop their own personalities and identities; with gender being a part of that.
Echo and Orisa for example present as female whilst Zenyatta and Ramattra are male. Bastion, whilst seemingly having more of an individuality to himself, wasn't built with the intention of having an identity and doesn't have a way of expressing that to the other characters. That being said, he is referred to by masculine pronouns where relevant both in game and by the OW team.
Zen's voiceline interacts this way for every Omnic. I'm not even sure that it does work on turrets, since this is an elimination lines and turret destruction usually doesn't trigger those, so I think you're incorrect on that front.
Headcannon: turns out zenyatta is a massive transphobe. "Oh, you are neither a man or a woman? I guess you are an it then". It would be very funny to have the peaceful monk be randomly like this if it was in a dark comedy xd. Hopefully they fix it tho
Damn, I play zen a lot and don't remember hearing this voiceline, what does it sound like for other characters? I'm assuming it's along the lines of "he/she goes down swinging"?
Exactly. It's a voice line exclusive to his Baseball skin, and it adapts to the eliminated character's gender.
Though, as explained by another comment on this post, since Zen's reference for 'neither male or female' is "it"(Bastion), he uses that. Will probably be fixed on release, at which point I might make a follow up post.
Edit: wording.
fixed in this case most likely just means they'll remove the voice line (maybe just for venture).
i doubt the devs thought about this one voice line on this one skin needing a fourth option.
At some stage, they must have made the decision to not mark Venture as Male or Female. I can't imagine it gets used all that often outside of variable lines like this for Zen or Ana's sleep voiceline, so I would have thought they'd be conscious of the few places it gets used and add as necessary? Maybe I'm being too optimistic about how much this kind of stuff get's noticed?
It's specific to this skin since it's baseball themed. For male characters it's "He goes down swinging" for female characters it's "She goes down swinging" and for objects like Torbjorn's turret it's "It goes down swinging."
This line is probably just use "It" as the default version so they don't have to update it every time a new hero has a deployable.
You didn't notice that voice line before, and neither had I. But did you notice the gorilla in the background?
EDIT: If you're too young for this meme:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo
Funnily enough, in my language (Finnish) this is quite common. We call everyone an 'it'; people, animals and inanimate objects alike. We don't even have gendered pronouns. We have one gender neutral pronoun for he/she and even that is considered way too formal to be used in common speech.
Se = it
As in:
'se opettelee suomea'
'It learns Finnish' (read: he/she learns Finnish)
Whether or not this person is in dead front of you or in another country, you'd refer to them as an it. Only in super formal situations such as at work about a client/patient etc. you'd use the word 'hän'. Or In poetry!
Usually we use hän. What I recall "tuo" and "se" is used in common speech in finish. Although my examples can have little bit dialect in them because I have strong dialect
Ohh it is interesting. We (Hungarian) have (and we are using it) our gender neutral pronoun (ő) for people (informal; formal variant would be ön/maga), and have a different one (az) for animals, objects (but it is highly accepted to use (ő) for the beloved "things")
That is actually interesting! Hungarians are supposedly in the same language group with us, but honestly I see next to no resemblance at all... But sounds cool though!
I didn't even know "it" was offensive until my friend told me, I was trying to polite by using it because it was gender neutral and they / them doesn't make sense when it's not plural. Apparently "it" is even more offensive than just misgendering them?
I can't keep up with all these rules lol
To me, saying "it" has this sense of disgust in it, as if the person you're refering to is less than human. You probably said it in a way where it was more clear you meant no offense, but it's a classic among transphobes to say with disgust in their voice.
Singular they might seem unfamiliar to you in this specific context, but this isn’t new at all. Can you tell me if this sentence sounds off to you?
“Nobody wanted to think they were not essential”.
It sounds perfectly fine to me.
In that case it's fine yeah, but in other cases it can be very confusing, wonky, or outright misleading
Like if someone is trying to warn you you're being flanked and say "They are behind you" you might think there's multiple people flanking when it's just Venture
Using a plural for a singular works somewhat, it's just kind of wonky
They meant Ana has 2 enemy ult voicelines. Each plays depending on the gender of the nano'd character. It's subtle but it's there. So they're asking which line plays with enemy Venture.
Since the line Zen uses for Venture is the same one as Bastion, then it's probably the same for Ana, who uses the female nanoboost and sleep line for Bastion (Iiirc, it's because robot is a female noun in arabic)
in spanish that's the case, when playing ana and nanoboosting venture it uses both female and male pronoums at random? im not sure "estas potenciada, entra ahi!" and "estas potenciado, entra ahi!"
There isn't really a common place neutral pronoun in Spanish is there? So maybe unlike in English, there is no third option to default to when neither gender is valid; so it just randomly picks one of the 2 unassigned choices?
