I nearly leaped out of my body with excitement for D.Va’s animated short. And to tell you the truth, Blizzard portrayed D.Va’s character perfectly.
Wait what?
I’ve seen so much hate and backlash from people criticizing her character for lack of development in the short. In the games, she’s cocky, brash, supremely confident, fearless, and loves to trash talk her opponents. She was always an exciting popular character, but many people were curious about seeing the REAL D.Va. You know, the one that maybe seemed a little bit relatable. Maybe the real 19 year old gamer girl underneath all the bravado.
Warning this post will be quite long
I’m going to refer to her as “Hana” to emphasize the person behind her public persona.
But as you’ll see in this post, I’m going to show you that D.Va is just an extension of Hana. They’re basically the same, just portrayed in different settings.
I’ve seen so a lot of fan fiction try with D.Va, but I feel it never really captures her personality well. I feel writers often try to portray her as being more more soft and girly.
Here’s the problem people are having with accepting her character in the animated short: She’s exactly the character Blizzard has portrayed her as, and not the character you think.
I’m aware of the Mary Sue trope, where a character is unrealistically perfect, and obviously there more to be an amusing character, not as much to serve the story. But D.Va is not that.
I’m also totally aware that in Korea, celebrities are sometimes given roles as Idols, and expected to portray a certain image to the public. In the short though, we see her away from the cameras, when she’s at work and not showing off for her fans. It seems that media portrays D.Va as a larger than life character, and Hana herself isn’t responsible for this. For example, they said she escaped the final battle without a scratch when in truth she got injured. So in the short, we’re seeing the real Hana behind the cameras.
If you look at D.Va’s life, you can see that everything about her life is a perfect manifestation of her innermost character traits. She’s a competitive gamer, a superstar in Korea, an A-list celebrity, and a cultural icon.
She’s an EXTREMELY UNUSUAL person. She’s an over-achieving over-achiever.
She has the character traits of an elite athlete: she’s extremely competitive, hard-working, dedicated to her craft, and basically shuts out anything that isn’t helping her get better at her craft. She lives in sort of a bubble and likes it that way.
If you study sports psychology, you’ll see Hana displays the same personality traits of best top-tier athletes. And seeing as top-tier athletes are an incredibly rare breed, it makes sense that they don’t share much in common with ordinary folk.
Notice how despite her celebrity status and acting roles, her claim to fame was as an E-SPORTS CHAMPION and NOT as an actress?
Her outgoing personality and obvious good looks makes her perfect for the camera, and while she no doubt loves the attention and high-life, she’s clearly driven primarily by her competitive nature. Even in the short she calls all the glamour “overrated” and is way more interested in perfecting her craft, which in the case is fighting Omnics in her Mech.
In the MBTI model, D.Va would be an ESTP to the max. She masters her physical environment, acts quickly, is incredibly bold, and has incredible focus on her task. ESTP’s also occasionally show traits of hypomania and narcissism (which Hana seems to have too).
Earlier I mentioned that Hana shares a lot of personality traits common in elite athletes. The real-life person who Hana seems most similar to Cristiano Ronaldo. Ronaldo is one of the best footballers to ever grace the sport, and he has no problem letting everyone know. He loves the limelight and has as much celeb appeal as any A-list actor. He’s the face of brands, models, is extremely attractive and well-groomed. He’s cocky, arrogant, and seems to embody the positive aspects of narcissism as Todd Kashdan who wrote “The Upside to Your Dark Side” would describe. He props himself up and is obsessed with perfecting himself. Everyone who knows him says he’s the most dedicated and hardworking player in the sport. When his teammates are tired after travelling, Ronaldo will head straight to the gym to train. He’s a madman full of unlimited vitality for his sport. He’s in a league of his own and will literally carry his team. To him, his teammates are the supporting roles, and he’s the star of the show.
