Lack of Pharah in Mercy short story disappoints me

Story Discussion
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Uh yeah, I wouldn’t put it past them because many of them are just crazy. The thing Amari was talking about with the assassination started over Mercy’s pachimari magnet in Zero Hour. A magnet.

It’s not that Pharmercy shippers in particular are inherently crazier than the others. In my opinion, it should be a rule of thumb to assume they’re all crazy until proven otherwise because that’s how many of them are hostile and combative over it. It’s just that the Pharmercy shippers developed this bizarre sense of entitlement in the past, and that’s because they thought it would be a sure thing due to its popularity and all this anecdotal evidence for it happening. I saw the exact same insanity back when I was following Naruto and the title character ended up with a character named Hinata instead of Sakura. They just completely lost it because blah blah blah “it should’ve happened.”

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I don’t think it’s wrong for anyone to hope that their favorite ship will get a bone tossed their way - just when people get mean over it, it’s kind of concerning. Honestly though, some Gency shippers get on my nerves a lot when they go out of their way to comment on Pharmercy art and say “this is stupid, Mercy is straight” or some other opinion literally no one asked for. And a lot of them have said homophobic stuff to me and my friends on twitter. That is arguably not as… dramatic as sending bad messages to the writers on twitter but my point is every shipping community has their bad apples.

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You are just taking a stance of guilty until proven innocent. Which is biased and not very ethical.

I don’t think that’s the full story, because most of the time it isn’t in social media. Right now, with this post I’m only seeing Amari and your point of view about the situation, so I restrain from any judgement. Because none of you are carry real information. For example: Why should I believe you when you cleary carry a hatred towards Pharmercy and likes Gency?

I don’t share this point of view. I try, most of time that I engage with someone, to not carry some preconcived perception of them. Otherwise I would just be diminishing them.

When the fans feel entitled of something the responsibility of falls on the content creator. It means that the creator isn’t delivering enough quality in their work suply fans with entertainment. Sure, they can’t always please everybody. But in case of overwatch, when the writer use fan works to create their canon content, people that aren’t catered will inevitably feel left out.

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Not necessarily guilty of anything. You can be crazy without being guilty. I try my best not to judge individuals in conversation even when I think they might be biased. Of course, I’m not always successful.

It was just really strange, and to be honest, the one talking about possible hired killings didn’t seem mentally sound. They were very insecure about it after being called out. Definitely not someone that could ever bring themselves to do something like that anyway. They were insisting that Chu be fired to protect both him and the VAs from passionate shippers after he “ignored Jeff’s orders to stop writing Gency.” It seemed more like manipulation and delusion than an actual threat, as he/she tried to pass this off as genuine concern about Chu’s well-being.

I don’t hate Pharmercy. The extent of my hate towards them was for the combo in the game, and anything I may have said about the pairing was just out of bitterness about the game. I’m over it now, since I’ve improved and can take care of them rather easily.

I’ve said in the past that I don’t hate any ship, but that’s not true. I find both Shimadacest and Genyatta distasteful. Pharmercy is fine. I only hate when their fans whine about Genji and Mercy. On the topic of Gency, I like it to the extent of Genji’s involvement and that I think it could be a good story if told subtly. That’s it, really. The only pairing I’ve ever actively wanted to happen was Genji/Tracer way back when the game came out. That’s not happening for obvious reasons, and that’s fine by me.

That’s fair, and I probably shouldn’t be so presumptive. It’s just that most of my experiences with shippers in any given fan base is extremely negative.

That’s a leap of logic. I’m not seeing how quality content relates to a subjective creative development, especially one as minor as a romantic pairing. There are plenty of people that do enjoy Genji and Mercy together or just flat out don’t care one way or the other. Other fans should try to find entertainment in the series as a whole, not just the romantic fan fiction. If they can’t enjoy the franchise without that being written in canon, then they should move on. Furthermore, canon isn’t law, and Chu himself has expressed this. They can enjoy it regardless of what he does.

What do you mean about fan work being used in canon?

