As far as I know from the lore, Amélie Guillard AkA “Widowmaker” used to be only a ballet dancer before she was “recruited” by Talon in her mid-20s and became this deadly remarkable (canonically) sniper in a mere few years. HOW could have she become this good in so little time? No prior military/combat how could this beeee? Unless Talon has insanely good instructors!
- We are Lorewise in the year 2076
- her physiology has changed significantly: slower heartbeat, improved eyes, possibly cyberware implanted, etc.
To be honest, I am upset that the potential that Overwatch would have is not even being used. At the moment I am reading a fan fiction (currently 800 pages) that brings a lot of light into the dark about Widow and tells her story. (I also hope that OW2 will continue to tell its story in this way). The bad thing is that the fan fiction is more logical than the official stuff.
Trailer OW2 “Is overwatch back? Yes, we are” ever heard of the Petras Act of the UN that classifies Overwatch as illegal?
In the fanfiction Talon attacks Washington and the UN advises to revoke the Petras Act (I’m not at the point of whether it really happens, but it would be logical). The Petras Act has apparently been forgotten by the Officials.
I digress again from the topic xD
Amelie is currently 33, at the time of Mission 00 (Gerard’s death) probably. 25. Means approx. 7 years of “improvement” on the psychological and physiological level and training. Since we’re talking about over 50 years in an alternative future, I think it’s realistic that she would become an outstanding sniper.
PS, in case someone is interested in the fanfiction:
Human https://m.fanfiction.net/s/12764926/1/Human
and the little prequel to it:
Everything Changes https://m.fanfiction.net/s/13059842/1/Everything-Changes
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When she was reprogrammed and get-off her emotional part she does’t longer shakes her pulse out of fear, nerves or remorse, which makes her even better in her lethality. And without any will or desire I would most likely have been training 24/7 until the next mission (She “became” a machine in Talon’s hands). And most probably she got improvements on her body (like Sombra or Ana) and use the most advanced tech weapons.
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Right, but why a Sniper, of all positions? How and when did she have this talent discovered and developed?
If you think about it, snipers hold their breath to stabilise their motions before a shot. BUT with Window suppressing her emotions with blood flow to the heart so in theory, she has a biological advantage as a sniper.
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Her family motto is “Chasseur toujours” - Hunters forever - you can check on Château Guillard. So if her family was a family of hunters, she may have done some hunting with them before and have a good aim.
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I don’t know if you can like this answer of mine, but I think anyone can only make assumptions to you instead of giving you actually plausible answers.
in my opinion it is the “precision” that gives this skill to Widowmaker. She was a dancer, and it is assumed that she had a strong education based on having a lot of precision in how her body moves. This may have some value in how she manages to stay still with her arms while she holds a rifle, while the rest of her may have been indoctrinated by Talon’s brainwashing program. also include the possibility that Widowmaker had a primal upbringing in the traditions of his noble family (the Guillards), who in the lore are described as hunters in both the map and the skin countess (presumably a legendary ancestor of the woman).
this narrative gimmick isn’t even that unusual for Blizzard. In WarCraft and StarCraft, the archetypes of the woman converted to evil would be Sylvanas and Sarah Kerrigan.
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Widowmaker is not Amélie Lacroix anymore.
She has been repurposed, she’s a fabricated Sniper and infiltrator, a product for Talon; and none other than Moira is behind it (spawn room banter in the game alludes to that). And by the way, Amélie wasn’t recruited. She was kidnapped to lure her husband out of hiding (he was OW’s leader when OW and Talon were in an ‘open war’ so to speak). It worked, they spotted him, knew where to get him and how. So they experimented on Amélie, most likely full body enhancements (not excluding possible torture, or if not, at least a lot of pain initially I would imagine), along with a near-complete mind / personality construct. You want to keep your weapon on a leash in case things turn south; I can imagine Talon having more than just one “Plan B” in case Widow goes rogue.
The gist is that the question isn’t about how Amélie became a Sniper. It’s about how Widowmaker was ‘made’ into a living weapon by Talon.
Now, sure, we’ve seen the OW comics and apparently “Widowmaker” sometimes pays a visit to her dead husband’s tombstone (that she killed herself, mind you). And in the game sometimes you can hear Widow sort lamenting to herself in a soft voice: “Ah… Gérard.”
That stuff… I don’t know if it’s all really fleshed-out internally. Because that would mean that there’s still a little bit of Amélie Lacroix in Widowmaker, that Amélie’s original life and/or memories surface in Widowmaker’s mind from time to time. Almost comparable to Gollum in Lord of the Rings. But I am actually hesitant in ‘accepting’ this, since there’s no actual canon, fleshed-out information considering THAT specific part of her personality.
