While its possible to play Overwatch and not pay attention to its lore, theres a part of that games fandom that loves it for its lore. These fans theorize about character backgrounds, make fan art, and often obsess over the possible romantic pairing in the game, known as shipping. They imagine former friends Reaper and Soldier 76 sharing intimate moments in easier times, or they dream of rivals Widowmaker and Tracer falling in love on the battlefield. There are also fans who ship Genji and Hanzo. Thats where some fans think shipping goes too far, because Genji and Hanzo arent former friends or rivals. Theyre brothers.
In the ribald world of shipping, incest is an occasional taboo. For some it is a fantasy too far, a normalization of a reviled real-world act that signals to victims of incest that their plight has some admirable allure. To others, creating a drawing of two fictional brothers making out is simply playful and, at most, the exploration of the forbidden within harmless bounds.
This is what Overwatch fans debate when they now argue about Shimadacest, a word used to describe the hundreds of written and illustrated depictions of hookups between Genji and Hanzo, the brothers Shimada. The debate is about nothing less than what we consider to be real, what we make of those who fantasize about taboo lifestyles and what we deem the impact of fiction to be.
