I'm Korean and I find the Trickster's new cosmetic offensive.
Hi. I've never posted here before but I felt the need to share the general consensus among Koreans to the global community.
I visit a variety of websites where Koreans talk about DBD, including Twitter, Twitch and a community website similar to Reddit. Practically every Korean in every community finds most of the Trickster's cosmetics shocking. In other words, native Koreans are not on board with what the devs are proposing as 'Kpop fashion'.
The newest valentine outfit is especially considered downright horrifying and hideous. This miserable excuse for an outfit has literally nothing to do with Kpop. Still, it might have been acceptable if it wasn't described as a Kpop outfit. But the description indicates that it's a costume for his performance. Has anyone seen an Kpop idol dressed in an outfit that even remotely resembles this thing? As a Korean, who has listened to Kpop for my entire life, my answer is: No.
Which leaves the question pending: What do the devs even think Kpop fashion is supposed to be?
I don't know what the devs' actual intention was and how much effort they put in when they designed this cosmetic. But no matter how well meaning they were, if an allegedly Korean outfit looks nothing like actual Korean fashion, it sends a bad message. It comes across as apathy and a lack of research about Korean culture.
Most of the Trickster's cosmetics are unbelievably unrelated to Kpop and just look like pure nonsense. The newest outfit especially looks like random scraps thrown together. It gives the impression that the devs are under the belief that they can put together whatever random tidbits they want and then label it Kpop. A country's culture should not be arbitrarily fabricated like that. I can't go around putting together random garments and call it Canadian fashion, right? It's just plain wrong and rude. And yet that's what the devs are doing right now.
My best guess for this madness is that the devs thought they could make him a performer who wears experimental fashion, like maybe Lady Gaga or David Bowie. But they've forgotten the Trickster is Korean, and a Kpop idol at that. Kpop fashion is, er, way more conservative than whatever the devs are creating. Has anyone seen BTS wear anything like the Trickster? No. The fact that he's a performer does not give him a free pass to wear 'anything'. Kpop idols have their limits to their wardrobes.
Trickster's outfit does not align with the public sentiment in Korea, nor does it have any basis in actual Kpop fashion. It looks like it's based on pure imagination. As I've mentioned: no one has a right to go around imagining and fabricating another country's culture as they please. It's completely ignoring actual Korean culture and then claiming some unrelated thing to be Korean.
This repetitively terrible interpretation of our culture makes us feel like the devs have no respect nor interest whatsoever regarding Korea. Kpop is nothing close to a fashion indulgence and yet the devs are treating it as such. As a result of his monstrous sense of fashion, the Trickster is mostly regarded as a laughingstock among Korean DBD users nowadays. Koreans who don't play DBD are astounded by the Trickster's outfits and are asking if this is a bad joke.
As a user who loves to play the Trickster, and a user who believes that the devs have the potential to design a decent outfit(the Trickster's Pressured Performer and Yun-jin's Fire Moon Mourner were pretty cool, I'll give you that), I just wish the devs would base their cosmetic designs on thorough research rather than intuition and imagination. Please, at least do some basic research on Kpop. Please.
TL;DR: Trickster's new cosmetic is hideous and has nothing to do with Kpop. It looks like the devs are not doing any research and are simply making up 'Korean fashion' as they please. This is disrespectful and offensive.
Comments
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Yeah and all the Killers offend me so they should be removed.
In all seriousness, it's an Ultra Rare cosmetic, which is supposed to make him appear as an entirely different character. That's what Legendary and Ultra Rare skins are meant to be. It isn't supposed to resemble Kpop.
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I know most Ultra Rare cosmetics make the character appear as someone else, and I would have accepted this one too if the description of the cosmetic indicated that is also the case for this one. But the description doesn't really mention that it's an different person, so it just seems like it's supposed to be an outfit for the Trickster's performance. And even if that's a good enough explanation for the newest cosmetic, it doesn't change the fact that the other cosmetics also look awful and unrelated to Kpop.
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If you go and search the word '혐한' (meaning Anti-Korea) in Twitter, you'll find a truckload of tweets saying the Trickster's new cosmetic looks awful and accusing the devs of being apathetic about Kpop culture, including a tweet with 6k retweets. I think this would be enough to show that most Koreans aren't happy with how Trickster's cosmetics are.
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Jeez, my point and yours don't even come close. Wraith doesn't really have strong connections to his ethnicity. The Trickster is supposed to be a character who is strongly related to Korean culture and yet he looks nothing Korean. Is that really hard to understand?
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OP these are serious allegations so I did some research. In seconds of searching "KPop Outfits" and looked at images I got this:
OP - I think you should apologize.