Pretty much everything I described here can be related to Hana as well. She perfectly embodies her star persona, making full use of her good looks and charm. She stars in movies, hangs with celebrities, and dines at the best restaurants. While her teammates are on leave, she’s working on her mech prepping for the next battle with the Omnics. She’s obviously the best in her team as she was the only one who made it out of their battle without getting hit. Her cocky attitude is no mystery, and you can see the hints of narcissism in her personality. She’s obsessed with winning and perfection, and her attitude towards the Omnic crisis is completely self-centred: as long as she’s the best she can be, and everything and everyone else will be fine. And before you say she’s only like this because of the responsibility she feels for her country in a time of war, remember she risked her life to win a bike race. This fact sheds light on why she became an esports champion at 16. It’s not because she possessed some mysterious natural knack for the game, it’s because she’s obsessed with winning at all costs.
Now I’m not saying Hana doesn’t care about the lives of civilians or her country. Like most Koreans, I would bet she’s extraordinarily patriotic. In the short, she shows genuine concern for the people in Busan. Many psychologists have observed that people with positive psychopathic and narcissistic traits are well-suited towards heroic deeds. If Hana was fearful, timid, and lazy, and unmotivated, would she be the hero she is?
No Hana firmly believes everyone is counting on HER. She sees herself as the hero in this story who’s duty it is to save everyone else.
We don’t know much about Hana’s childhood, but I’m willing to bet she’s always had these qualities in her.
As I said before, she displays many of the positive aspects of narcissism and psychopathy: Ultra confidence, competitiveness, high self-regard, recklessness, determination, and fearlessness probably make up most of her personality (remember, this is a girl who nearly got herself killed just to win a bike race). I don’t imagine she is overcome with emotion very often. Even when she shows the most emotion in the short, she brushes it off quite quickly. In short: Hana’s personality traits make her perfect for handling high-stress and dangerous situations where there is conflict. Even in Blizzard’s biography of her, she was excited to start fighting Omnics even though she had never been a soldier. Given her young age, and how early she began her esports career, I’m willing to bet she’s had these personality traits since she was a child.
If you’re interested in knowing more about this topic, I highly recommend you read the “The Upside to Your Darkside.” It describes how people with psychopathic and narcissistic traits can become incredibly successful. I’m NOT saying Hana embodies a complete psychopath or narcissist, nor is she malicious in any way. I’m saying she shows has several of the traits and she uses them constructively rather than destructively.
A reoccurring theme throughout the short was that Hana’s a workaholic. She’s constantly working on her mech, refuses to take time off even when she has a vacation. Taehyun tries to convince her that she needs a break, but she’s hearing none of it. She also relates it to a time in the past where she would stay up late working on Taehyun’s hover bike only to destroy it while nearly killing herself in the process.
Several people have pointed out how she works on her own mech because she’s apparently not a mechanic. Given her driven, energetic personality, I bet she learned herself and became so good at it that she can do almost everything with her mech not needing to rely so much on others. Remember she apparently would work on a hover bike into the late night.
She has absurd amounts of energy and engages in dangerous activities with little regard for her own safety. You could also see this when she flew out alone to confront the Omnic’s with not an ounce of hesitation. And as if this couldn’t be anymore clear, she self-destructs her own mech, while bailing out into the ocean, falling from a height which would almost certainly injure her, all while shooting the reactor from a distance that would require an incredible amount of skill (anyone who’s ever fired guns at the range knows how difficult that shot would be to make). Not only that, she comes up with this plan in a split second all while ignoring Taehyun’s suggestion for a plan which she never even ends up hearing. It’s almost like she was looking for the most adrenaline-inducing plan imaginable.
Now do you think these are the actions of a perfectly normal human being?
But this is what makes D.Va special. Compared to the other Overwatch agents, D.Va is quite ordinary in terms of physical and mental attributes. Her personality is literally what sets her apart. She does what many in her country have done, but just happens to be the best at it.
So why are fans criticizing her character development so much?
The answer is quite simple really: She’s not a relatable person at all.
She’s not the gamer girl you can chill with, she’s not one of the girls, she’s not the nerd girl you know who happened to be really attractive.
