Satya Vaswani

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"The true enemy of humanity is disorder."
Character
Name: Satya Vaswani (सत्य वास्वानी), Symmetra
Occupation: Architech
Relationships: Vishkar Corporation (faction); Lúcio Correia dos Santos (enemy)
Fandom: Overwatch
Other:
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Satya Vaswani (Hindi: सत्य वास्वानी, romanized: Satya Vaasvaanee), commonly known as Symmetra, is a playable character in Overwatch, a 2016 first-person shooter game by Blizzard.

The character's abilities center around use of turrets and teleporters to redirect the momentum of battle. Redesigned twice, in 2016 and 2018, Symmetra was introduced as a support character who provided shields for teammates, but in her current incarnation, she focuses on high damage output. The character is the first playable video game character to identify as autistic, though the developers downplayed the trait to avoid tokenization. Like many other characters in the game, such as McCree, Genji, and Torbjörn, Symmetra is an amputee, with a cybernetic arm. Symmetra is a divisive choice for players composing teams, as a result of the hybridity of roles she can play and her association with bad faith players. These factors contribute to her standing among the game's least selected characters, both in casual and professional play.[1]

Canon Lore

Symmetra literally bends reality. By manipulating hard-light constructs, she crafts the world as she wishes it to be, in hopes of engineering a perfect society.

Following the Omnic Crisis, the Vishkar Corporation of southern India began the laborious process of creating new, self-sustaining cities to house the nation's displaced population. One such city, Utopaea, was created using radical hard-light technology that enabled its architects to shape the city's streets, utilities, and living spaces in the blink of an eye.

After she was identified as one of the few capable of becoming a light-bending architect, young Satya Vaswani was plucked from extreme poverty and placed in the care of Vishkar's architect academy, never to return home. Isolated and lonely in her new life, Satya immersed herself in her education and training. She quickly grasped the applications of the technology and was one of the top students in her class. Satya approached hard-light manipulation differently from her peers, with their more procedural, mechanical constructions, instead weaving her constructs in the motions of the traditional dance of her homeland.

Though she was one of Utopaea's top architects, the Vishkar Corporation saw far greater potential in Satya's abilities. Giving her the moniker "Symmetra," Vishkar sent her on clandestine missions around the world to uphold its corporate interests and expand its influence into other countries.

Symmetra believes her actions serve the greater good in society. But there are times when she wonders whether the control and order she desires are truly best for humanity.[2]

The 2016 comic "A Better World" alludes to Symmetra's autism. In mid-2017, Jeff Kaplan confirmed that Symmetra is autistic in a letter responding to an autistic fan.[3] Symmetra's dialogue reflects a desire for order and aversion for overstimulation.

Fan Community

Reception and Reactions

Gameplay Meta

Symmetra is traditionally the least selected character in hero-based shooter game's roster, which together with her multiple redesigns reflect her divisive capacity in Overwatch team composition. Players widely differ with regard to her essentiality to any team, partly exacerbated by the wider range of character classes she occupies in comparison to the rest of Overwatch's roster: defense, support, damage, and builder.

While Symmetra is infrequently selected by players, the character is associated with players who mainly practice the single character ("Symmetra mains") and refuse to switch. These players built an online Reddit community and some have invested hundreds of hours in play, preferring the character for what they see as opportunities for strategic, critical thinking afforded by her hybrid team roles. Outside of this community, selecting Symmetra became associated with griefing and trolling, which proliferated as a stereotype when additional bad actors adopted the character to mask their poor sportsmanship. In an ensuing backlash, frustrated teammates increasingly accused Symmetra mains of bad faith, especially when their character choice appeared inopportune for a winning team composition. Some Symmetra players were banned a result of "poor teamwork" complaints filed by teammates. Following the character's second redesign, which changed her team function from "support" to "damage", players continued to perceive Symmetra players as having insincere intentions. Symmetra mains often report high abuse from their teammates, some of whom perceive Symmetra as a joke that embodies the aspects of Overwatch that they loathe. Symmetra mains have countered that the game is not designed to highlight their contributions to team objectives and that their teammates misunderstand the value she brings to a team composition.[1]

Evil or Indoctrinated?

