Tag: overwatch

raingiant:

tiredorcbutch:

So. In a moment of me deciding to rant about something different from the usual, let’s talk about bodybuilders, power lifters, and why about half the people doing Zarya fanart need to learn the difference between the two.

A bodybuilder is someone who is trying to craft their muscles for aesthetics, and a very particular type of aesthetics at that. People sometimes think of bodybuilders as extremely strong, but this is actually not the case. While they are somewhat stronger than the a person who never works out at all, when you see a bodybuilder on competition day they could probably be knocked over with a stiff breeze and have the resilience of a glass hammer. 

This, for reference, is a “bodybuilder” physique:

Notice the overall structure, the sharp muscle definition, the complete lack of body fat. This is someone who has been building their muscles to show off at competitions that are purely about appearance. This is also a physique that, despite what comic books might tell you, is completely worthless for anything but looking like a bodybuilder. They actually have fairly little lifting and carrying power, and as far as combat goes they’d collapse if someone hit them in the abs. 

Meanwhile, a power lifter works out to the end of actual application of their strength. A power lifter doesn’t want to look a specific way, they want to DO something with their body. They have body fat, they look SOLID, people who work out to the end of becoming actually physically strong are kind of person you see and feel like they could stop a freight train. For example:

This is a powerlifter/”strong woman” physique. This is representative of the sort of training I do. This is someone who is actually strong in a physically applicable way. Most of the muscles don’t pop out with sharp definition because she actually has body fat because that’s something someone who’s training for strength rather than aesthetics actually needs. They don’t have an incredibly tiny hip/waist/butt area. And because they have body fat unless the muscles are currently “pumped” from doing a workout, you don’t notice individual muscles as much although their arms and legs do have an overall shape that suggests the muscles underneath. 

Zarya from Overwatch was purposefully given a powerlifter/strong woman physique. She’s a combatant, and she runs around hefting a TANK CANNON that she’s using as her personal weapon. 

I’m using the weightlifter skin here because it has less armor and shows off her body shape a bit better, but it’s the same body shape as her normal skin. Notice that she has plenty of body fat, her overall shape is solid and looks like it can withstand heavy weight and combat situations as well. She isn’t tiny in any sense of the word, she doesn’t look like a 90s liefeld comic book character with razor-sharp definition lines and a hip/waist/bust ratio that reads like a cautionary tale of over-corseting.

One of the reasons I love this character so much is that she’s one of the extremely rare examples of a woman in any kind of media that shows a thicker, heavier woman in a positive fashion. And this is what the character actually looks like. So maybe consider that if you’re doing Zarya fanart.

Oh, and don’t put her in high-femme clothing ffs. But that’s a rant for another post. 

I have been meaning to write basically this post (in honestly somewhat less detail) for weeks thank you so much.

Additionally, let’s have a look at what’s easily my favourite bit of canon media: that one time Zarya guest-wrote an article on resistance training at Bodybuilding.com.

The fact that it’s on that website is a bit “eh” but, it’s worth a read. I found it looking through the references on Zarya’s wiki article in minute detail becasue of course I did.

(This is incidentally also one of my main sources for that one post I did about how Zarya has at least a very skilled technician’s knowledge of the OW universe’s superscience gravity physics)

This is the longest piece of lore we have in Zarya’s voice and it’s a joy to read. From a functional advice standpoint it’s kind of dross, weight-training-101 dressed up in an overwatch skin. But look at how often she stresses safety and look especially at the diet section.

Zarya is meticulous about maintaining her healthy layer of chub. When she’s on deployment with the Russian Army she has special dietary needs ration packs to keep her weight up. We even have that wonderful spray from the Lunar Fesival event of her catching up on some food.

I really can’t get over how much Zarya’s bulk is celebrated in canon. As a woman recovering from an ED and trying to bulk up and train to get stronger, Zarya has been maybe the most positive influence I’ve had in the last few months (alongside @apophenic-ocelles ’s constant encouragement and praise – love you babe I can’t understate how important it is that Zarya has a real weightlifter’s physique.