When it comes to this whole debacle, I've taken the time to read a lot on here, and contemplate this.
I would suggest to many to wait for the replacement and see what it looks like. If it's better to her character, than great. If it's worse, then it can just sit around being ignored. It is only one pose.
As a side note I am kinda annoyed at the sex-negative perspective people tend to take in these kinds of discussions.
Tracer could have a little cheeky side to her, maybe not. Could the pose be toned down a little? Yeah, maybe firming out the butt crease would reduce the whole thing fine. But let's not start making broad strokes like "every woman is expected to show sexuality" and turn this into yet another "men against women" argument.
Sexuality is a facet of every person with a pulse. Sexual desire is a side effect of the reproductive instinct. Most certainly the fact that it is NOT the only facet of our existence puts us above a rutting animal, but that does not mean we should regard it with disgust like we have somehow ascended beyond our humanity. You are not some supranatural metahuman that "has no need for such vulgar feelings; they are beneath me, and should be beneath you."
I don't see why the pose needed changing beyond it not fitting Tracer (because honestly it's too reserved for someone like her anyway; she doesn't strike me as the type to be all cool as opposed to making quips, salutes or joking around, considering how cavalier she is in the snippets we have of her character), but if the new pose is actually better to her character, than it's no big loss.
And seriously Widowmaker was brainwashed into a sleeper agent to murder her husband and then was converted into what is essentially a walking corpse with a minimum pulse. The woman can't feel anything, so any sort of flirtation or sexual posing is nonsensical for a character who almost literally feels nothing, especially since she got those body mods to make her the "best snipar evar," so her seducing a target is not only impractical, but unnecessary. Aside from the "no warm body temperature" thing.
That being said...
The creators have the final say as to what does and doesn't fit her character. If they choose to remove the pose, it's their decision. That being said, Kaplan only turned things into a shitshow by trying to virtue signal. They should've just changed the pose into something else and been done with it, no muss no fuss, because hey, it's just a pose.
It's the stance he took on the matter with Fipps that was either poorly timed or just him tossing the team under the bus by acting like some cheeky posing was "wrong." My optimism claims the former, precedent claims the latter.
What I am tired of is "inclusive" or "diverse" being misused as viable critique, especially towards videogames. A good character is determined by their personality and their story, not their gender or race, or orientation. I'll keep coming back to Indivisible as the best example, where someone praising its "diversity" over its good character design, artwork and animation makes me cringe so hard my face withdraws into my head.
When a creator claims to be making the change for inclusivity, they are saying "we are making this change because some group might dislike this and feel like they're being excluded, so we are going to change this to make them feel less excluded." If the pose is no big deal, why is it something that needed to be removed? Who is being excluded by Tracer's butt?
And for those people disagreeing with the pose fitting or not fitting Tracer's character:
It's boiling down to "this character is not acting in a way consistent with MY perception of how this character behaves! Change this!"
And pointing out that this is how the majority of people are acting about the removal, then I have to wonder, what makes Fipps so special that Kaplan feels the need to acknowledge his opinion in relation to the reasoning behind the change? Fipps is acting no differently than the majority of the people opposed to the removal, just on the opposite side.
This is not the kind of logic that demonstrates "creative freedom" and I think this is why there's such a huge backlash. Kaplan and them might have originally planned to change it, but his response to Fipps was a head over heels dive into complete and total agreement (despite Fipps operating on the logic that an adult knowing what being sexy is automatically devalues their character).
Well that's my mildly sleepy, potentially redundant 2 cents on the issue. I'll show myself out and continue to observe the argumentum ad infinitum that shall swirl around this thread for another week or so until the next nontroversy cones along.
