What is V's gender

[The Extinguisher]

Are you are saying that every character is trans unless we know their sex via their participation in reproduction?

If you were right it would mean that trans people are massively over-represented in media.

Actually im saying all of them are trans, even if theyve made babies or not. Its fantasy, baby!

Why is it an issue i trans people get overepresented for a while? It can be interest for years of being completely non-existent in media

[2D8HP]

it appears to me that the term androgynous has fallen a bit out of fashion.

I recall any number of references to elves having androgynous appearance to most humans in games and in stories. Not sure if that was something Rich was exposed to or considered when writing V initially.

Take 'em to school KorvinStarmast! You'll probably recognize this:



Elves are not humans (which makes it hard to role-play one), and they are physically and culturally different than humans.

We are used to cultural ideals of seperate male and female roles (i.e. one as warriors, one as caretakers), but default D&D elves are different.

Their cultural ideal is a god/dess who "represents the highest ideals of elven-kind", and "is alternately male or female, both, or neither", and all Elves are trained in bows and swords, with no exemptions based on sex, and"When the primal elves cast aside formlessness and impermanence for the promise of greatness, they forsook the part of their nature that Corellon most cherished..." and "Now the elves of the world must forever live and die and live again, suffering the consequence of their ancestors' poor judgment", "fixed in the forms they had adopted in defiance of Corellon's will", "And all elves grieve over the broken bond between themselves and their creator", so "that they are seldom frivolous and carefree is rooted in an inborn malaise or sorrow that infused the primal elves when they choose to stop following Corellon's path", "even if many of them ultimately remained loyal to Corellon"
(yes, I freely mixed lore from different D&D editions, that's just my jam).

Yeah, the culture described seems to me to fit. Vaarsuvius.

(and BTW among default D&D Dwarves "priests arrange marriages, using a process that finds the best matches and is designed to ensure that each generation of a clan is stronger and more talented than the last. Their dictates in this respect are sacrosanct, and a dwarf designated for arranged marriage must obey the priests or risk exile.")

So:

Hello, my name is Varsuuvius and I am an elf.
Hello Vaarsuuvius. May I ask if you are a boy elf or a girl elf?
Your racial heritage makes you believe, we have genders too. Elan, I am just an elf.

Fighting-Man has always been my favorite class name. Like, of all the terms - Fighter, Brawler, Pugilist, Warrior, Knight, Soldier, etc. etc. etc., they picked....Fighting-Man. I would always pick that class solely for the ridiculous name.

Fighting-Men

The phrase is probably used many other places as well, but cited by Gygax as an inspiration was A Princess of Mars and it's sequels including

Spoiler: A Fighting Man of Mars

Show

and I'm certain that the class name was a homage to those tales.

[Fyraltari]

Why is it an issue i trans people get overepresented for a while? It can be interest for years of being completely non-existent in media

Spoiler: Le Futur Ne Recule Jamais

Show

"One day, men and women shall be perfectly equal, Michalon. But, as far as I know, we are still at episode 2 : The Merciless Revenge."

[Synesthesy]

That volcano, if I may toss some additional pedantry into the mix, is referred to now as Vesuvio in the nation where it stands above the ruins of Pompeii. (If you get a chance, visit both. Personal recommendation).

Vesuvio is a male ending (usually) in Italian but I suspect that there are exceptions to that. When I first read V's name in comic my immediate association was to Vesuvius, but that may have been due to my familiarity with that volcano IRL.

"O" is almost always male in my language, where "A" is most always female, and "E" can be both. It comes from latin, of course, where "US" is male, like "lupus", the wolf, and "A" is female like "rosa", a rose. Latin "us" in Italian become "o" almost always, so latin Vesuvius became Italian Vesuvio.
In our language, Vesuvio is a male name. But we can argue that Mountain is "Montagna", and it's female; and just to add some salt here and there, Pompei is clearly a female name in Italian.
In Italian, you can't have a character like V that ambiguous, because a lot more of words change between male and female. We have male and female possessive pronoums, for example, so we would know V's mistery everytime (s)he say that something belongs to hir.

Ok, now I'll end my lesson

I would say that IMHO the idea that V is female because every party in Giant's writing are 4:2 is the best argoument I have read.

[Fincher]

Someone brought up Vaarsuvius' figure at some point. It could be argued that Vaarsuvius wasn't given breasts because they were supposed to be male, but it could also be argued that every other female character is given breasts because readers couldn't tell that Vaarsuvius was supposed to be female.