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I'm very familiar with these, thank you. I'd have to say your interpretation of Kpop fashion is poor if you really think these are anywhere close to the Trickster's cosmetics. "They both look the same, I can't tell the difference" is a pretty naive thing to say when talking about a culture you're not familiar with, you know.
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If you have to go looking this hard and stretch this much to find something offensive, it probably isn't.
I've spent almost my entire adult life living in Asia, primarily Japan and Korea and all I can say is - this isn't far off some of the bizarre outfits I've seen performers wear. It's honestly quite tame.
A big part of being a happy, well adjusted adult is being able to have some fun and relax with others poking a bit of fun at you.
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The devs work more along the lines of "make whatever we want and tack a country of origin onto it at the end."
Trickster's outfits don't represent KPOP well.
Artist is a crow-based killer from a country that doesn't have crows.
Baba Yaga skin has basically no relation to Baba Yaga, but is called that because it's the only Russian monster people know.
It's all token representation, not real consideration of the culture.
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You're trying to teach a native Korean about Korean culture? Seriously? Well, I don't know what performers you've been looking at, but as I've mentioned in the original post- I visit most Korean online communities, and people who have spent their entire lives in Korea are finding the Trickster's cosmetics completely far off. I'm not making a claim based on my sole opinion.
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No, I'm trying to say that from my perspective, I've seen plenty of this sort of outfit in both Japan and Korea, as I had a longtime girlfriend who was part of the live music scene. I can only say what I've seen, and this isn't atypical. It's honestly quite tame to some of the other outfits I've seen (one or two had codpieces that would make David Bowie blush).
I also think that you are going looking for things to be offended about. Exercise a little charity - a foreign company is putting an aspect of your culture front and center, in the standard hyper-exaggerated manner DbD does.
Relax, have a laugh, maybe even be a little flattered.
There is no cultural appropriation, only appreciation.
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I think you are just being rude now:
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That actually makes kind of sense, thanks. I get that the devs were never really one for accurate representations of culture.
But it seems to me that most of the designs strongly related to a country's culture - such as the Baba Yaga cosmetic or the Oni and Spirit's designs - keep to a specific aesthetic that's at least loosely related to their origin. They don't seem too much far off.
The Trickster's newest cosmetic, on the other hand - I honestly can't find the 'token' representing Korea. It doesn't seem like it has any relation whatsoever to Kpop, and it just seems so unfounded that I get the impression that the devs believe they have a free pass to throw seemingly random clothing together and call it Kpop. Kind of like giving Huntress a dress with pink frills and calling it Baba Yaga, instead of having at least a mask resembling an old lady and a color theme similar to traditional Russian costumes.
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Your point?
They're mostly dressed in suits and shirts with a consistent color theme. They don't have yellow lips, white gloves with ridiculously heavy frills, or weird red and gold patterns. You're just affirming my point that the new cosmetic looks nothing like Kpop.
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You keep accusing me of being overly sensitive. If you'd like the truth- I was actually satisfied enough with the past two cosmetics whereas other Koreans were already pretty offended about them, so you could say I'm less prone to taking offense than most Koreans. I repeat it's not just me who's dissatisfied about the newest cosmetic, it's the general consensus over here. Unless you're about to claim most Koreans are out of their way to get offended.
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If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to ask - do you think overall/regular Trickster is a well designed character design wise and do you think he's a good form of representation? (if that's the right word.)
His design and appearance was quite a contentious topic on his release and I'm curious to know your thoughts about it.
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Er, I guess I'm personally pretty satisfied with his regular design. I don't exactly find it to be aesthetically pleasing by Korean standards nor do I think it's a representation of 'common' Kpop culture, but these aren't really problems for me because I don't think he necessarily needs to look common and his design isn't completely unfounded. While Trickster's original design doesn't look like 'popular' Kpop, it resembles some uncommon aspects of Kpop which is good enough for me. There are instances of real Kpop stars wearing items resembling his original outfit, such as long coats, a jacket over a bare chest, chain necklaces, etc.
My opinion is the minority amongst Koreans because most people would prefer him to dress according to 'popular' fashion, but I'm fine with the Trickster's design being uncommon because I understand that the devs were going for a unique look rather than actually aiming to look like a common Kpop star.
To put it shortly, Trickster's design was controversial because he looks uncommon but I'm personally fine with it because it has SOME basis in Kpop. I couldn't say the same thing for his newest cosmetic which is why I have a problem with it.
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I am, because - from my perspective, you definitely are.