Draco in Leather Pants — Symmetra tends to get hit with this trope within the fandom, where she's usually portrayed as unambiguously heroic. While her backstory is extremely sympathetic, and she truly does want to improve peoples' lives, her fans tend to forget that she's at best an Anti-Villain who's currently working for Vishkar Corp. Not only does she actively antagonize people who oppose Vishkar (like Lúcio), she's terribly elitist and condescending towards poor people (despite coming from a lower class background herself) whilst rationalizing Vishkar's actions and doing their dirty work under the naive assumption that it was For The Greater Good. Being confirmed to be autistic also let fans to have the tendency to excuse her elitist attitude.[4]

Ron the Death Eater — Just like how she can get hit with Draco in Leather Pants, Symmetra can get hit with this trope as well, when people forget or dismiss her inherently good intentions and her doubts towards the company after "A Better World". She's generalized into someone just as elitist and delusional as her corrupt co-workers from Vishkar (seeing that she doesn't show her doubts and continued to look for places for Vishkar to work on at her in-game quotes) to further glorify Lúcio's quest for freedom. There are also a handful of 'fans' that also made Symmetra highly antagonistic and repulsed towards any Overwatch members simply because they're now illegal and therefore an enemy of order or a terrorist group that has to be apprehended for simply existing, despite Symmetra herself being able to engage a semi-decent rivalry with Torbjörn, an ex-Overwatch member, thus her opinion on them are at least higher than to Lúcio, and has a quip on beating the more obvious villains also on Overwatch's radar (Talon or Junkers).[4]

Autism

Symmetra is fairly liked by Indian fans, but it's the autistic fandom that overwhelmingly loves her, as she is one of the few autistic characters in fiction portrayed as (mostly) reasonable and self-sufficient instead of as a socially-maladjusted freak, making her relatable and avoiding misconceptions of autism in general. Her more nuanced and sympathetic anti-villain portrayal is also much welcomed by the same crowd.[4]

...I think it’s probably the only time they actually make an autistic character’s moral rigidity and black-and-white thinking both integral to the character AND a reason for them being an antivillain. Absolutely no one wants to actually admit autistic people can be the biggest knights templar when it comes to their internal moral code but Symmmetra was raised to believe the organization she worked for is “good” so even when she starts to see evidence to the contrary it’s hard for her to conceptualize them as “bad” and like…morality in autistic people never seems to get discussed or used to characterize them beyond “This is an uwu Lawful Good cinnamon roll who can’t tell lies or hurt people or ever think malicious thoughts” or “This is an unfeeling monster with no ability to empathize with others”[5]

celtic-pyro, autistic fan and writer

Similar to Tracer being revealed to be a lesbian in paracanon materials outside of the game proper, Symmetra was confirmed to be autistic by Jeff Kaplan himself; her neurodivergence had previously been implied in lore, but not explicitly stated. Some accuse Blizzard of pandering rather than directly and meaningfully incorporating her autism into her character. Others are happy to see representation for the autistic community, something that is rarely done effectively in media, all the while arguing that Symmetra's gameplay kit expresses her experience with autism. Others still are pleased that Symmetra is an autistic character, but concerned that players who dislike Symmetra (especially based on gameplay preferences) could use her as license to mistreat autistic players, who already face harassment within gaming communities.[6][6]

Visual Design

Some fans find Symmetra's default character design—skin-tight clothing and heels that emphasize her rear and bare thighs, which are further exaggerated by her poses—impractical, unfitting with her personality, and forcing fanservice. Some see her "Devi" and "Goddess" skins in particular as fetishization of Indian women and culture.

Some fans view Vampire Symmetra as whitewashing, while others argue that vampires are usually depicted as pale and Symmetra is just wearing makeup for a Halloween costume. Still, those who argue the former claim there is no good reason for Blizzard to give a dark-skinned character in the game such a light skin, and that they should have gone for a darker greyscale.[6]

Fanon and Tropes

Many fanworks portray Satya as cold, snarky, and judgemental. This often connects with fans headcanoning her as being friendly towards Hanzo Shimada, who is also seen as quite cold and critical. Many fans speculate that they would further bond over their shared struggles with morality and guilt as anti-villains.