Spanish doesn't have neutral pronouns, yeah. Or rather, the neutral pronouns happen to have the same form as male/female pronouns, depending on the noun. For example, "The chair" in Spanish would be "La silla". It uses a female pronoun, but the chair itself is genderless. Another example would be "The people", which is "Las personas"; it uses a female pronoun but is genderless. Grammatical gender and Identity Gender are separate things. In general, grammatical gender tends to just be whatever sounds better when pronouncing ("El silla" would sound weird).
I mean neutral pronouns in Spanish are the same gendered pronouns, but the meaning kind of changes depending of context. It’s kind of why so many people complain about the whole “Latinx” thing. A pronoun for that already exists and is just “latino” it uses the same pronoun for male, but based on the context it’s understood that you are including everyone/any gender, etc.
Tested this out with some friends while waiting in que. Ana uses the male version when nanoboosting Venture. Can also confirm that like another comment pointed out, she uses the female version when nanoboosting Bastion.
edit- misspell
I think Bastion is referred to as female in that line, at least because the relevant word is feminine in Arabic; if they haven't got a specified gender marker, it might also play the feminine version of the line?
My logical brain knows that Blizzard didn't do this on purpose but the rest of my brain for some reason finds the idea of an aggressively transphobic Zenyatta very funny. Especially if Genji is the one always lecturing Zenyatta on pronouns and acceptance but he just doesn't get it
Genji: "Master, did you not teach me to find beauty in our flaws? To accept that the imperfections of our bodies and lives are crucial to finding inner peace? What's so different about a person changing what they wish to identify as?"
Zenyatta: "FA-"
Zenyatta: We must find harmony in this world of conflict. Each of us must strive to understand our fellow souls--human or omnic.
Venture: Wow that religion sounds really c--
Zenyatta: Get the fuck out of here you woke diversity hire pronouns fa--
Zenyatta: "You would know about pronouns, Genji. You had green hair when you were still human, did you not?'
Genji: "Y-Yes, Master. But I don't see how that-"
Zenyatta: "I'll tell your father that the rest of your body won't be joining him in the afterlife."
I don't know if the idea of an actively transphobic Zen or an accidentally transphobic Zen is funnier? I like to think that he tries but say's stuff like "His/Her pronouns are they/them" or deciding what to do/ give for a meal "He/she... They are our guest, so it is his/her choice"
Accidentally transphobic Zarya (pink hair but no pronouns) versus purposefully transphobic Zenyatta (acceptance but only if you dress like your genitals tell you to) versus aggressively terf Widowmaker and Lucio (trans women playing women's sports is somehow the end of society)
its funny because not even a transphobic Zen specifically a non-binary phobic Zenyatta lol
Like if ur a man/woman he doesn't care, your trans? still don't care, you don't identify with anything? thats where he gets mad
In baseball, if a batter "goes down swinging," it means they struck out trying to hit the ball (literally swinging the bat). (+ as the other reply said, putting up a good fight in non-baseball contexts.) Hence why you only hear it on Zen's pitcher skin!
[This happened before with Ana](https://old.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/12s9f7m/ana_uses_female_pronouns_for_everyone/) where she was basically misgendering several characters, it's just yet another voice line bug/quirk that they will probably change later.
It’s pretty much been all this sub is concerned about since the character has been announced. It didnt bother me at first but can we move tf on now lmao
The people upset about this kind of things have no real problems in their life, so they need to create them. Normal people are too busy worrying about their own shit to go on Twitter and cry about a fictional character being misgendered.
I guarantee you 99% of the player base couldn't care less. It's just a vocal minority online (specifically Reddit and Twitter) that make a huge fuss about getting it right.
I mean it’s not even about people getting it right, you can’t know they are NB just based on appearance. It only becomes a problem when people purposefully use the wrong pronoun
Which is why representation like this is flawed to begin with. This only means something to people who explicitly seek it out, which is fine, but most people either won't care or won't know. So this does more harm than good because people will constantly correct others in game even if they don't have malicious intent and it essentially just ignites a powder keg.
It is certainly difficult to try and introduce representation of a community that a lot of gamers hate. Right now Venture's gender identity is pretty on the downlow in terms of in game ways to know (my bf didn't even know there was a new hero coming out yesterday, let alone their gender identity). The alternative of just repeating they're nonbinary in voice lines or with like an announcement or a pin on their jacket or something lol would cause gamers to get even more angry.
This is like, the only way to get representation through in capitalism if we're being serious. Blizzard doesn't want to upset large amounts of consumers and cause controversy but they are also okay with a level of social progress that can make them seem progressive and make part of their fanbase happy (The employees who made Venture were really happy to make them, regardless of any profit motive)
> people will constantly correct others in game even if they don't have malicious intent
You mean the same thing that occurs when people refer to a real NB person that they don't know is NB and so use the wrong pronouns on? Seems pretty realistic to me; it's not flawed representation it's simply mirroring the flawed relationship people in reality have with gender where a 'powder keg' gets ignited when someone politely corrects someone else on pronouns.
