POISON
Created By: Akira Yasuda
First Appearance: Final Fight (1989)
Home Country: The United States
Role: Female Mook, Miss Fanservice, Trans Character
Vague Martial Art Basis: Unknown
PL 8 (142)
STRENGTH 2
STAMINA 3
AGILITY 6
FIGHTING 13
DEXTERITY 5
INTELLIGENCE 0
AWARENESS 2
PRESENCE 4
Skills:
Acrobatics 10 (+16)
Athletics 8 (+10)
Deception 4 (+8)
Expertise (Criminal) 6 (+6)
Expertise (Martial Arts) 5 (+5)
Insight 3 (+5)
Perception 3 (+5)
Persuasion 3 (+7)
Ranged Combat (Energy Attacks) 4 (+10)
Stealth 2 (+8)
Advantages:
Chokehold, Daze (Deception), Equipment (Riding Crop- Reach 2, Handcuffs), Fascination (Deception), Fast Grab, Improved Critical (Special Moves), Improved Grab, Improved Initiative, Ranged Attack 1, Startle, Takedown
"World Warrior" Fighting Style: Accurate Attack (Jab), All-Out Attack, Extraordinary Effort, Fast Grab (Grab), Improved Critical (Unarmed) 2, Improved Defense, Improved Hold, Improved Trip (Throw), Power Attack (Roundhouse), Takedown, Withstand Damage (Block)
Powers:
"Honey Trap" Blast 2 (Feats: +2 to Airborne Opponents) (Diminished Range -1) Linked to Affliction 6 (Will; Dazed & Hindered/Stunned & Vulnerable) (Extras: Ranged, Extra Condition) (Flaws: Limited Degree, Distracting) (10) -- [13]
- AE: "Thunder Whip/Whip of Love- Repeating Whip" Strength-Damage +2 (Extras: Multiattack 5) (Flaws: Distracting 5) (Inaccurate -1) Linked to Affliction 5 (Toughness; Dazed & Vulnerable/Stunned & Defenseless) (Extras: Extra Condition) (Flaws: Limited Degree) (8.5)
- AE: "Aeolus Edge" Blast 5 (Flaws: Reduced Defenses 2) (6)
- AE: "Elbow Drop/Ascension- Lifting Kick" Strength-Damage +2 (Inaccurate -1) (1)
Features 1: May Add Whip Damage to Strength-Based Attacks [1]
Offense:
Unarmed +13 (+2 Damage, DC 17)
Whip +13 (+3 Damage, DC 18)
Elbow Drop/Ascension/Thunder Whip +11 (+5 Damage, DC 20)
Aeolus Edge +10 (+5 Ranged Damage, DC 20)
Honey Trap +10 (+2 Ranged Damage +6 Ranged Affliction, DC 17 & 16)
Initiative +10
Defenses:
Dodge +12 (DC 22), Parry +13 (DC 23), Toughness +3, Fortitude +5, Will +5
Complications:
Motivation (Greed)
Prejudice (Well, YOU Know...)- Depending on the continuity (or hell, the country in which you're playing the game), Poison may or may not be born biologically-male, still have a penis, or be full post-operative.
Total: Abilities: 70 / Skills: 48--24 / Advantages: 11 + 12 / Powers: 14 / Defenses: 11 (142)
That Girl Is Poison:
-Easily the most confusing history in the
SF/Final Fight franchise goes to the mysterious, enigmatic, controversial Poison. To go into why takes a LONG time, but the short version is: she may or may not have been born male. And of course the REAL explanation gives Poison by far the longest bio of any
Street Fighter or
Final Fight character, despite not really being that interesting as a CHARACTER.
-See, the INITIAL story was that Poison & Roxy were a pair of female Mooks in the
Final Fight game (Poison the "main" one with a full Health Bar and pink hair; Roxy had a smaller Health Bar and orange hair)- their outfits were extraordinarily-skimpy to the point of Fanservice- barely-there skirts, and shirts so tiny they flew up and revealed underboob when either girl was struck. But fear over being seen as sexist for allowing players to beat up on women ("rude" was the term the Japanese developer used), they were changed to TRANSVESTITES (modern term would be "Crossdresser") in the version sent to Western arcades. Because of course, beating up ladies is totally insensitive, but if they're men in lady-dress (never mind the underboob), it's totes radical? Not creating any kind of unfortunate implications THERE, right? Nonetheless, both were STILL removed from the Home Console versions of the game, and replaced with Billy & Sid, a pair of male characters.
