#Raindancer Pharah

[sahonithereadwolf]

Sokka winning over Willie Jack in the indigenous character poll thing is just kinda got me feeling a way. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an absolutely nothing issue. This really doesn’t matter. But it does have me thinking about this pattern I see a lot in pop culture where the, sometimes very racist expectations of the, often very white, dominant group and what they read as genuine and representative will often very much not align with the traits, ideas, characterization, and coding the in-group will identify with. I think a very good illustration of this is Overwatch, specifically the handling of Pharah. So, if you don’t know what happened. Parah, an Egyptian character, got skins called Thunderbird and Raindancer. (Yeah, you should already be groaning.) Not really the best. And there are plenty of articles on why they suck ass.

That was enough for a mostly white audience to start fanoning that she might be half-Indigenous. Which isn’t wrong in concept, as a biracial person I can indeed confirm that biracial people do indeed exist. But the why they were marking them was that it was meeting the concept of who and what a native is in their head. A cultural expectation of what it means to be indigenous that indigenous stories rarely get to exist outside of. (And we could turn this into a related discussion of the specter of medicine shows and the hollywood indian or the big three of shitty native reps which originated most of these expectations directly or indirectly, but that is for another time and another post.) Blizzard, being blizzard, tends to like to incorporate fanon into canon if it’s loud enough and doesn’t clash with their plans as a way of making them seem and fans feel engaged. So they made it canon because a mostly white fanbase saw a set of kinda shitty skins and said “indian”. This is despite push back kinda being pretty vocal and visible at the time. It felt hollow, disingenuous, and out of nowhere to a native audience who never read native off her and it never being meaningful before. And nothing meaningfully native was incorporated into her in the future. Nothing that a native audience would identify with or recognize could be seen in her. And it’s not like there wasn’t talk of indigenous coding in overwatch.. But Parah was never the person it was attached to. That was McCree. He has big shitty uncle energy (among other things).

But again. Because one met a mostly white fandoms expectations of native, and thus got more noise. One got the canon and the other got an ugly beach skin where they made him blonde. What we flagged as native and what white consumers flagged as native did not align.

Ain’t nothin’ wrong with Sokka. Sokka has a lot of features I wish more native characters got to have on tv. I know a lot of Alaskan Native folks that fuck with him. But if you tell me he’s more native than arguable the most native character to ever been on tv, from a tv show written, directed, and acted by Indigenous folk in a way tv hasn’t gotten the opportunity to be previously, I’m going to side eye you.

[sadpankio]

My fav overwatch skins for each character

Tank

D.Va: Junebug, White cat

Doomfist: swampmonster

Junkerqueen: plutonium

Orisa: reindeer, forest spirt

Ramattra: wandering monk

Reinhardt: greifhardt

Roadhog: toxic, Mako

Sigma: prophet

Winston: gargoyle, safari

Wrecking ball: junker, snowball

Zarya: workout

DPS

Ashe: poolside, little red

Bastion: antique

Cassidy: lifeguard, blackwatch, mountain man

Echo: moth, surf’s up

Genji: blackwatch, sparrow, young Genji

Hanzo: scion, young Hanzo, wave

Junkrat: beachrat

Mei: honeydew, Luna

Pharah: asp, raindancer

Reaper: solider24, blackwatch Reyes, el blanco

Sojourn: captain chases

Solider76 (ace): slasher76, grillmaster 76

Sombra: Los muertos, neon cat, virus

Symmetra: Devi, goddess, magician

Trobjörn: Blackbeard

Tracer: nezha, Mach T

Widowmaker: Côte d’Azur, rose, pale serpent

Support

Ana: captain Amari, snow owl, sniper, wastelander

Baptiste: tropical, talon,

Brigitte: vampire hunter, ironclad, opera

Illari: daybreak, chumpi

Kiriko: sukajan, take

Lifeweaver: amsonia, magnolia, orchid

Lúcio: equalizer, jazzy, poison dart

Mercy: witch, winged victory, pink mercy

Moira: glam, moon

Zenyatta: zealot

[bimccrees-blog]

9 raindancer pharah icons for @whatevertotesyourgoat

all my icons are here

[sasuketheenegro]

in celebration of canon indigenous first nations fareeha (?)

[omgcharmanda-blog]

Pharah 3.0 is done. I have a few more things to figure out.

[morticianart]

Raindancer A little commission for Julia from VK! I really love Pharah and I lo-o-ove this skin so much, so it was a pure pleasure to draw her (*´▽`*) Commissions | Ko-fi | Twitter | Instagram | VK

[nikranel]

obviously I'm stuck again. It was supposed to be a sketch, but I got carried away

[airalyswirls]

A quick update about my current work! I need to finish some Flight Rising headshots before but in the meantime I started to sketch this. I'm a Pharah main, I love my rocket queen and I ABSOLUTELY need to draw her more often, so I decided for one of my favourite skin of her <3  Really hope to be able to post the finished version soon, I still need some dexterity in drawing mecha-like armors and similar stuff with digital tools.

[geirahood]

Some overwatch paintings I’ve done.

(the pharah one is available on the etsy store, 2 weeks left for it to go down, grab it if you liked it ^^).

Follow me on my patreon page https://www.patreon.com/Geirahod 

[mysteryprof]

Only 6 more legendaries to go 👏

[flowerheals]

Raindancer

[alobona]

Pharah Raindancer

[everlasting-cosplay]

I was pharah today at comic con so I got some pictures with some beautiful mercys

[neechees]

Also there was that debaucle where, before Pharah got confirmed as Native & other Natives started pointing out her Thunderbird/Raindancer skins were offensive, some other person came in and said "actually this is GOOD REPRESENTATION because I am Eyak and we NEVER see ourselves" & that post got really popular & ovw fans used it as an excuse to silence anyone who still had criticisms about it & it turned out this supposed Eyak "Native" was a pretendian

[gentlekevs]

My friend Aoshi (https://shinomori7.artstation.com/) helped me give an upgrade to my Pharah fan art, hope you guys like it O/

[omgcharmanda-blog]

So happy with these photos, and so excited to get back to making Pharah 3.0