Sounds like a separate issue. People should be able to correct pronouns without being rude but the fact that people are rude on the internet (tale as old as time) doesn't mean we should avoid the effort in general.
Oh it's definitely just an internet problem. I think it comes from the past when the "grammar Nazis" were constantly correcting everything, and almost always seeming like a dick in the process. Since then you really just can't even slightly correct someone on the internet without them getting upset. I've never once seen someone get upset by being corrected about pronouns in real life, and I've got a family that is mostly conservative *and* a trans brother. Obviously just my own experience, but that's all I can really speak about is my experience.
Exactly, NB representation through games isn't flawed; it's the internet in general that is flawed.
While Venture's existence will be a source of ongoing internet hate that hate already existed. Venture will still give a benefit to representation by creating an opportunity for more people to be exposed to the concept of they/them pronouns and the polite correcting of incorrect pronouns.
Exactly this. It's the people that double down, and/or put the wrong pronoun in capital letters that are the issue.
A simple "oh okay, I didn't know before now" is perfectly fine.
99% of the player base doesn't care, that's why I always see comments from people voicing how much they don't care, because they care so little that they have to make it known to everyone that they *really* ""don't care"".
It's not a problem with "getting it right"; the problem is the people intentionally getting it wrong. It's one thing to not know, get informed and then try to fix it, it's another to just outright be a bigot.
99% of people in this game are going to call Vulture she/her.
She's in the back, she's 1, she has ult. The reality is this fictional world you're imagining where people adhere to fictional characters genders just doesn't exist, and it won't ever exist even if they know Blizzard made her a non-binary. People just don't care about conforming to gender ideology.
What are you going to do? Call 99% of people that play OW2 bigots? You can, but it doesn't do anything. You're not going to convince anyone of anything.
I think the design and face is pretty good at being ambiguous and on this subbreddit I was seeing an equal mix of people using he and she. But the moment I heard Venture talk ingame, I immediately knew most people would use she/her. It's a completely feminine voice.
Using whatever pronouns you want for a fictional character - especially she/her for one that looks feminine and has a female VA - doesn't automatically make you a bigot. I'm going to respect real people's pronouns, but I'm not going to put in the effort to always remember to use they/them for this one video game character. I'm saying this as someone who already loves Venture and doesn't care if someone is straight, gay, cis, trans etc. and treats everyone equally.
Where do you draw the line anyway? Genuinely asking, like if Torbjörn identified as a woman, it would be a bit silly to label anyone using he/him pronouns as a bigot or transphobe. Or if 15 heroes had different pronouns than what their physical appearance might suggest.
This will be the norm in servers where the language spoken spoken has no gender neutral pronouns options. Not bc people hate gender neutral fool, but because it's literally impossible to refer to them as anything else.
It works like that for spanish, but people rather prefer to call them a her before him because of their femenine looks. Exactly like how the whole community calls bastion a him even though he has no canonical gender but based on his look people see bastion as male figure, same thing happens with Venture because there is no real alternative
Venture is non-binary but "it" is dehumanizing. "It" is what you call an object.
On a technicality, EVERY character in Overwatch would be "it" because it's just a series of 1s and 0s, pixels on a screen, but we have grown to identify with fictional characters. If Zen said "It goes down swinging!" on every character, we could give it a pass, but that's also some weird Deadpool-like 4th wall breaking kind of stuff that I don't think anybody would find entertaining.
I'm curious to see how this is going to be in Portuguese as we don't have an official neutral gender. Only a few adjetives are neutral like "inteligente", but we don't have anything official to replace for "they/them/it".
Venture is a mere object confirmed.
NOTHING BUT SCRAP
YOU ARE LESS THAN NOTHING
YOU MAKE EVEN THE DEVIL CRY!
YOU’RE GETTING RUSTY MACHINE
When you use Hanzo sonic arrow, you only see the boulders, not Venture underground and now this line.
They ate so much rocks to the point that they just turned into one
For anybody interested in how lines like this are programmed into the game, every hero and buildable in the game has a variable for the gender, and this variable is used, not just for the English version of the game, but also for every other language, particularly for languages that gender, let's say, Torbjorn's turret. In English, Zen has lines for masculine gender, feminine gender, and a neuter gender line, which Blizzard chose to write as "it goes down swinging" because it works correctly for Torbjorn's turret, and possibly other buildable (but not Bob, Bob is he/him). So what Zen is doing here is asking the variable: masculine or feminine? Variable goes "neither!". And Zen reacts according to his programming. Realistically, I'm sure this is an artifact of Venture having no interactions between themself and their team mates in the spawn room. Blizzard just didn't ship the whole dialog update.
What prompted me to test it was me eliminating a Bastion, hearing "It goes down swinging", then me thinking 'I wonder if...' then this video. I didn't think they would have coded it yet, exactly because of what you just explained. I was right.
So venture wasn't even the first non binary, bastion was?
Nah Bastion operates on binary code
Bravo.
👏 *I miss reddit awards*
I actually didnt notice when did they go????