[The Extinguisher]

"O" is almost always male in my language, where "A" is most always female, and "E" can be both. It comes from latin, of course, where "US" is male, like "lupus", the wolf, and "A" is female like "rosa", a rose. Latin "us" in Italian become "o" almost always, so latin Vesuvius became Italian Vesuvio.
In our language, Vesuvio is a male name. But we can argue that Mountain is "Montagna", and it's female; and just to add some salt here and there, Pompei is clearly a female name in Italian.
In Italian, you can't have a character like V that ambiguous, because a lot more of words change between male and female. We have male and female possessive pronoums, for example, so we would know V's mistery everytime (s)he say that something belongs to hir.

Ok, now I'll end my lesson

I would say that IMHO the idea that V is female because every party in Giant's writing are 4:2 is the best argoument I have read.

You can just use they/them/theirs. Its much more preferable to things like she/he or whatever. Just an fyi :)

Also, i wouldn't read Kish's point as V is a girl because of X reason, rather that V was originally created as a female character and was then changed. Unless ive completely misunderstood their general forum presence.

[martianmister]

I am completely unable to tell if this is sarcasm or not.

Considering she just said "our fates are now intertwined!" before that and there is nothing to doubt her seriousness, I think it's no sarcasm.

[Dr.Zero]

Someone brought up Vaarsuvius' figure at some point. It could be argued that Vaarsuvius wasn't given breasts because they were supposed to be male, but it could also be argued that every other female character is given breasts because readers couldn't tell that Vaarsuvius was supposed to be female.

And from what should have we known, in strip #1 for example, that V was female?

You can just use they/them/theirs. Its much more preferable to things like she/he or whatever. Just an fyi :)

You missed his point, which is not how other people talk about you, but how you talk about yourself.
A simple sentence like "I am their friend" translates in italian either "Io sono una loro amica" (female version) or "Io sono un loro amico" (male version). It's quite hard to avoid telling your own gender in a normal conversation, in italian.

Well, at least if the subject doesn't use pluralis maiestatis, but that would be considered... well...exactly the same way you english consider it: bordering on nut.

Oh, on a second reading I got it: I was the one missing the point. You were referring to the use of "hir".

[Knaight]

it appears to me that the term androgynous has fallen a bit out of fashion.

I recall any number of references to elves having androgynous appearance to most humans in games and in stories. Not sure if that was something Rich was exposed to or considered when writing V initially.

The term still gets used, it just doesn't apply particularly well to V, who is canonically non-binary. Whereas Bandana (for instance) has a more androgynous appearance, while also being explicitly female.

[KorvinStarmast]

"O" is almost always male in my language, where "A" is most always female, and "E" can be both. It comes from latin, of course, where "US" is male, like "lupus", the wolf, and "A" is female like "rosa", a rose. Latin "us" in Italian become "o" almost always, so latin Vesuvius became Italian Vesuvio.
In our language, Vesuvio is a male name. But we can argue that Mountain is "Montagna", and it's female; and just to add some salt here and there, Pompei is clearly a female name in Italian.
In Italian, you can't have a character like V that ambiguous, because a lot more of words change between male and female. We have male and female possessive pronoums, for example, so we would know V's mistery everytime (s)he say that something belongs to hir.

Ok, now I'll end my lesson

Been a while. Thanks for the refresher. Io parlo la lingua Italiano no molto bene. (I used to say that a lot, and I think I spelled some of that incorrectly)

You can just use they/them/theirs. Its much more preferable to things like she/he or whatever. Just an fyi :)

In Italian, I seem to recall that they also had genders assigned, but it's been so long and I've forgotten so much due to misuse that I won't go any further than that.

[Liquor Box]

Actually im saying all of them are trans, even if theyve made babies or not. Its fantasy, baby!

Why is it an issue i trans people get overepresented for a while? It can be interest for years of being completely non-existent in media

You missunderstand me - I don't think it is an issue, or at least not a negative one.

If I am understanding you correctly, you are saying you assume that all characters are trans unless you are certain that their birth sex matches their gender identity. Since we cannot be sure of most character's birth sex, you look at most characters as trans.

It seems to me that you can apply this to all media (not just the comic) - where you cannot be certain of a character's birth sex, assume they are trans.

That way you never need feel under-represented at all - your take is that almost all characters are trans. Any person who prefers significant non-trans representation probably does not default to trans like you do, so they are happy too. Seems like everyone wins on the representation front.