Out of the "villains", fans generally view Symmetra as the one who would be most willing to join Overwatch.[note 1] Thus, fan fiction commonly depicts Symmetra realizing Vishkar's true nature and defecting to Overwatch. Subsequently, she struggles with guilt over her past affiliation with the unprincipled Vishkar Corp, and also struggles with integrating with her diverse and often less-than-orderly Overwatch teammates.

Otherwise, Symmetra may be the subject of character bashing—often being portrayed as completely elitist and unconcerned with well-being of the common people—especially to emphasize Lúcio as a noble hero.

A lot of fanworks portray Satya's in-game turrets as her children or pets.[7] Fans will also sometimes use in-game scenery and her six turrets to make scenes or visual jokes.

There is a lot of fanart of Satya in traditional Indian dress.[8]

Fans speculate about how Symmetra's autism manifests. In canon, she has demonstrated a deep fixation on "order"—shown by her many in-game voice lines that extol the virtues of order, and her distress at a crooked painting in the official comics; fan portrayals have extended her fixation to pursuing all things related to "order", especially symmetry.[9]

Shipping

As of April 2021, Symmetra/Sombra has the highest volume of tagged works among Symmetra ships on Archive of Our Own (AO3), followed by Symmetra/Junkrat, then Symmetra/Pharah. However, when filtering out stories listed under the M/M category, AO3 search results yield more stories tagged Symmetra/Junkrat than Symmetra/Sombra; this may possibly suggest that Symmetra/Sombra tends to appear more often as a background ship in M/M works.

In a sample of 46 Overwatch stories published to FanFiction.Net (FFN) between 2014 and 16 October 2019, Symmetra was most often listed in the pairing filter with Junkrat (59%), followed by Sombra (15%), Pharah (11%), Lúcio (7%), McCree (7%), and Mei (2%).[10]

Symmetra/Pharah has often been considered a complementary ship for Gency, especially within the context of the Gency vs PharMercy ship war.

Many headcanon Symmetra as being friendly with fellow "anti-villain" Hanzo; this relationship is often (though not always) portrayed as platonic rather than romantic.

Notable Ships

Example Fan Works

Fan Fiction

Fan Art

Cosplay

Meta

External Links

Fan Pages and Communities

Resources

Notes

  1. ^ Other than possibly Hanzo.

References

  1. ^ a b Wikipedia. Symmetra. Accessed Apr 2021. Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "Wikipedia" defined multiple times with different content
  2. ^ TV Tropes. Characters / Overwatch - Symmetra. (Accessed Apr 2021.)
  3. ^ Francis, Laura (February 13, 2019). "Character before condition - looking at gaming and autism representation". Eurogamer. Archived from the original on February 16, 2019. Retrieved February 15, 2019.
  4. ^ a b c TV Tropes. YMMV / Overwatch - Story and Lore. (Accessed Apr 2021.) Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "TVTYMMV" defined multiple times with different content Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "TVTYMMV" defined multiple times with different content
  5. ^ celtic-pyro. Say what you will about Overwatch... it’s probably the only time they actually make an autistic character’s moral rigidity and black-and-white thinking both integral to the character AND a reason for them being an antivillain posted to Tumblr on 30 Sep 2019.
  6. ^ a b c TV Tropes. Broken Base / Overwatch. (Accessed Apr 2021.) Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "TVTBB" defined multiple times with different content Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "TVTBB" defined multiple times with different content
  7. ^ Symmetra's turrets - Fanart
  8. ^ Symmetra in traditional Indian clothing - Tumblr
  9. ^ darkelfslair. "Has this been done yet? :v". Posted to Tumblr on 7 Oct 2016.
  10. ^ phantomstatistician. Symmetra's FanFiction Shipping Chart 2014*-Present, posted to Tumblr on 16 Oct 2019. (Accessed Apr 2021.)
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