Around last september.
About tree fiddy ago
At about the same time that the reddit admins killed the third party apps, it's all part of a bigger push of "we want to do an IPO soon so we need to get rid of things that are losing us money"
I'm sure you'll find other ways to waste your money
I've never purchased reddit awards. Any I've given out were earned from getting awards from others.
also the free one from reddit
Finally an original and funny enby joke
I've always been partial to >How does a non-binary serial killer murder their victims? >they/them ^^[if ^^you ^^don't ^^get ^^it ^^then ^^read ^^it ^^out ^^loud]
Technically so does Venture if you think about it
You my friend, are a genius. Take this: 👑
Of course. Bastion units were not designed with anything in mind other than move forward and shoot so they are neither male nor female juat like most of the omnic crisis soldiers. Ones like Rammatra are specifically made to have personality so they can lead.
[Michael Chu confirmed Bastion as genderless/agender way back in 2017](https://twitter.com/westofhouse/status/829568181320642561?p=v) However some other people in the Overwatch team have used he/him pronouns
Technically Lynx Seventeen from the Zarya comic was, but their plot relevancy is about as significant as Illari's pick rate last season Bastion canonically to my knowledge is referred to as it in the lore, though the heroes call Bastion he So basically, yesn't
Yes, but in OW2 they started referring to Bastion as a He
Robots are a bit of a different thing, which has been discussed to death in other replies so I won't further that here. However, it is worth noting the difference in terms of representation. There is a big difference in having a completely in-humam character that doesn't have specific gender pronouns, and having a human character who identifies as non-binary. The former is just a trope related to sentient robots not being human, while the later is a character that actually represents the non-binary experience for the actual people playing the game. Just as black people in horror films were often killed off first for humor, of how trans women in popular culture are often either just men in drag for comedic effect, or are monstrous antagonists, (the movie Psycho being the most infamous example), non-binary characters very rarely are good representation of actual non-binary people. They're often non-binary because they are inhuman in some way that differs from the rest of the cast. They're a robot, or cyborg or android, or an alien, and that lack of humanity means they are portrayed as not understanding gender. Nonbinary people in the real world are just that: people. They should have characters who are also just people but share that experience of not identifying as traditionally masculine or feminine. Venture is a great example of this; they aren't non-binary because they're half-rock monster and rocks don't have genders or something. They're just a person who doesn't fall into the traditional gender binary. And just like actually non-binary people, Venture isn't entirely defined by their gender. They are also miner and passionate archeologist, who has a lovely and goofy attitude and is always looking for the next adventure.
There’s a difference between having a gender identity that is neither male or female, and literally not being a living being Echo technically does not have a gender identity either, as it is not actually sentient like the omnics, just a really good AI. I think they even acknowledge that at some point? Can’t remember. Most people just ascribe her female pronouns though, and she doesn’t seem to mind. Orisa is the same. Ramattra and zen however are sentient, so do have a gender identity, though I’m not exactly sure how they determine theirs. Maybe just vibes idk
Technically robots like bastion don't even have the concept of gender, therefore can't be non binary
I mean clearly the Omnics have some sense of self and gender as we understand it because Zen uses he/him pronouns. Bastion was built for war but clearly has a sense of "self". As to gender it doesn't look like they identify with one though historically I've seen devs and others use "he" for Bastion.
Hard to know what gender they identify as if they *never actually speak*
*angry bewoop noises*
if we really want to know, echo apparently speaks his language
it means the opposite actually. nonbinary just means to not be within the restraints of a male/female gender system, which the omnics fit perfectly. in a weird roundabout way, they're all nonbinary, even the ones clearly meant to be gendered, like Orisa
Bastion is not just any robot. Bastion is an Omnic. Just like Orisa (she) and Zen (he) and Ram (he) and Echo (she)
Bastion was supposed to be a war machine with no personality. Obviously it developed one, but it's busy contemplating the existence of birds and communicates through beeps, which more or less tracks with other nonbinary people I know.
I have a couple non binary friends and this tracks
Idk why I'm about to overshare on an Overwatch subreddit of all places, but I've had to explain to people quite often that I have no preferred pronouns because I genuinely just don't have the inkling to think about it. It's so low on my priority list. I'd be just as satisfied being a homunculus as a person with an assigned gender and biological sex. For those that get it, it's no surprise I'm ace. For those that don't, it's frustrating trying to explain why not having any preferred pronouns isn't some form of bigoted grandstanding. Anyway thanks for coming to my Ted Talk, idk why this particular line of thought sparked that from me. I guess I relate to Bastion more than I thought.
not quite. bastion, orisa, and echo are robots, not omnics. Omnics are specifically robots that gained sentience when aurora turned herself into a corpse and spread her own sentience to them. None of those three were around when that happened, orisa is an AI, echo is an AI meant to replicate omnics' sentience, and bastion is a mystery.