[The Extinguisher]

And from what should have we known, in strip #1 for example, that V was female?



You missed his point, which is not how other people talk about you, but how you talk about yourself.
A simple sentence like "I am their friend" translates in italian either "Io sono una loro amica" (female version) or "Io sono un loro amico" (male version). It's quite hard to avoid telling your own gender in a normal conversation, in italian.

Well, at least if the subject doesn't use pluralis maiestatis, but that would be considered... well...exactly the same way you english consider it: bordering on nut.

Oh, on a second reading I got it: I was the one missing the point. You were referring to the use of "hir".

Yeah i shouldn't have quoted the whole thing, but im on mobile and thats annoying.

On the topic of Italian, id look into what non-binary Italians call themselves. Im sure they've found something.

[Peelee]

Actually im saying all of them are trans, even if theyve made babies or not. Its fantasy, baby!

I seriously considered asking to sig this for a while.

[Liquor Box]

I don't think it's likely that a male writer fairly new to creating literature would 1) create two female characters for his main cast, and 2) design one of them to be decidedly unfeminine.

Why?

Particularly when you look at the rest of the early strips. There, you see other women represented by Sabine (who spends most of her time acting catty to Haley, and brings the same out of her), Hilgya (who needed to be redesigned for her reintroduction because her initial portrayal was so bad), and the elemental fairies (each of whom is wearing less than Haley), and you see jokes made out of female stereotypes like there being a long line at the bathroom. These are not sensitive or nuanced portrayals in the slightest.

I think those examples go the opposite way. Other than the fact that most wear revealing clothes, those characters are very different from one another. Sure they all have female stereotypes, but different one to each other - like all the male characters fit stereotypes, but different from one another.

Delta
Again, you're making my point. He has those characters now. Read the commentaries in the books, he himself loves to point out that he had basically no idea how to create nuanced characters back in the day and has precisely called out Haley's early characterization as some of his early sins because of how flat she was, she was a "girl" and a "rogue" and that's that.

No, even very early female characters were very different from Hayley. Here's what you said:

"Because we have the evidence right there in the first strip what Rich considered to be an "obviously" female character, giggling, wearing leather armor not even covering her belly and showing off her cleavage, and talking about shoes in the first personal dialogue she has a couple strips in. V, in the same number of strips, has absolutely no indication whatsoever of being female."

Your argument was that V could not be female because Rich, in his early days wrote females to giggle, wear revealing clothes and talks about shoes in their very first strip. But Hilgya is the very next significant female character we meet (assuming V is not female), and she does none of those things (just like V). So the fact that V does not giggle, does not wear revealing clothes and does not talk about shoes does not even hint that V is not female.

Seriously, I have no idea at this point what we're even talking about, this is nothing revolutionary, it's a trope that has been in existence forever, has been called out hundreds of times, even by Rich himself. If you're a young, male fantasy writer, you write male characters. It's what you do. Unless you consciously think about it and say "Okay, this is going to be a girl!", it's going to be a guy, and back in the first couple strips when he was only trying to make some rules jokes, he didn't think about stuff like that, that came later when you begin to notice the characters growing more nuanced and layered.

Just because someone has called it a trope does not even mean that it is something that usually happens, let alone something that happened in this particular case. Kish pointed out on the previous page that 4/4 other parties written by Rich that he could think of each had two female characters.

Personally, I think the "propensity to write female characters" is a weak argument either way when balanced against any more direct evidence (which admittedly is itself ambiguous). But Kish's "Rich usually has two women in a party" is still much stronger than your vague unexampled or referenced "men tent to write..." argument.

[The Extinguisher]

I seriously considered asking to sig this for a while.

If you want to that is absolutely okay with me :)

You missunderstand me - I don't think it is an issue, or at least not a negative one.

If I am understanding you correctly, you are saying you assume that all characters are trans unless you are certain that their birth sex matches their gender identity. Since we cannot be sure of most character's birth sex, you look at most characters as trans.

It seems to me that you can apply this to all media (not just the comic) - where you cannot be certain of a character's birth sex, assume they are trans.

That way you never need feel under-represented at all - your take is that almost all characters are trans. Any person who prefers significant non-trans representation probably does not default to trans like you do, so they are happy too. Seems like everyone wins on the representation front.