For now, I rather think that Widowmaker is a fabricated product and Amélie Lacroix is gone. But if there’s sort of an internal conflict going on between Widow and the original Amélie, then they better show that stuff in detail in Overwatch 2; otherwise fanfiction stories on her lore will always simply be better.
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Gérard wasn’t an Overwatch leader. He only directed the operation against Talon, so he was a key figure in the fight against Talon.
In the fanfiction I’m currently reading, Widow is one of the protagonists.
This offers good and meaningful explanations.
Gérard’s death led to dissociative amnesia (loss of memory due to a traumatic event), which prevented her from remembering her previous life. Visiting his grave is a form of subconscious trauma management.
Then there is the conditioning and physiology adjustment.
The conditioning can be understood as a programm that it carries out the mission no matter what.
When the kid in the museum hit her head with Doomfist’s glove, the conditioning got a crack and continues to break and so bits of memory appear to her. This can explain the Ana / Widow interaction but also this saying on Ilios.
It may be fan fiction, but since Blizzard has given us absolutely no real new information, I practically do not care about her development in OW2, as I now see this fan fiction as the lore. (It’s your own fault, Bilzzard) Also, who says that the current story writers are the ones who came up with the characters and their story. A classic case of death of the author.
It’s just that they focused too much on multiplayer and eSports with this game, it was never meant to be a “story” game. But of course, that’s the Activision part of the company (and the feeding hand). The ‘real’ Blizzard artists I’m sure would have taken more time to do more story-related content and character progression. Because I’m not going to wait for some Twitter post to make something canon, nor do I care about out-of-the-game materials like comics.
I suppose to each their own. I don’t write fanfiction per se but I do make it up in my mind to fill in the void. I don’t consider other’s fanfic as canon, since I made my own. But that’s just because Blizzard can’t be bothered with it for this game. However, they do say that OW2 will have a Story mode, with proper in-game cutscenes (we’ve seen some of those in action in recent months as they’ve revealed some footage).
If OW2 really does go in more details for most characters, including Widow (and Talon in general) then I’m open minded about it and I’ll wait and see how it turns out. If it ‘makes sense’ and is well done, then sure I’ll take it as canon (doesn’t mean I’ll “like” it, I don’t need to like or, or dislike it for it to be canon; it just needs to make sense, to be plausible).
For now though, “my” vision of Widowmaker is sufficient. I think she’s being controlled, ordered and “maintained” by Talon (and Moira). However, there’s a potential in there somewhere for Widowmaker to go rogue, or to go vigilante style. I don’t think that Widowmaker has a specific agenda on her own for now. But it’s possible she develops one. And that… would be very dangerous. That’s why I think Talon, or at least Moira herself most likely came up with a contingency plan for such a possible scenario.
If Widowmaker one days has a wake up call in her mind and it goes ‘click’ “What is this, who am I, what am I doing” sort of internal crisis, then either Moira tries to turn the switch off, or Talon considers her an enemy. I don’t think they would hesitate one single second to send everything they have against her if she was to go rogue. It’s too dangerous to let her go. I wouldn’t be surprised if the story in OW2 involves a kind of internal conflict within Talon that might trigger something in Widowmaker to ‘force’ her to take a side.
But anyway, I’ll keep my own fanfic for myself until Blizzard shows us what they had in store with OW2’s story mode. I’ll reserve judgement until I see it all.
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That’s not what “death of the author” means.
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First of all, fanfiction is important and I support you creating it.
That being said, only the creator of the work gets to delineate what is or isn’t canon. There are cases where a piece of fan-created work BECOMES canon (though it has not happened with Overwatch) but that’s still a decision that’s made by the creator, not by the fan-artist or the community at large.
Your headcanon is still a headcanon until such time as the Lore Powers That Be deem otherwise. And again, you are 100% within your rights as a part of the audience to create your fanfiction! But that doesn’t extend to calling it canon to the rest of the Overwatch community. You don’t have that power.
J.R.R. Tolkien being dead for 60 years doesn’t open the door for some piece of Middle-Earth fanfiction becoming canon. Leaving a story space untouched for any length of time doesn’t change anything about that story space; it can ONLY be changed by the creator.
In the case of Overwatch, the creator is Blizzard Entertainment. The specific writers and creators involved in that process may no longer be AT Blizzard Entertainment or may not be on the Overwatch team any longer, but Blizzard Entertainment still exists, and is still the creator for all intents and purposes.