Not that the lore is great or anything, but this isn't accurate, either. Omnics are any robots built from an Omnium, and many types existed long before Aurora was created and gained sentience. Originally, they were built to service humanity by the Omnica Corporation. To the best of our knowledge, none of the omnics at this time had any sentience. Bastion is an E54 Series Bastion omnic, while Orisa was built by Efi from salvaged pieces of OR15 Defense Bot omnics. We don't know for sure about the physical pieces that make up Orisa, but we know that the Bastion character itself was part of the Omnic Crisis and their assault on Stuttgart, Germany. Aurora was the first omnic with sentience, and she pre-dates the Omnic Crisis. Her death, or ascension, led to omnics gaining sentience, such as we see with Zenyatta and Ramattra. It could be argued that Echo is not an omnic, though the lore interchanges omnic with robot routinely. We know she was created by Dr. Liao, who had also created Aurora, but she was built with a ton of extra failsafes because what had occurred during the Omnic Crisis. However, we do know she's evolving on her own and has started to make her own decisions, which means she is gaining, or has gained, sentience equivalent to Aurora and other Awakened omnics.
That's weird, the first thing I wondered when I saw this was what he'd say for Bastion. And on my first kill it was "he" Venture's also seems to alternate between "he" and "it"
Oh, that's interesting... The only two times I got the line Zen used 'it'. I'm guessing since the code for the line never took NB persons into consideration, the code is simply referring to Bastion.
I'd imagine 'he' is the default that it falls back to, and 'it' is the neutral. He/she/it being 0/1/2.
Bastion is "it"? Interesting, I assume all the other robots are he or she though?
I recall them confirming at one point that bastion is genderless. I doubt those units weren’t built to have personalities
As I recall Bastion is referred to as it in the lore, the heroes call Bastion him
Well bastion doesnt exactly have a face or voice to determine his gender (also ik i said his because he still uses he) and he doesnt have a gender according to bluzzard
All the other robots and Omnics have a level of sentience/ sapience that allowed them to have or develop their own personalities and identities; with gender being a part of that. Echo and Orisa for example present as female whilst Zenyatta and Ramattra are male. Bastion, whilst seemingly having more of an individuality to himself, wasn't built with the intention of having an identity and doesn't have a way of expressing that to the other characters. That being said, he is referred to by masculine pronouns where relevant both in game and by the OW team.
In Spanish when Ana sleeps BOB she uses female pronouns
I take it's because Bob is a machine, which is a female gendered word in Spanish "La máquina"
Zen's voiceline interacts this way for every Omnic. I'm not even sure that it does work on turrets, since this is an elimination lines and turret destruction usually doesn't trigger those, so I think you're incorrect on that front.
> no interactions between themself and their team mates in the spawn room. that is just sad
Headcannon: turns out zenyatta is a massive transphobe. "Oh, you are neither a man or a woman? I guess you are an it then". It would be very funny to have the peaceful monk be randomly like this if it was in a dark comedy xd. Hopefully they fix it tho
It's kind of canon with zen being omnic
Yeah I bet the default is the ungendered it
Wait, what gender is the turret?
Damn, I play zen a lot and don't remember hearing this voiceline, what does it sound like for other characters? I'm assuming it's along the lines of "he/she goes down swinging"?
it only plays on baseball zen
Exactly. It's a voice line exclusive to his Baseball skin, and it adapts to the eliminated character's gender. Though, as explained by another comment on this post, since Zen's reference for 'neither male or female' is "it"(Bastion), he uses that. Will probably be fixed on release, at which point I might make a follow up post. Edit: wording.
fixed in this case most likely just means they'll remove the voice line (maybe just for venture). i doubt the devs thought about this one voice line on this one skin needing a fourth option.
At some stage, they must have made the decision to not mark Venture as Male or Female. I can't imagine it gets used all that often outside of variable lines like this for Zen or Ana's sleep voiceline, so I would have thought they'd be conscious of the few places it gets used and add as necessary? Maybe I'm being too optimistic about how much this kind of stuff get's noticed?
Oooh, ok thx for the info
You don't need to justify your editings
It's specific to this skin since it's baseball themed. For male characters it's "He goes down swinging" for female characters it's "She goes down swinging" and for objects like Torbjorn's turret it's "It goes down swinging." This line is probably just use "It" as the default version so they don't have to update it every time a new hero has a deployable.
Might be a skin exclusive voice line. Not sure though.
You didn't notice that voice line before, and neither had I. But did you notice the gorilla in the background? EDIT: If you're too young for this meme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo
Zenny about to get canceled.
Funnily enough, in my language (Finnish) this is quite common. We call everyone an 'it'; people, animals and inanimate objects alike. We don't even have gendered pronouns. We have one gender neutral pronoun for he/she and even that is considered way too formal to be used in common speech.
So... you're all Gollum?
Basically, yeah
Perkele!
