Hey why not both? : D
1 Like
You kidding?
Do you know how many Mercy players I know and have known also have Widow in their top 3 most played heroes?
Why do people assume people who play Mercy automatically can’t/won’t/hate to play heroes like Widow or Genji?
yeesh -.-
1 Like
What specific features should they try to make similar though? Should they give her a super girly soft vibe but a different design and identity?
Again . The context is not for Western eyes 
As long as the character has more difficulty behind its playstyle.
I think a lot of people who play “easy” characters also do a compensation where they have to play “hard” characters. Like you’re totally correct with a lot of Mercy overlap with Widow and Sombra is another one I see.
However that players actual skill on Sombra/Widow is a hell of a lot lower than it is on Mercy. The general skills just aren’t transferable even if they like them. But I guess I answered my own question, I can see a lot of Mercy players playing the harder character if they like the aesthetic.
Isn’t there brig?
Like she’s basically tomboy mercy
Ehhh… kind of I guess? More women can definitely get away with it. But feisty women is not exactly a new phenomenon. What is a new phenomenon is gamer girls, women scientists (Mei in this case), and… women who shoot guns.
To point out that Mercy is feisty, but overlook D.Va being a gamer girl, or the fact that she operates a military-grade mech, seems like a bad comparison. I’m also not convinced that D.Va isn’t equally, or more feisty than Mercy.
Lastly. Feisty is a feminine trait, technically. By that, I mean it’s an adjective we only ever assign to women. When is the last time you heard someone call a man feisty?
Well Earth is a planet. It’s not any more or less feminine than my arm chair.
Protecting a child isn’t exactly a maternal trait. It’s just a parental trait, and it can be seen as more paternal.
Sorry. I don’t see it with Orisa at all. Definitely not even close to being as feminine as Mercy.
The thing is, the thing that sets Mercy apart from the other females is how maternal she comes across. I don’t get any sliver of a sense of maternal instinct from Mei. I don’t get that impression from D.Va. I maybe very slightly get it from Orisa. Maternity is a very prominent feminine trait, and Mercy screams it, despite not being a confirmed mother.
Yeah, Mei is shy, bubbly and apologetic. More girly than feminine, and it’s probably because Mercy acts much more like an adult than both her and D.Va. Despite acting more like an adult who is mature, she also is more feminine.
Yeah. There you go. She acts girly; i.e. childlike. Mercy acts like a grown woman. That does not make her less feminine.
Someone who is girly is certainly less likely to act maternal.
2 Likes
I have a strange question - do you know many women in academia? I think it’s arguable whether or not Mercy conforms to any archetypes of femininity, but I think it’s besides the point. What she does do is present a very recognizable (though of course stylized, exaggerated, and idealized) personality portrait of an actual person. Like I said in a post above, I know plenty of people like her (obviously not exactly). I am people like her.
Now this - I don’t buy at all. I don’t think it would be hard to find examples of women who would be considered quite feisty in the mythology and post-suffragette movement literature of numerous cultures.
Maternal and feminine are not the same thing.
Thus again, why i said it’s almost like everyone has their own ideas
It definitely is. I was asked specifically about my view tho.
Yes and no. The role of femininity for different cultures vary. For example, despite mercy being the angel, Ana is a better representation of biblical portrayals of female holiness through the pentatuch than mercy. Ana’s wisdom is very explicit and exact. Whereas mercy is characterized as an advocate, which for the pentatuch is a more manly thing
1 Like
It’s a part of it. If I were to list all the components of femininity, maternity would be a big part of it. There’s obviously other parts to femininity, but maternity is too big of a trait to overlook.
Traditionally (through history and what-not) maternity is a prominent feminine trait. Feminine traits attract heterosexual men. Signs of maternal instincts are one of those things that attract men. It’s all over academic writing and study of human psychology and sociology. And it’s all over history.
2 Likes
Yeah, I’m a woman who plays Mercy and I must admit one of the most appealing things about her minus playstyle is the way she looks. Very…sleek and pretty. I’ll play anyone to help my team, but in terms of strictly preference, I’ve always leaned more towards playing the characters that are somewhat similar in terms of design (Widowmaker, Ashe, Moira, Tracer, D.Va). So I would love to see another hero who looks similar to that. I saw someone mention the Junker Queen, but to me personally she just looks pretty scruffy. Call me nitpicky, but I don’t care…
2 Likes
I think that might apply to dva who is gamer bait. But that Mei and orisa imo are better representation of maternity.
B-But you can get a nice view from behind her, though! Even if you have to get smacked upside the head with a broom.
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/522628388532256770/635980907290951681/image0.jpg
True, but the central point I was making was that Mercy is not necessarily best defined by her adherence to archetypes but by her relatively accurate portrayal of a an actual class of people.
I’ll agree that the role of femininity varies from culture to culture. I guess I don’t understand the connection of this to the rest of the paragraph. Mercy’s connection to angels is rather tongue in cheek. It’s not necessarily meant to evoke a connection to any religious ideal of holiness. It’s not meant to really encapsulate her at all, as far as I’m concerned.
The Jewish religious tradition certainly represents a culture, though by no means the only one (or even the first one) in which one can look for inspiration for feisty women (which is what brought up this point). It’s not a culture in which angels play any significant role at all.
But setting that aside - the old testament in general (and the pentateuch in particular is not monolithic in its portrayal of women. It’s also not meant to portray only portraits of female holiness. It’s not merely a book about holiness at all. It has a wide range of women behaving in lots of different ways. Some of which could be considered feisty.
I think the visual trappings of Mercy as an angel are distracting people from the actual personality that she displays, which is of a Sardonic professor with a somewhat old school continental sense of humor, who cares deeply about her work and about the people she works with. I think of her more as an Emmy Noether than as a Sarah the matriarch.
1 Like
Echo is another cute girl with wings hopefully she’s a support 
1 Like
i kinda assumed brig, lucio and baptiste was kind of that super friendly helpful person like mercy is.
but ofc if you mean kit wise being able to not have to do anything outwardly offensive to win then yeah that could be a thing to think about.
I really like the idea of echo being a new support hero 
I hope blizzard will make it happen!
1 Like
Are we talking aesthetics, attitude, or a mix of both?