I would like to give Props to the Overwatch fandom for taking D.va, who I had originally thought was sort of like this Evangelion-looking k-pop idol skirting–legal animoo waifubait and have brought to life instead this horrible dorito-horfing McDonalds git gud MLG gremlin child. Absolutely no better direction could have been taken and I’m so happy.
I actually haven’t said anything about this but I can’t stand it any more. This post and similar posts are actually so disappointing because it’s clear that people do recognise a big part of D.Va’s concept is kpop idol culture, which is insane, nothing like the Western music scene, deeply interesting and controversial and actually rich with headcanon potential. There’s so many heinous stereotypes and toxic ideas of Asian women inherent in this post it actually makes me a bit ill.
‘Skirting-legal’ - yeah, she’s young, but I’ve already talked about the Overwatch fandom’s weird infantalisation of D.Va in insisting she looks like a minor, which incidentally is a thing East Asian women get a lot. ‘Animoo waifubait’ - do I even need to say anything. I have no doubt she wouldn’t be accused of this if she were white. It feels like all we have to do to be slapped with that label is to be Asian, ostensibly female, young-ish and exist. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been called that. I can’t count the number of times people have thrown gross jokes about hentai and bukkake and god knows what at me. I’m not even Japanese, and incidentally, neither is D.Va. I digged D.Va’s ‘Evangelion-looking’ aesthetic and clearly Pacific Rim-inspired background, not that anyone has seem to have read that. It’s nice to have an East Asian character whose concept is deeply rooted in media and culture from her actual region, and a shoutout to one of the most significant Western movies with an Asian female lead.
There’s nothing technically wrong with MLG doritos-and-mountain-dew gremlin child D.Va and I actually thought it’s pretty hysterical, but it’s also something that’s really Western gamer culture and it seems to be coming at the expense of D.Va’s actual background. it seems to essentially stem from this sentiment that modern East Asian culture is not interesting, isn’t ‘real’, not worth thinking about, or is something sweaty weeaboos are into. I would have loved to have seen D.Va’s fandom development actually account for her actual canon background while also picking up that she’s teenage gamer trash. The juxtaposition (and general incompatibility) of gamer culture and idol culture would have been really interesting to me.
The Overwatch fandom is really fucking weird about their East Asians. This ranges from mild things like joking about how Genji is a ‘weeb’ and would probably correct your pronunciation of ‘manga’ (He’s…Japanese) to actually repulsive things like insisting Hanzo looks ‘too white’ and photoshopping him into some racist caricature of a Japanese man. It honestly makes me so weary because Overwatch is the first game to make me really happy about how the devs really did their homework for the most part for their Chinese, Korean, and Japanese characters.
Sorry about the long post, but I haven’t seen anyone else talk about this, so.