But I humored you and posted this on our Korean ESL board. Nearly 40 responses thus far, people's reaction was usually 'who is this? No, it looks fine, why would that be offensive?'. EDIT: Okay, that was funny, one person thought it was a pretty infamous Japanese singer, Gackt. Google him and...yeah.
And no - that has not been my experience with either Koreans or Japanese folks. They tend to be a lot less easily offended than western audiences are (and often have cultural norms that many westerners would find offensive) aside from a small minority generally centered around heavily westernized campuses. This modern concept of offense-mining and wokescolding is entirely a western invention.
Which is why I was surprised here, as this seems very petty.
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Deleted, please ignore.
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We live in times where media have made everyone sensitive, they want us to feel offended by everything. Just enjoy the game instead.
I could say Hag is offensive to me and my mum because how she portrays women..but come on.
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I get the feeling that you keep dodging my point that my opinion is a shared view among Koreans and you're trying pass it off as my own psychological problem or something. No offense, but trying to teach me "Korean culture isn't like that, Korean people aren't like that" isn't going to work when I obviously have a better understanding about Korean culture and better access to communicating with other Koreans.
So, your reason for claiming 'Koreans are fine with it' is about 40 comments. Fine. I searched 지운(Jiwoon) on of the game-discussing boards I visit, and the result shows roughly 300 posts complaining about the new cosmetic. On Twitter, there are several tweets expressing shock over the design with retweets over 1k and up to 6k. Since you have such good connections to Korean people, I suggest you ask one of them to search 학지운(Hak Jiwoon) or 학지운 신스킨(Hak Jiwoon new cosmetic) on Twitter and ask them to translate the results for you, because every single one of them is complaining about the outfit. I think this clearly shows what most Korean people actually think, even if it unfortunately doesn't match your own personal interpretation of Korean people.
I'm sorry, but the "You're being petty, Koreans aren't like that" argument isn't going to convince me unless you make me unsee all those hundreds and thousands of other Koreans' opinions.
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I'm french, the twins are french... should i feel offended?
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you have every right to not like this cosmetic but it’s really not that bad. It’s not supposed to be the flagship KPop representation and its an outfit trickster was apparently wearing for a special valentines concert (valentines being a western thing, or is it not?).
Trickster on its own is not supposed to be a ‚good‘ kind of KPop representation with him being a psychopathic serial killer and all. And I think (may be wrong here) he is described to be over-the-top on fashion choices..
also iirc BHVR has worked with an actual KPop group as consultants to create the All-Kill chapter - and I assume this also holds true for the cosmetics which might have been conceptualized back then as well.
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Ah, I think I see the issue.
You are saying 'Koreans find this offensive' but what you actually mean is 'Twitter finds this offensive'.
Twitter is not a good indicator of anything. Twitter can find anything offensive. Twitter literally found sugar-free yoghurt offensive, by your metrics.
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Twitter is not the only community I mentioned, neither in the original post nor in my reply. Your accusation is unfounded. Getting fixated on one word, downgrading and reducing my argument to that word, and completely ignoring the rest. Convenient.
I'd have to mention (for the third or fourth time) that I visit several Korean online communities. Each of them has a unique personality different from one another. And yet, the thought that Trickster's new outfit looks awful is a shared opinion on each and every one of them. I already told you in my last reply that I found 300+ posts complaining about the new cosmetic on one of them. Another one has a user base very hostile against Twitter (because they don't share most of the opinions on Twitter, and they don't like how Twitter is 'offended by everything', to put in your words) and still they also think the new outfit is weird and disrespectful.
I'm sorry, but no matter how hard you try to deny it, your "Real Koreans don't get offended by that!" argument isn't going to amount to anything more than a feeble fantasy.
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Someone posted a reply along the lines of "I don't understand why you think artists' fashion is a part of culture, over here in Germany we don't care what they wear" but they deleted it... I'll give my answer nevertheless.
You have to understand that Kpop idols are different from individual singers from Germany - or Korea, for that matter. I also wouldn't have cared about the Trickster's outfits if he was just some random individual singer. But he's a Kpop idol. Kpop is a specific genre with distinct characteristics - distinct enough that the DBD devs actually thought to choose it for an killer's theme, you know. Kpop idols share a relatively consistent way of singing, dancing, and yes, dressing. The fashion style is part of the deal, so to say. And Kpop is a huge part of our everyday lives - dominant even - so yes, I'd say it represents a lot about Korea's national culture. Hence Koreans think Kpop fashion shouldn't really be up to arbitrary interpretation, and we don't take very kindly to incorrect representation.
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So this offends you why exactly?
Because you think people may mistake a fake murderer from a video game as real Korean culture? Super logical
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You're replying to ask something that I've explained in length in the original post? Super literate.
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