I really want to thank the Valorant character team (artists, writers, etc.) and Sunil Malhotra, Harbor's VA, for bringing this amazing character to life. Growing up, there was not a lot of positive representation in media for me, a Malaysian-American. I grew up feeling very attached to the Hindu and Indian characters, since I knew that there would probably not be very many characters would be synonymous with my culture. Even still, there weren't that many in the media I consumed, and the few that I did know about were side characters in games or shows.

Of course, there are games like Overwatch and Apex that have released characters either from or based on South Asian culture, and while that made me happy, something about them never really clicked with me. I didn't like either Symmetra or Rampart's personalities a lot, along with their motivations as characters.

In 2020, I got into Valorant Beta, and loved the game. After 2 years of playing, they released Harbor, and he was different from every other South Asian character I have ever seen in any other form of media. In the video Meet the Voice of Harbor, Malhotra defines him as "a badass, big brother character with strength in him," which I agree with completely. In fact, I feel like Malhotra's claims in the video are completely the same as mine. There's not a lot of "badass brown characters" in any sort of media, and I'm so happy that Harbor ended up breaking new ground with that. I'm hopeful that he inspires more love to South Asian characters, and maybe one day, there will be an Indonesian or Malaysian character for me to attach myself to.

(I originally wrote this a few days after the voice of Harbor video released, but kept it in my drafts for a while and polished it up over the past 3 months or so. I hope you enjoyed it.)