gtk+-3.14.9 requires installation of x11-themes/adwaita-icon-theme , which makes itself the default in /usr/share/cursors/xorg-x11/ . (1) Users should not be required to install this theme package ; (2) users should not find themselves suddenly faced with a cursor they may not like & did not choose to use. The gtk+:3 ebuild needs to be changed so that it no longer requires Adwaita or at least, if for some reason Adwaita cannot be avoided, Adwaita should not be allowed to make itself the default cursor theme.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 543488 ***
> (1) Users should not be required to install this theme package ; Due to certain upstream changes (which very few (are there already any other in portage ?) themes cover) and the general gnome3 mindset, users opinion is irrelevant. Point 2 is a different matter...or at least it should be. On not quite related note: any plans of fixing evince-3.14 theme deps or the changes postponed till 3.16 ?
This was marked as a duplicate of bug 543488, but that bug ended up marked as fixed when adwaita-icon-theme stopped installing a symlink. Unfortunately, on my systems, the problem still exists even without a symlink. This seems to be actually explained in bug 543488 comment 20. Even with no "default" symlink, gtk (including gtk2) applications will still use adwaita-icon-theme.