TL;DR: Blizzard sets the canon. No one else does.
PS: As others have stated, you’re using the phrase “death of the author” to mean something that it does not mean. You would be well-served to study what it DOES mean.
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Choosing to ignore canon because the output of lore is slow is not “Death of the Author.” That’s a specific term that refers to how the author’s personal interpretation on a work does not mean that it is the singular interpretation to the work. IE it is the authors own interpretation of the work or original intent in an ambiguous scene or idea that is “dying” and as those of the viewer/player/reader are “born”. This is generally more applicable to more ambiguous questions or ideas.
Death of the Author is NOT just ignoring what is explicitly canon. It is not about a literal “death” of the author or departure of the original author. It is not saying “Well I don’t like what they’re doing now, so I wont take it as canon.” It is not saying “I like this fan work, it might as well be canon.” Those are all very different terms than Death of the Author.
A few popular examples are films like Blade Runner (is Deckard a replicant? Ridley Scott says yes) or Do The Right Thing (Why did Mookie throw the trash can? Spike Lee says its because he was angry.)
What is not applicable to this term is the question you are trying to answer with fanfiction, which is neither lore nor canon. You could use it to look omnic-human relations. You can’t use it to look at why Widowmaker is an ace sniper, why she enjoys killing, or anything else you are trying to fall back on non-canon fan fiction to answer…
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I read this fanfiction, I never said I create it (unless the translator screwed up again 
).
Also, I never said that this fanfic is canon for everyone now, but that it fills this gap for me and is canon for me.
The whole Canon stuff of companies is just generally questionable. See Star Wars. For years the canon of Star Wars was huge. Then Disney came along and kicked a lot of it out of the canon and is now called Star Wars Legends (EU). Why? So that Diesney himself can publish a lot and can copy from the old one (see Hammerhead Corvette, which actually comes from SWTOR).
Darth Revan almost became Canon through Clone Wars, and the scene was then deleted.
I admit that I used the “author’s death” incorrectly. “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author”
Means the opinion of the author can be ignored. Example J.K. Rowling she said in the last few years that a number of characters had a certain sexual relationship. For example, according to her, Dumbledore is gay and had a relationship with Grindelwald.
But it doesn’t matter. We can agree that:
- I misused the therm death of the author.
- I will possibly ignore the story of OW2 and see the fanfic for me as a canon. (Headcanon)
- Blizzard did a terrible job on the lore.
- Widow’s past / reprogramming etc. is not even rudimentarily well documented with official material and can currently only be explained with interpretation and fanficion.
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Yeah, companies get to do that because they own the IP. That’s something you get to do as the owner of a thing. You can say you don’t like what Disney has done in their management of the canon, but it’s still THEIR canon to manage.
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Again. That’s not what Death of the Author means. Saying a character had a relationship with another character is a fact. It is not a ideological point about the moral of the story, motivations of a characters, or answer to an unexplained mystery.
You’re free to do so, but this is the wrong place to do that. This board is for story discussion, not for fan-made fiction. This is the place for people who are not going to ignore the story of OW2 to talk about the story of OW2, and for people to talk about what is actually canon, rather than some fan-made fiction that has no bearing on what is actually canon.
You’re welcome to talk about that here. I can agree with a lot of points that they did a poor job. There are some things that are interesting to discuss about this.
I agree with the first half. Her conditioning is not well discussed, which leads to the very common argument about whether she is brainwashed against her will, or she was conditioned like a dog with her will suppressed. I argue the latter, her bio states that her will was suppressed and uses the key word conditioned, and none of her interactions, monologues, or story aspects indicate that she is doing what she does against her own wishes. Alive was very much about how she does what she does because its the only thing that allows her to feel alive, hence the name.
I disagree with the second half entirely. There is literally nothing that can “only be explained with fanfiction.” And the Widowmaker story is not one that is something to be explained through varying interpretations. Its a clear cut story we haven’t seen yet, not some mystery or ambiguity for us to puzzle over.
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For a while I used to think Ana Amari was the or a mentor of Amélie “Widowmaker” Lacroix but there was nothing that really proved that lore-wise except the latter past as a ballet dancer and the presumption Ana only knew her as the wife of Gerard Lacroix.
If Amélie had also a past as a practitioner of shooting it would be plausible there would be some backstory between her and Ana thus leading to a conflict between mentor and rogue protégée in Overwatch 2…
Anyway, more backstory for Widowmaker pre-Talon (a comic or a novel at least)! More than this, more story for Widowmaker, period!
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Hell doesn’t need to be censored by the way.
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