Shen is a Grinchler (Patreon)

I've been getting a little bit into fighting games lately. A bit of Guilty Gear Strive, a bit of Street Fighter 6, and a speckling of other smaller games like Idol Showdown and Ultra Fight Da Kyanta 2.

And so naturally, I've been thinking about what Shen would be like if he were in a fighting game.

And in those games, I really like playing grapplers. Not EXCLUSIVELY grapplers (In Guilty Gear I play Gio too, and in Street Fighter I play Dee Jay), but I just love the concept of grapplers. Grapplers are a fighting game archetype that focuses on grabs, which is a type of move that can be done even if your opponent is blocking -- so the gameplan with grapplers is to get in the opponent's face, make them block, and then grab them.

Here are a few examples of grapplers:

Zangief. Look, he's coming right at you with his hand in OPTIMAL grabbing position. This dude's gonna fuck you up.

Potemkin. Look at those arms and hands. This guy basically grabs you and then blasts off into the sky with you, it rules.

So I was thinking, it'd be cool if Shen was a grappler. And I put him in this stance:

But the problem is, Grapplers, as you saw above, tend to be beefy. Like, in almost any fighting game roster, you see the HUGE dude? That is very likely the grappler.

And Shen is oh so small.

Like, does he really look like he's about to suplex Life here? He's simply.... too small. The only way he looks like he could grab Life is if he makes his arms go like this:

Which is a very Grinch-like pose. So there we go.

Shen is a grinchler.