I mean, if you want to think of them as cis i guess thats okay but it just feels weird to call someone cis when theres no proof. Dont get me wrong im all for cis representation in media but dont you think youre stretching believability?

[ti'esar]

I'm confused as to why people are so fervently debating whether V was originally conceived of as male or female when pretty much everyone is in agreement that that original conception was abandoned over 1100 strips ago. I think there's plausible evidence in both directions ("Smurfetted" on the one hand, the number of 4/2 male/female adventuring parties in Rich's work on the other), but whatever the case it's not like it actually matters now.

[Peelee]

If you want to that is absolutely okay with me :)

Thanks! I try to keep it short and I just added one earlier today, but it's awesome enough to warrant it.

[zimmerwald1915]

Why?

Because that is the default starting point for all male writers, and Mr. Burlew is not exceptional in that regard.

[2D8HP]

I'm confused as to why people are so fervently debating whether V was....

Itchy thumbs, and I think mostly just liking to argue.

I also have some interests in the worldbuilding aspects that are suggested, but yeah, small pegs to hang hats on.

[Algeh]

I think fighting-men used to be a more generally used term that has since fallen out of favor (probably along with a lot of other gendered language). I think of it as a term I'd see a lot reading Kipling, for example.

[Liquor Box]

I mean, if you want to think of them as cis i guess thats okay but it just feels weird to call someone cis when theres no proof. Dont get me wrong im all for cis representation in media but dont you think youre stretching believability?

I wasn't really talking about myself. I don't think I ever really think about whether a character is trans or not in most cases - but your right I'm sure I do default to assuming a character's sex is what it appears to be (and that's probably why I don't think about it).

Anyway, even though it wasn't the point you were trying to make, isn't a win-win for everyone if people who care about representation just interpret the characters to represent what we want them to represent? It hadn't really occurred to me before.

[Liquor Box]

Because that is the default starting point for all male writers, and Mr. Burlew is not exceptional in that regard.

The default for all male writers is to only create one female character in their main cast? I think you are going to have to do more than make a bare assertion of that one. Kish pointed out that Burlew himself is a counter-example already with 4/4 of his parties other than the order (and perhaps the order too depending on V's sex at the start).

[Mightymosy]

Female. Because Rich's default adventuring party template appears to be four male/two female. That's the template in Five Foot Steps, as well as the original Linear Guild, Order of the Scribble, and Vector Legion. If the Order of the Stick has a different sex balance, it's the only outlier.

Delta, meanwhile, seems to be arguing that everyone should assume a level of incompetency and automatic sexism far beyond what Rich has admitted to even at his most self-critical. (I would submit that the troglodyte writer he describes as a default would have responded to finding out less than six strips in that people were seeing his manly blaster wizard as a woman with offense, not with deciding to play up the ambiguity.) And bringing back the tired old "look, it's Latin!" argument. I suppose it's better than misquoting Rich as having said Vaarsuvius was originally male, which was also a popular claim for a while.

(For the benefit of anyone who wasn't here for the last twenty rounds of How Can You People Question He's Male: Latin lacks the aa form and the ky form, thus of all the real-world languages they could be, the name Vaarsuvius and the name Inkyrius cannot be Latin. Vaarsuvius probably is named after Mount Vesuvius, as their second Linear Guild mirror was named after Pompeii. Is this indicative that 1) Vaarsuvius is characterized by fiery explosions, or that 2) Vaarsuvius has a penis? Hint: Only one of those is true of Mount Vesuvius, and if you're talking about the root of the name, that means you're going back to assuming the name is Latin.)

Rich has spelled out that, after his gaming group voted 66% that Vaarsuvius was female, having Roy call Vaarsuvius V-Man in #9 was a (poorly chosen) way to create ambiguity by pushing the audience away from the way they were leaning. Thus, pointing to an incident after that strip and saying "look, he's not treating Vaarsuvius as female here" means nothing; at the Elan-strips strips he was treating Vaarsuvius as explicitly ambiguous.

Thanks for your answer. Interesting point of view.

Was that the idea you had when you first read the first couple if strips? Did you have that information (4:2 parties) back then (because you had read later strips first or whatever)?

If not, what was your impression when you first started reading?

Like, the moment you had read the first 10 or 30 strips or so, which gender did you think V was back then?

[Delta]

The default for all male writers is to only create one female character in their main cast? I think you are going to have to do more than make a bare assertion of that one. Kish pointed out that Burlew himself is a counter-example already with 4/4 of his parties other than the order (and perhaps the order too depending on V's sex at the start).

