What you should know about Poison

A certain character has come to my attention that I had otherwise never heard of, and her name is Poison. Apparently there's a lot of buzz about whether she may have originally been a he. So, in light of the recent announcements regarding the new characters in Street Fighter X Tekken at last week's Comic Con, I decided to do some research on this surprisingly controversial character.

So here's the deal with Poison, as far as I know: She first appeared in Final Fight but has also been featured in Street Fighter III, along with a number of other Capcom games, and seems to be pretty popular, probably at least partially due to the controversy surrounding her. Even so, it has been a number of years since she's made an appearance, so the news that she will be in Street Fighter X Tekken, along with her cohorts Roxy and Hugo (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not sure whether or not Roxy and Hugo are playable), is generating a lot of excitement.

Poison as she appears in 'Street Fighter X Tekken'

Apparently, back when Poison was created for Final Fight's release in Japan, she was strictly a female character, but due to fears that Americans wouldn't take to well to the big, burly men of Final Fight beating up a chick, they decided it would be a better idea to make her transgendered. To make things even more confusing, though, it seems like Capcom themselves treat her gender differently in Japan and America. Check out this quote from Street Fighter IV producer Yoshinori Ono: "Let's set the record straight: in North America, Poison is officially a post-op transsexual. But in Japan, she simply tucks her business away to look female."

Basically, I think it's safe to say that she's the Birdo of the Capcom universe.

Regardless of how we choose to define Poison, she certainly is an interesting addition to Street Fighter X Tekken, and I have to say I am really excited for the game's impending release. I think we should all take the advice of this lovely comic, brought to my attention by GayGamer.net, and just accept Poison for what she is, rather than get hung up about how we should label her. And without further ado, here is the main reason I wrote up this whole post in the first place (click on the image for a larger view):