But Actually...:
-HOWEVER, it's since turned out that this initial perception was WRONG. The initial drawings of Poison & Roxy by the designers include the word "Newhalf" right underneath- "newhalf" is a Japanese term for a Female-To-Male Transgendered people (ie. born physically male, views self as female, or is transitioning TO female, or has already gone THROUGH an operation- it appears to all fit under that heading). Which... KIND OF makes sense from a language perspective (it's like, the "new" means change, and "half" means "somewhere between", which is kind of what "Trans" means anyways...) but comes off vaguely-rude. Probably doesn't sound rude in Japanese, in any case (it's just them combining two English words). So APPARENTLY Poison (and Roxy) was meant to be what we in the 2000s are supposed to call "trans" all along.
-This, of course, wasn't quite the story for years. The version I'd heard since I was a pre-teen was that they were "transexuals" (a term that doesn't get used so much these days, as it's viewed as dated and was too often used as a slur) in America, but standard-issue women in Japan ("cisgender" is the operative word now, and yes all of these terms have undergone a rapid change in recent years, which makes looking into matters confusing, and makes all information before like 2000 come off as insensitive to modern trans people, regardless of their sympathy to the LGBT spectrum). And of course I had the typical semi-homophobic teen male response (all "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO the hot chick from a video game is actually a DUDE NOOOOOOOOO!")- such things generally go away with age. But, this reputation kind of stuck, and so pretty much any time Poison showed up, jokes about male organs would soon follow.
Poison As Background Joke:
-Now, Poison didn't appear in subsequent
Final Fights games (save
Final Fight Revenge, a Fighting Game), and was usually only seen in the background during other games (like SNK, Capcom liked to stick un-used characters in backgrounds as a Canon Gag for longtime fans). It wasn't until Hugo's reintroduction in
Street Fighter III that she became a thing again- Poison was treated like Hugo's manager/caretaker- his best pal, who would always watch his back. Poison would finally get some playable appearances in
Street Fighter X Tekken and a few other games as well, meaning that she was now back on the fighting circuit in a major way!
-HOWEVER, this did not stop any kind of confusion and/or controversy. Problematically, Capcom people keep changing their story on her, and how things are. Eventually, the "official line" was that Poison was Pre-Op (or Non-Op- I imagine plenty don't go through with it) Trans in Japan, where she "tucks away her business" in order to pass as female, while Post-Op in America. This is of course REALLY SILLY, but not the FIRST time the canon has diverged cross-country (though usually it's just the boxer going by "Balrog" instead of litigation-inspiring "Mike Bison", not someone growing male genitalia overseas). And of course, Poison's appearances in
SF/Tekken drew controversy because somebody thought it'd be funny to have a ton of dialogue sent her way poking FUN at her very nature- Ryu says he doesn't want to fall into her "trap" ("trap" is a joke/fetish about someone seemingly-female revealing a penis to a male lover), and Chun-Li would say nonsense like "You're not very lady-like at all! It felt like I was fighting a GUY in there!" (this is both offensive to trans people, and not even FUNNY, which makes it even worse), Kuma the Bear denies Poison's a woman, saying she "smells like a man". This was, shall we say, not entirely well-received. Thankfully, Capcom changed some of the dialogue (most of which was revealed pre-release) when the game actually came out.
So What IS Poison, Anyways?:
-Part of the issue is a lack of real, definition answers from Capcom, which I think is kind of a cultural thing with Japan. There's very little "MY say is the only say" stuff, and the creators often aren't as obsessive as the fans are in keeping stuff straight, and often people disagree within the company itself. This is sometimes still true in the WEST, but for the most part, you see a lot less of the "True Official Statements" regarding things like this. If it was Marvel or DC, we'd almost absolutely have a proclamation from On High, where Joe Quesada or Alex Alonso or somebody would be "Yes, Poison is X instead of Y, and we are all super-happy about it"... but in Japan? There's not nearly as much of that- sometimes, MAJOR questions go unanswered. Never mind the fact that they keep CHANGING THEIR MINDS about everything- the Official Story (and thus, Poison's entire nature) has changed repeatedly, and continuity itself is often up in the air- The answer has gone from "She COULD be male, but it's up to the viewer to decide" (
FF designer Akira Nishitani) to "in North America, she's a post-op transexual. But in Japan, she simply tucks her business away to look female" (
SF IV producer Yoshinori Ono)- she was thus not included in
Street Fighter IV because "this would be too confusing".