Yes, that is the default starting point for all who have previously not thought much on the issue. Again, this is not a new or revolutionary idea, that has been a problem for as long as young male writers have been writing. This also isn't me accusing Rich of being a horrible person, a massive sexist or anything. We all start out clueless about most things in life. And again, this isn't just me, he himself has admitted quite freely that when he made those first comics, he just didn't care a lot about characterization and storytelling, it was just some silly D&D rules jokes. Intentionally creating a female character without feminine features, with a name that sounds more masculine by default and then don't highlight her gender in any way seems to be a lot of nuance and layer to put in a character that's just a vessel for silly rules jokes.

[Mightymosy]

I have thought about V's name some more.

It clearly isn't proper Latin.
It clearly is fake Latin, though.

For someone who has passing knowledge of Latin, they would clearly know that -us can be both male or female endings.

But for someone with only "common" knowledge of Latin?
i.e. someone who read Asterix and then sat down to name their D&D character and tried to make it sound Latin?

If such a person wanted a female character, I think they would have her end with -a most of the time.
If such a person wanted male character, they would more likely have one with -us, I think.

Especially given the appearant connection to the volcanoe, which has a male name in Italian as well.
I think the name was no coincidence. The "player" wanted to play a blaster mage so they chose the name of a volcano. And they didn't care much about gender - for them the stats needed to cast fireball and disintegrate were important.
So V's "player" could have been either male or female, with the wish to play a blaster mage, who cares what gender?

They cared as much about real proper Latin as they cared about gender. They picked one because they had to, but it wasnt really important to them.

With this player type and narrative, male seems more likely to me. Not proof, but more likely.
It is also entirely possible the player knew Venus, but that sounded too weak (Goddess of love? bleh! mesa wants FIREBALLS), picked the name of the volcano, altered it to sound more like Venus and more fantasy like and called it a day.

Early OotS was parody of roleplaying games.
Of course our reading is influenced by our own experiences.
For me, LotR was the hype back when I read OotS, so I assumed V's gender was an obvious parody of the Legolas concept: androgynous male elf.

It would be nice to know, but at the current state I think it is a better marketing strategy to leave Vs gender ambigous, even the "initial idea Rich had".
I'd love to read about it in the making of though, once the story is finished :-)

[Liquor Box]

Yes, that is the default starting point for all who have previously not thought much on the issue. Again, this is not a new or revolutionary idea, that has been a problem for as long as young male writers have been writing. This also isn't me accusing Rich of being a horrible person, a massive sexist or anything. We all start out clueless about most things in life. And again, this isn't just me, he himself has admitted quite freely that when he made those first comics, he just didn't care a lot about characterization and storytelling, it was just some silly D&D rules jokes. Intentionally creating a female character without feminine features, with a name that sounds more masculine by default and then don't highlight her gender in any way seems to be a lot of nuance and layer to put in a character that's just a vessel for silly rules jokes.

Just asserting your view again does not support it.

I replied to your post a wee way up the page, with a counter example to your earlier assertion that all females in the comic giggle, wear revealing clothing and like shoes.

Your only new points are the ones I bolded.

The "feminine features" point doesn't follow in this comic - you cannot see the characters facial features, so there are only two things to rely on - body shape and hair. V's body shape is obscured by V's robe, so gives no hints. V's hair is long and long hair is more common on females, although it is not unheard of on males (no male in the first hundred strips has long hair, and not female has short hair).

As to the name, at most it weighs equally against V's long hair, and at worst it is a name that can apply equally to both genders (i saw people arguing both sides). Like long hair amongst females, it seems names ending in 'us' are more comment amongst males, although not unheard of on females. Personally, I have never thought of 'us' as being more common for boy's names than girl's, and I wonder if naming conventions may differ from country to country (if so, Rich is American, so Americans would probably have the best perspective of whether Rich would see 'Varsuvius' as a male or female or gender-neutral name).

[Mightymosy]

Just asserting your view again does not support it.

I replied to your post a wee way up the page, with a counter example to your earlier assertion that all females in the comic giggle, wear revealing clothing and like shoes.

Your only new points are the ones I bolded.

The "feminine features" point doesn't follow in this comic - you cannot see the characters facial features, so there are only two things to rely on - body shape and hair. V's body shape is obscured by V's robe, so gives no hints. V's hair is long and long hair is more common on females, although it is not unheard of on males (no male in the first hundred strips has long hair, and not female has short hair).