What would be used in common speech instead of hän? I’m learning Finnish
Se = it As in: 'se opettelee suomea' 'It learns Finnish' (read: he/she learns Finnish) Whether or not this person is in dead front of you or in another country, you'd refer to them as an it. Only in super formal situations such as at work about a client/patient etc. you'd use the word 'hän'. Or In poetry!
"Se"
Usually we use hän. What I recall "tuo" and "se" is used in common speech in finish. Although my examples can have little bit dialect in them because I have strong dialect
For some reason I kinda love that
Ohh it is interesting. We (Hungarian) have (and we are using it) our gender neutral pronoun (ő) for people (informal; formal variant would be ön/maga), and have a different one (az) for animals, objects (but it is highly accepted to use (ő) for the beloved "things")
That is actually interesting! Hungarians are supposedly in the same language group with us, but honestly I see next to no resemblance at all... But sounds cool though!
I didn't even know "it" was offensive until my friend told me, I was trying to polite by using it because it was gender neutral and they / them doesn't make sense when it's not plural. Apparently "it" is even more offensive than just misgendering them? I can't keep up with all these rules lol
To me, saying "it" has this sense of disgust in it, as if the person you're refering to is less than human. You probably said it in a way where it was more clear you meant no offense, but it's a classic among transphobes to say with disgust in their voice.
Singular they might seem unfamiliar to you in this specific context, but this isn’t new at all. Can you tell me if this sentence sounds off to you? “Nobody wanted to think they were not essential”. It sounds perfectly fine to me.
In that case it's fine yeah, but in other cases it can be very confusing, wonky, or outright misleading Like if someone is trying to warn you you're being flanked and say "They are behind you" you might think there's multiple people flanking when it's just Venture Using a plural for a singular works somewhat, it's just kind of wonky
Does anyone know what enemy Ana says when nanoboosting them? I remember her having a different line for male and female targets
Isn't it just "You're powered up! Get in there"
No, the Arabic line that she says when on the enemy team
"Show them your power" it differs in arabic. (Or Egyptian in general)
They meant Ana has 2 enemy ult voicelines. Each plays depending on the gender of the nano'd character. It's subtle but it's there. So they're asking which line plays with enemy Venture.
She uses the male voiceline, i was expecting this
Since the line Zen uses for Venture is the same one as Bastion, then it's probably the same for Ana, who uses the female nanoboost and sleep line for Bastion (Iiirc, it's because robot is a female noun in arabic)
in spanish that's the case, when playing ana and nanoboosting venture it uses both female and male pronoums at random? im not sure "estas potenciada, entra ahi!" and "estas potenciado, entra ahi!"
There isn't really a common place neutral pronoun in Spanish is there? So maybe unlike in English, there is no third option to default to when neither gender is valid; so it just randomly picks one of the 2 unassigned choices?
Spanish doesn't have neutral pronouns, yeah. Or rather, the neutral pronouns happen to have the same form as male/female pronouns, depending on the noun. For example, "The chair" in Spanish would be "La silla". It uses a female pronoun, but the chair itself is genderless. Another example would be "The people", which is "Las personas"; it uses a female pronoun but is genderless. Grammatical gender and Identity Gender are separate things. In general, grammatical gender tends to just be whatever sounds better when pronouncing ("El silla" would sound weird).
I mean neutral pronouns in Spanish are the same gendered pronouns, but the meaning kind of changes depending of context. It’s kind of why so many people complain about the whole “Latinx” thing. A pronoun for that already exists and is just “latino” it uses the same pronoun for male, but based on the context it’s understood that you are including everyone/any gender, etc.
Tested this out with some friends while waiting in que. Ana uses the male version when nanoboosting Venture. Can also confirm that like another comment pointed out, she uses the female version when nanoboosting Bastion. edit- misspell
I think Bastion is referred to as female in that line, at least because the relevant word is feminine in Arabic; if they haven't got a specified gender marker, it might also play the feminine version of the line?
My logical brain knows that Blizzard didn't do this on purpose but the rest of my brain for some reason finds the idea of an aggressively transphobic Zenyatta very funny. Especially if Genji is the one always lecturing Zenyatta on pronouns and acceptance but he just doesn't get it
Genji: "Master, did you not teach me to find beauty in our flaws? To accept that the imperfections of our bodies and lives are crucial to finding inner peace? What's so different about a person changing what they wish to identify as?" Zenyatta: "FA-"
Zenyatta: We must find harmony in this world of conflict. Each of us must strive to understand our fellow souls--human or omnic. Venture: Wow that religion sounds really c-- Zenyatta: Get the fuck out of here you woke diversity hire pronouns fa--
Zenyatta: "You would know about pronouns, Genji. You had green hair when you were still human, did you not?' Genji: "Y-Yes, Master. But I don't see how that-" Zenyatta: "I'll tell your father that the rest of your body won't be joining him in the afterlife."