Like I said before, she’s one of those extremely rare personality types who go on to be an absolute enigma in their field.
I imagine her as someone who played a lot of sports and was into a lot of activities when she was younger, she just happened to focus on gaming because… hey gaming is cool. And also esports is on a whole different level in Korea than the rest of the world.
Remember before when I compared her to Ronaldo?
How many people do you personally know who ended up becoming the best athlete in their sport and an A-list celeb?
You probably have met none. And that’s why D.Va seems so unrelatable. Her character is one of those extremely rare people who are literally one in several billion.
And this is another reason why I think fans criticized her character portrayal.
If you knew her in real life, you would probably hate her.
D.Va appeals to so many gamers because they identify with her. A fellow gamer who also happens to be an extremely attractive girl? Isn’t that like every gamer guy’s fantasy?
The truth is, Hana in real life would not have a lot in common with you. She’d basically be a very attractive, over-achieving, popular girl who’s too interested in her own life to care about you. And she would apologize for none of it.
Oh, and she would be way at your favourite video game than you.
Like I said, you would HATE her.
Just like as many people who worship Ronaldo hate him and call him an arrogant, narcissistic jerk.
You would hate her because she’s so confident and self-assured that it would fill you with doubt about your own self-image.
And this is why you don’t want to accept the character she is. Because as much as you may worship her in the game, in real life she would be someone out of your league x1000000.
She’s a person who everyone is astonished by, and has never seen anyone else like her.
But in the short, we DO see her more vulnerable side. She has flashbacks of her battle with the Omnics and she realizes how close they came to losing the fight.
But I don’t think that’s the full story. Notice again how she structures the dialogue. It’s based on her concern that her teammates survived. It’s not based on the lives of the people in Korea. It’s based on winning and losing.
“Are you sure life ain’t a game, Soldier 76?”
Bruce Lee was obsessed with being the world’s best martial artist. After he fought with Wong Jack Man, his wife saw him distraught with his face buried in his hands, even though he won. You know what he was upset about? He was upset that he didn’t win fast enough.
Here’s another example, look at how Magnus Carlsen reacts when he loses a chess game.
Ultra-competitive people like this dedicate their lives to cultivate their highest ideal. And their highest ideal is one of winning every challenge. Losing is devastating and emotionally shattering. You don’t get to be the best athlete in your sport by being okay with defeat. And Hana is one of the people.
There were several suggestions that she suffers from PTSD, but I’m not completely convinced. People who suffer from PTSD tend to dramatically relive their experience and have constant anxiety. Bastion’s short was a good example of PTSD, when he freaks out from vivid hallucinations and destroys a forest. D.Va doesn’t seem to be experiencing anything that severe. At the end of the short, she completely unphased by her recent battle with the Omnic.
She shows a little more sentiment when she acknowledges Taehyun as her friend, but notice how fleeting it is? And even when Taehyun suggests that he helped, she rolls her eyes in a light-hearted way. Obviously she’s doing it in a playful way, but it does speak volumes about her self-centred outlook. He was even present when she was in the hospital after an incident which could have killed her, but she doesn’t appear overly sentimental about it.
The diversion from her usual character comes when she reluctantly admits to Taehyun that she needs his help, IN MID BATTLE! And even then, how much help does she accept? Basically he says “reactor” and she’s like, “oh okay, I got it from here!”
I wouldn’t say she changed though. She realized she needed help and was willing to ask when it was absolutely necessary.
Conclusion
Some people say D.Va lacks personality, but the truth is, over-the-top traits which make up her persona are TOTALLY HER!
She’s unrelatable because she’s an outlier in her fields. Outliers are typically abnormal people functional on an extraordinary level.
Despite being a fictional character, she could definitely be a real person, just extremely rare.
Perhaps there was really no dramatic event which led her to being who she is. Perhaps she always had this very alpha personality since she was born. We may never know for sure.
Overall, she’s not an underdeveloped character. She’s just misunderstood.
Congratulations if you read the whole thing!
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