As to the name, at most it weighs equally against V's long hair, and at worst it is a name that can apply equally to both genders (i saw people arguing both sides). Like long hair amongst females, it seems names ending in 'us' are more comment amongst males, although not unheard of on females. Personally, I have never thought of 'us' as being more common for boy's names than girl's, and I wonder if naming conventions may differ from country to country (if so, Rich is American, so Americans would probably have the best perspective of whether Rich would see 'Varsuvius' as a male or female or gender-neutral name).

Did you look up on that site you yourself linked to, with the baby names? -us was more common (4 times as common) in the reference you provided.

Also,I don't think hair is on a similar level of evidence as names. Because hair in fantasy, especially with elves, is very commonly long in males.

So I don't dispute that V might have been concieved female in the beginning, but I do question your statements above a little

[Dr.Zero]

The "feminine features" point doesn't follow in this comic - you cannot see the characters facial features, so there are only two things to rely on - body shape and hair. V's body shape is obscured by V's robe, so gives no hints.

I beg to differ. In my very first post in this thread I, on purpose, linked a scene with a robed female cleric, to point out that the "the robe is hiding her tits!" cannot be a valid argument. (Of course, to quote V, "logic itself dictates" that robes don't hide upper body features, but I wanted to be sure with an actual reference.)

And, again, let's not forget that if really Rich was surprised by the fact that readers could not understand V's gender, that gender must have some clear feature (or lack of feature) displayed. Else the surprise is out of place.

[Delta]

The "feminine features" point doesn't follow in this comic - you cannot see the characters facial features, so there are only two things to rely on - body shape and hair. V's body shape is obscured by V's robe, so gives no hints. V's hair is long and long hair is more common on females, although it is not unheard of on males (no male in the first hundred strips has long hair, and not female has short hair).

Again, you're kind of making my point here.

You seem to be arguing against me claiming that we have solid proof of V being male, which is a claim I never made. Of course we don't. It would be silly to argue this, because if there was solid proof of V being male or female, it would invalidate the whole shtick of the character.

it seems names ending in 'us' are more comment amongst males, although not unheard of on females

Again, that's my whole point. Yes, it's not unheard of girls names ending in us. Of course it's not. If V was called "George" or "Richard", no one would ever have begun questioning V's gender. But it would be really weird for Rich to give a male-sounding name (and sorry, that's not really debatable. A latin-sounding name ending on -us is generally considered to be male) to a female character, with no other clear indicators of the character being female, yet expecting it to be obvious that the character is female. While the other way round is much more easily explained, Rich considered V to be male, gave him a male-sounding name and never felt the need to point it out because he didn't even think of anyone considering the character anything but male because if V was designed to be female, he would've made that clear.

But clearly, I'm stepping on a lot of feet here and I don't see any point in continuing this because this has gone to the point where I feel we're discussing two or three different things (and some people have already claimed me calling people sexist or even seem to think I'm defending sexism in writing here) and can't even agree on what we're discussing, so I'd prefer to leave it at that.

[Liquor Box]

Did you look up on that site you yourself linked to, with the baby names? -us was more common (4 times as common) in the reference you provided.

Also,I don't think hair is on a similar level of evidence as names. Because hair in fantasy, especially with elves, is very commonly long in males.

So I don't dispute that V might have been concieved female in the beginning, but I do question your statements above a little

Long hair might be common among males in some fantasy genres (i'm not sure), but in the OotSverse it doesn't appear to be.How many strips in before you see a male character with long hair? I doubt there are any in the first 100 strips. How many stripes in before you see a female without long hair? Again I doubt there are any in the first 100 strips.

As to the names, I did see the link and your post. That was why I thought the name thing might be a similar level of evidence to the long hair. I'm not quite convinced though because it is not clear that the OotSverse follows the same naming conventions as the real world (and I see from the last page there is plenty of disagreement about real world naming conventions, which unsurprisingly are different from place to place). Also, Varsuvius is not on the list of male names ending with 'us' so I'm not sure how relevant stats of the prevalence of male baby names that end with 'us', but are not Varsuvius, are to whether the elf named Varsuvius in the comic is male.

Anyway, even putting all those concerns about whether the stats apply to the comic aside, it is still only 4 times as likely to be a male as a female. I'd bet that in OotS long hair is much more than four times as prevalent amognst female characters than males.