-THEN, however, Ono declared her a post-op in all regions (for ease of localization... though why all the games HAVE to mention this enough to require changing the dialogue is beyond me), then changed his mind AGAIN and said it was up to the fans to decide. Meanwhile, the original game's designer has said that "to me, Poison will always be cisgender". Meaning that the "Official Answer" is simultaneously unknown, yes, no, maybe, and meaningless- essentially, it's the "Shrug of God". To me, when I hear stuff like "it's meant to be ambiguous", it's the same as when a celebrity accused of being gay says "I don't like to talk about my sexuality"- ie. the answers's "yes, but I don't want any of the negative attention from people who hate that kind of thing."
Poison... Is Kind Of Popular?:
-The funny thing is, all of this controversy and confusion just make the character MORE fascinating to people. First off, Trans people (who have like ZERO fictional characters with whom to identify, even as that became the new "in thing" to openly-find okay and acceptable) all identified with her (which is funny, seeing as how she was a vicious criminal and accessory to kidnapping). And... how do I put it delicately? Let's just say that the possibility of Poison having a huge penis has not exactly held her back in terms of popularity in Fan Art or as a Miss Fanservice
. And Capcom wouldn't admit this, but I would bet MONEY that she was made trans in the first place because someone working on
Final Fight had that very same fetish. But honestly? There's nine hundred female charactes in Capcom's games. Why NOT make one of them trans? It at least sets her apart from the rest of the herd. I have no issue with Poison being part of the "T" on the "LGBT" spectrum. Hell, it's really the only interesting thing ABOUT her- if she's not trans, then she's no more interesting as a person than say, Bred or Dug. She's just some criminal who now wants to make it big. Not exactly the stuff of legends. Between the look and her status, that's all there really is to the girl.
Poison's Stats:
-Oh yeah, the stats
. Okay, in any case, Poison is a PL 8 Fighter- having only a handful of appearances, and spending most of her time as either a Mook (
Final Fight) or Sidekick
SF III, she hasn't "earned" the full status of PL 9-10 yet. However, she's got a pretty neat set of moves- some standard-issue stuff, but then we have a STUNNING attack- her Honey Trap move is a minor Fireball, but can actually stun an enemy for a pretty long period of time (a second or two is an ETERNITY in Fighting Game terms). She's an acrobatic Dexmonkey type of fighter otherwise.
-I'd rather not get into the minefield of whether or not to give her Attractive (I mean, physically it seems OBVIOUS she should have it- she's ALSO a flirt. But if the characters KNOW? Depending on who's in charge, who knows WHAT they know, and WHO knows? And who'd still be affected anyways?... See? Not worth getting into)- her moves work the same on everybody, regardless of their gender, sex or identity, and I figure she's a consummate liar and con-woman anyways, so any stat-benefit is probably not there.
POISON- in Final Fight
Created By: Akira Yasuda
First Appearance: Final Fight (1989)
Home Country: The United States
Role: Female Mook, Miss Fanservice, Trans Character
Vague Martial Art Basis: Unknown
PL 6 (97)
STRENGTH 2
STAMINA 3
AGILITY 5
FIGHTING 9
DEXTERITY 5
INTELLIGENCE 0
AWARENESS 2
PRESENCE 4
Skills:
Acrobatics 10 (+15)
Athletics 8 (+10)
Deception 4 (+8)
Expertise (Criminal) 6 (+6)
Insight 3 (+5)
Perception 3 (+5)
Persuasion 3 (+7)
Stealth 1 (+6)
Advantages:
Chokehold, Close Attack, Daze (Deception), Diehard, Equipment (Riding Crop, Handcuffs), Fascination (Deception), Fast Grab, Improved Critical (Unarmed), Improved Defense, Improved Initiative, Improved Trip, Takedown
Offense:
Unarmed +10 (+2 Damage, DC 17)
Initiative +9
Defenses:
Dodge +9 (DC 19), Parry +9 (DC 19), Toughness +3, Fortitude +5, Will +2
Complications:
Motivation (Greed)
Prejudice (Well, YOU Know...)- Depending on the continuity (or hell, the country in which you're playing the game), Poison may or may not be born biologically-male, still have a penis, or be full post-operative.
Total: Abilities: 60 / Skills: 39--19 / Advantages: 12 / Powers: 0 / Defenses: 6 (97)
-Poison in
Final Fight is PL 6, like the other "Full Bar" guys like El Gado & Holly Wood. Her accuracy & defenses move much lower, her Advantages take a nose dive, and her Whip no longer does extra damage. At this point, Guy, Cody & Haggar can make short work of two or three of her at once.
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