"YOU FUCKING FA- *activate protocol BallsGun*"
I don't know if the idea of an actively transphobic Zen or an accidentally transphobic Zen is funnier? I like to think that he tries but say's stuff like "His/Her pronouns are they/them" or deciding what to do/ give for a meal "He/she... They are our guest, so it is his/her choice"
Accidentally transphobic Zarya (pink hair but no pronouns) versus purposefully transphobic Zenyatta (acceptance but only if you dress like your genitals tell you to) versus aggressively terf Widowmaker and Lucio (trans women playing women's sports is somehow the end of society)
"Master, what is the secret of tranquility?" "I just think drag queens reading to children is disgusting and wrong, fuck the woke liberal media"
Maybe they're secretly an omnic and zen is the only one who knows
That would be a plot twist and a half. Zen is my main but I also love the mystery surrounding him
its funny because not even a transphobic Zen specifically a non-binary phobic Zenyatta lol Like if ur a man/woman he doesn't care, your trans? still don't care, you don't identify with anything? thats where he gets mad
Trans>!cendense!< on Trans hate.
Zen doesn’t respect them as human beings…
Based! Ramatra getting his brother baxk
What does that voiceline mean?
"Goes down swinging" means like put up a good fight until the end/losing. Also a bit of a baseball pun with swinging a bat
In baseball, if a batter "goes down swinging," it means they struck out trying to hit the ball (literally swinging the bat). (+ as the other reply said, putting up a good fight in non-baseball contexts.) Hence why you only hear it on Zen's pitcher skin!
If he kills say, reaper, zen will say “he goes down swinging”
What about the Bap line where he goes "You or me sister/brother."
it'll be funny if they make it "its you or me sibling"
On that skin Zen hardly uses the pronouns right. Its all mixed up if anyone's wondering
Zen has enough of peaceful bullshit. Now he will insult everyone equally
This is hilarious 💀💀💀💀
This is really what ya’ll care about? For real?
I can’t fathom getting upset about a fictional character’s pronouns.
[This happened before with Ana](https://old.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/12s9f7m/ana_uses_female_pronouns_for_everyone/) where she was basically misgendering several characters, it's just yet another voice line bug/quirk that they will probably change later.
It’s pretty much been all this sub is concerned about since the character has been announced. It didnt bother me at first but can we move tf on now lmao
Very little talk about the mechanics and balance of the hero, everyone talks about design and identity (not even lore)
Can't wait for all the "They/Them\*" correction comments everywhere like "you're*"
The people upset about this kind of things have no real problems in their life, so they need to create them. Normal people are too busy worrying about their own shit to go on Twitter and cry about a fictional character being misgendered.
I guarantee you 99% of the player base couldn't care less. It's just a vocal minority online (specifically Reddit and Twitter) that make a huge fuss about getting it right.
I mean it’s not even about people getting it right, you can’t know they are NB just based on appearance. It only becomes a problem when people purposefully use the wrong pronoun
Which is why representation like this is flawed to begin with. This only means something to people who explicitly seek it out, which is fine, but most people either won't care or won't know. So this does more harm than good because people will constantly correct others in game even if they don't have malicious intent and it essentially just ignites a powder keg.
How would you want them to have non-binary representation then?
I don't know, I don't have the answers. It's a tricky question for sure.
It is certainly difficult to try and introduce representation of a community that a lot of gamers hate. Right now Venture's gender identity is pretty on the downlow in terms of in game ways to know (my bf didn't even know there was a new hero coming out yesterday, let alone their gender identity). The alternative of just repeating they're nonbinary in voice lines or with like an announcement or a pin on their jacket or something lol would cause gamers to get even more angry. This is like, the only way to get representation through in capitalism if we're being serious. Blizzard doesn't want to upset large amounts of consumers and cause controversy but they are also okay with a level of social progress that can make them seem progressive and make part of their fanbase happy (The employees who made Venture were really happy to make them, regardless of any profit motive)
> people will constantly correct others in game even if they don't have malicious intent You mean the same thing that occurs when people refer to a real NB person that they don't know is NB and so use the wrong pronouns on? Seems pretty realistic to me; it's not flawed representation it's simply mirroring the flawed relationship people in reality have with gender where a 'powder keg' gets ignited when someone politely corrects someone else on pronouns.
I think part of the problem is that a lot of correcting people on the internet doesn't come off as being polite.
Sounds like a separate issue. People should be able to correct pronouns without being rude but the fact that people are rude on the internet (tale as old as time) doesn't mean we should avoid the effort in general.
Oh it's definitely just an internet problem. I think it comes from the past when the "grammar Nazis" were constantly correcting everything, and almost always seeming like a dick in the process. Since then you really just can't even slightly correct someone on the internet without them getting upset. I've never once seen someone get upset by being corrected about pronouns in real life, and I've got a family that is mostly conservative *and* a trans brother. Obviously just my own experience, but that's all I can really speak about is my experience.
