#I am allowed ONE problematic bastard woman in each fandom and I chose mine

[citroncynique]

Honestly thank you so much for adding onto this haha

I genuinely love Dori for her bastardly personality. She's a deeply flawed person who became so because of trauma. None of her actions are excusable, but all of her actions are very much intentional. She's unapologetic and puts up a hefty façade to trick everyone, including herself, that she's entirely remorseless about what she does.

There's a lot of reasons why people don't like her, and imho some are more valid than others.

Criticism of her orientalist design is one reason I will always agree with. No questions asked. It is the most valid reason to dislike/hate Dori as a concept.

The only caveat is that, on the subject of orientalism, Nilou was very quickly forgiven because she's a pretty anime girl.

(If it were entirely up to me there's... a lot of stuff wrt Dori's design that wouldn't be like that. I really wanna work on a redesign for her.)

If the issue is her personality, I can get that too, she's not for everyone- though on the other hand, a lot of Genshin fans who play Honkai Star Rail are very much into Sampo (who is quite literally Hot Man Dori. I'm sorry, it's true.)

It's speculated that Pantalone might be very much similar to her with regards to how he handles money. We won't see people hating him as much. People like who they like and all, and that's valid!! It's just. If it's the tropes you dislike, double standards are there.

I think the Dori hate also comes from a very performative form of virtue signaling for people who wanna show that they aren't into l*li type characters. People were mad that Nahida was the chibi model, people were angry way back when some theories that Shinobu would have that model popped up. There's always an initial loathing for those types bc it's sus for people to be excited for chibi model characters.

It's entirely understandable to want to distance yourself from that kind of stuff if you're averse to it. I've had to sift through a lot of content I'd rather not have come across if I wanted to see some Dori art that wasn't done by me lmao. I like Dori the way people like annoying little mascots and whatnot, personally.

There's something uncomfortable with how vitriolic some people are about Dori. It escalated to the EN VA being sent death threats and being accused of being a white supremacist (when they're. not a white person. nor are they in any case responsible for design or writing of this character. They just do Dori's voice and their delivery is absolutely stellar imho).

There's hate towards the character and towards the VA, but criticisms against HYV themselves have just. Faded away. The fandom was fed pretty characters and whatnot, and moved on. Soon enough Dori hate stopped being about (rightfully) criticizing a character for their orientalist design and inspirations, and just became a punchline.

With that being said, HYV didn't do Dori any favours. Her backstory makes room for a lot of complexities that just... aren't used, narratively, on actual on-screen quests. We barely see her genuine grief and anxiety aside from teapot companion voicelines. Everything interesting about Dori is stashed away in her character stories (and one of Kaveh's character stories- and the Kaveh+Dori business partnership is a whole other can of worms. I'll touch upon it at some point if prompted lmao)

Re: Kaveh, all I'll say for now is that HYV hasn't made their arrangement clear. Many people still think Dori scammed Kaveh, when the situation is far more complicated than that (and doesn't involve scamming at all).

I feel that HYV may have held back on writing more for Dori bc of the general backlash received. Instead of rounding her out, they flanderized her and kind of.... used her as little as possible.

I appreciated her in Cyno's SQ, I kind of wish we had a little more meat to her writing in Kaveh's hangout, but aside from that she hasn't been used to her full narrative potential. Fuck's sake, she's friends with Alice, of all people, use that! Her design is extremely reminiscent of Liloupar's bottle, and she has a little Jinni as a familiar- what's going on there?

I have a bunch of Dori doodles I never actually posted bc I knew how hated she was, and it's unfortunately only now that the Sumeru versions are coming to a close that I'm daring to post more of her haha (this isn't an act of immense bravery or whatever, it's just how I personally feel about my own art)

ANYWAY.

TL;DR Dori is disappointing as a character bc she's a waste of narrative potential. Also Orientalism is bad. Also people are quick to forgive the flaws of characters who are conventionally simpable. Also people can like or dislike whatever characters they want!! If you still hate Dori after reading this diatribe, godspeed!! I'm just throwing ideas into the blue void of tumblr and you owe me nothing! *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

Thanks for coming to my TEDxTalk. I swear I was not sponsored by the Almighty Merchant Lord Sangemah Bay to write this PR piece for her.

I decided to give Dori a snazzy outfit (to go financially extort Kaveh with what a girlboss)