Hey guys. Kinky is on break this week for some personal reasons, so I’ll be stepping in. You may have seen me around before, I’m his friend, Imaginary.
In an effort to preserve the classic Kinky work week, why not start off Monday with a highly political and divisive topic to get everyone riled up? Well, maybe it’s not that divisive. Seems more of a case of the smallest group screaming the loudest. If you guys aren’t aware, Blizzard, the company behind Overwatch and Diablo, held their annual convention last week. They announced Diablo Immortal which pretty much went over like an anime to a football team.
A true hero. We don't deserve this man.
But let’s not bring up past mistakes, alright? Kaisax already did a good job covering that and there’s no real room for argument there. I’m here today to talk about another recent announcement from Blizzard: a new female character in Overwatch. Now when I first heard this, I was immediately excited. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never played Overwatch a day in my life thanks to my toaster oven of a computer. But god damn do I keep up with Overwatch so I can know what juicy porn to look forward to. Widowmaker, Tracer, McCree, Mercy... there are so many hot characters in that game and people love putting in hours to make those sexy 3D videos come to life.
Needless to say, I checked out the character design, thought she looked cool and/or fuckable, and moved on. But apparently there was a bit of backlash from a certain side of the Overwatch fandom. Dissatisfied with the inclusion of another skinny, white character, they took to twitter and tumblr to voice their opinions. Blizzard acknowledged this in an interview with Kotaku, where they mentioned that several new characters are planned for the game and nobody should give up hope for the addition of more diverse characters (at this point really meaning black female characters) being included.
So that’s the gist of it, now it’s opinion time. My first knee jerk reaction is to condemn everyone whining and tell them to shut the fuck up. However, before I do that, I do want to mention that early concept art for Ashe did show her with a dark skin design. If Blizzard really did discuss in the boardroom, “Shit, we wanted her to be black but then she’d have a low playerbase because black people don’t look cool” or something then yeah I could see reason for outrage. Same thing if this was the last character ever going to be announced for the game. But let’s be logical. Overwatch is nowhere near dying, and the cast is already so diverse it doesn’t make sense for Blizzard to turn racist on a whim. It was more likely a simple curiosity they had to see her as a black woman than a serious consideration that was rejected.
Don't worry Ashe, I'm down to fuck any of those iterations.
They probably decided she needed to be white to either make sense in the lore, work with her character design better, work with the available voice actors that had, etc. I highly doubt it was for any racist reason. Again if this was the last character ever coming out those would be pretty poor excuses, but she’s not.
And here’s the part where I tell everyone to shut the fuck up. I’m getting so tired of seeing things like race or sexual orientation being treated as definitions of quality. “Look, that game has a female protagonist so we’ve got a unique character already!” “That cast is diverse, look how balanced it is! We’ve even got gay people!” Okay, so? Listen, I’m not a racist or a sexist. I’m not gonna judge character (fictional or otherwise) until I’ve actually SEEN the person act and speak. When people (or developers) parade around those tags, it makes me feel like they are more interested in shoving a political agenda in people’s faces than writing good characters. Ashe may be one of the most interesting characters they added to the roster. I have no clue, because I don’t follow the game’s story or lore. Therefore the only thing I can judge is if she looks cool. But so many people are prematurely hating on her and saying she’s a waste of space without having a clue what kind of character she is. Or god forbid, if her gameplay is fun. “She’s not my new different black woman character, so she’s boring and lame!” That’s the kind of illogical, backwards, and dare I say racist thinking that those people are supposedly so vehemently against in the first place.
What do you guys think? Are the people responsible for the backlash overreacting? Is Ashe boring regardless of her personality? Are you as hyped for some new porn as I am? Tell us in the comments below!