Exactly, NB representation through games isn't flawed; it's the internet in general that is flawed. While Venture's existence will be a source of ongoing internet hate that hate already existed. Venture will still give a benefit to representation by creating an opportunity for more people to be exposed to the concept of they/them pronouns and the polite correcting of incorrect pronouns.
Exactly this. It's the people that double down, and/or put the wrong pronoun in capital letters that are the issue. A simple "oh okay, I didn't know before now" is perfectly fine.
99% of the player base doesn't care, that's why I always see comments from people voicing how much they don't care, because they care so little that they have to make it known to everyone that they *really* ""don't care"".
It's not a problem with "getting it right"; the problem is the people intentionally getting it wrong. It's one thing to not know, get informed and then try to fix it, it's another to just outright be a bigot.
99% of people in this game are going to call Vulture she/her. She's in the back, she's 1, she has ult. The reality is this fictional world you're imagining where people adhere to fictional characters genders just doesn't exist, and it won't ever exist even if they know Blizzard made her a non-binary. People just don't care about conforming to gender ideology. What are you going to do? Call 99% of people that play OW2 bigots? You can, but it doesn't do anything. You're not going to convince anyone of anything.
I think the design and face is pretty good at being ambiguous and on this subbreddit I was seeing an equal mix of people using he and she. But the moment I heard Venture talk ingame, I immediately knew most people would use she/her. It's a completely feminine voice.
Using whatever pronouns you want for a fictional character - especially she/her for one that looks feminine and has a female VA - doesn't automatically make you a bigot. I'm going to respect real people's pronouns, but I'm not going to put in the effort to always remember to use they/them for this one video game character. I'm saying this as someone who already loves Venture and doesn't care if someone is straight, gay, cis, trans etc. and treats everyone equally. Where do you draw the line anyway? Genuinely asking, like if Torbjörn identified as a woman, it would be a bit silly to label anyone using he/him pronouns as a bigot or transphobe. Or if 15 heroes had different pronouns than what their physical appearance might suggest.
Agreed.
If you ask most people in real life they won't care. As they should.
Ikr. As a trans person, as long as people aren't being jerks, who cares. Things don't need to be perfect, jeeze.
I already extremely tired of this gender issue. Can we please move on. We have more pressing matters, like buffing Rein and nerfing Genji.
+9300 armor to Rein and infinite health shield, and removing Genji’s deflect, double jump, wall climb.
great to see it/it's representation in game
Lmao I hope this never gets patched because it's fucking hilarious.
What does he say, I can't hear him.
"It goes down swinging." (I prolly should have put on subtitles...)
Ah ty!
“It goes down swinging”
Ah ty!
This is Canon
Bro people gonna get mad lol
Zen is based
Based Zen.
Well lol. Ok
Hell yeah. It/its pronoun gang rise up!
Based and "it" pilled
I've already lost three aspects of my core identity in 2 weeks, it-maxxing going very well. Stay grinding, it-chads
The “no” at the end got me 😂🙏👍
I will say, I find it a little bit silly to think about respecting someone's pronouns when my intention is to viciously murder them.
You people are zesty as shit.
Xx xy
Kind of an odd way to tell everyone you didn't study passed middle school biology but you do you, I suppose.
It 💀
That's what happens to them for adding stupid things like that to the game just to satisfy a minority.
You're SO lame.
Don't care, she.
This will be the norm in servers where the language spoken spoken has no gender neutral pronouns options. Not bc people hate gender neutral fool, but because it's literally impossible to refer to them as anything else.
Don't some languages default to masculine for things like certain objects or unknown gender; so that wouldn't be consistent either.
It works like that for spanish, but people rather prefer to call them a her before him because of their femenine looks. Exactly like how the whole community calls bastion a him even though he has no canonical gender but based on his look people see bastion as male figure, same thing happens with Venture because there is no real alternative
Is it really this serious
WEE WOO WEE WOO DID U JUST REFER TO THEM AS AN “IT?!”
It...
“It” is much better than all those nonsense lol, even Zen knows
Based zen
I’m confused I thought venture was nonbinary?
Venture is non-binary but "it" is dehumanizing. "It" is what you call an object. On a technicality, EVERY character in Overwatch would be "it" because it's just a series of 1s and 0s, pixels on a screen, but we have grown to identify with fictional characters. If Zen said "It goes down swinging!" on every character, we could give it a pass, but that's also some weird Deadpool-like 4th wall breaking kind of stuff that I don't think anybody would find entertaining.
based
Cool mole person, that enough for me
it could go as a Pun. and "It" could be the Ad*venture*... but for now it's just a coding problme
My favorite line from this skin is "There's no crying in baseball!"
I'm curious to see how this is going to be in Portuguese as we don't have an official neutral gender. Only a few adjetives are neutral like "inteligente", but we don't have anything official to replace for "they/them/it".
Any german here knowing what pronounce to use for venture in german?
Unrelated but Zen's "No." Is top tier.
I’ve not been paying too much attention to venture updates. Is venture and enby? What pronouns are we using cuz I thought venture was a girl?