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You said you really only care about Gency because it involves your favorite hero (who is obviously Roadhog😝). Reading that gave me some perspective on why I even care about Pharmercy and why at first it upset me to see Gency become a thing and I even made that post talking about Genji getting too much lore - I think deep down I realize a lot of the community doesn’t really care about Pharah as much as I do (I don’t know if I’ve made it obvious that she is my favorite character lol but she is). I guess I can see why - her bulky power armor, helmeted design doesn’t appeal to male gaze as much as other female heroes (I’m not gonna lie… I don’t think Mercy is as popular as she is just bc of her personality), the depths to her personality have been written subtlety, and a lot of her lore has been overshadowed by Ana. and if less people cared about her it would mean less people wanting to see lore for her, and in my thinking at the time at least people shipping Pharmercy helped make some people care about her. I think somewhere along the way in my mind I saw it as = Gency will make less people care about Pharmercy and in turn less people will care about Pharah. But in retrospect my thinking was deeply flawed, and I was wrong to feel… annoyed? Upset? about it. Because, I mean people are still going to ship them no matter what. And I realize, maybe the lore isn’t as bendy to fan demands as I had chalked it out to be. They continued with Gency despite the… minor, backlash, because they believe in sticking to their story. And from the little clues I’ve picked up here and there… (like Jeff saying they have huge plans for Pharah) I know they’ve had a whole story arc planned for her from the beginning that they’re gonna go through with no matter how many people claim they think this hero is boring and undeveloped. So basically my apprehension was for nothing!!! whewww… sorry if this was long. but i think i’ve crawled one milimeter closer towards self actualization just now.

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People “don’t care” about Pharah as much because her lore was neglected. It has nothing to do with male gazes. There isn’t much to care about for most people, since most people won’t attempt to get into fan padding and just swallow whatever canon sources give them.

If they developed Pharah from the very start, I’m sure she’d be much more popular. Similarly to Ana.

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Later in my mini essay I said it was also because they haven’t touched on her story yet :face_with_hand_over_mouth: and I am not gonna debate whether there is a correlation between female heroes’ perceived attractiveness and their popularity because that’s subjective and there would be no point -_-

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Hey, i liked the idea of Genji and Tracer too! There is so much things that could’ve made their dynamic interesting.

I was talking about “fan entitlement” in general. I could’ve made it more clear.

If the writing doesn’t deliver up to fans expectations they feel like they wasted their time and emotional investment on it. It isn’t a writer’s job to deliver what fans want, but it’s their job to deliver a quality product and strive for something original. People that go around and say that the fans that were disappointed by saying that they are just “entitled”, fail or refuse to put themselves in their place and see things from their perspective, or are just at the side that was favored and use this word to demonize the ones that were left disappointed.

For example, the new pokémon games. I like the new designs and can see why the devs made the choice no to put every pokémon in the game. But I don’t call those that were unhappy by this decision entitled, because they’ve been waiting for a main console game for years and for it to not deliver a complete experience is disappointing.

This is just stance from the writer to appease the side that felt left out. Canon is canon and the fans that like it, will always get more content, by principle. If this wasn’t a thing there wouldn’t be a rule in this forum saying “no fanfiction”. Personally I think it’s pretty hypocritical for him to say that. If you want an example you need to look no further than the ow fanbase. Widow/Tracer was huge when the game came out. Fans liked their rivalry, and translated it to paring. But ever since they confirmed Tracer relationship with Emily, all those fans and content disappeared. Canon can and will kill people’s interest. I think the same has happened with pharmercy too(?).Someone that follow this closely could give a better information, but from what I see there is little to almost no more content about that either.

There is a scene in Bastet that’s based on a comic and the artist comment, and the Genji and Mercy interactions from Storm Rising are also based in fan art and the artist’s commentary. Both from 2016, that the lead writer tweeted and replied to. Those artists blogs have been deleted or they moved on from ow years ago, but you can still find the screenshots.

They also said in the past that they cover some parts of their office with the fan art that they like, so I guess there must be many other fan content that we don’t know about that were made canon.

In the topic of fan suggestions, he also admitted that when a fan asked about if Hanzo legs were prosthetics, he said “no he just has delicate ankles”, but later admitted that it could make into a story.
There were also fan request lines that were put in the game.

When he said big plans for Pharah, the content he was talking about was more skins. She was a long time without getting one and after that she got them.

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Normally I love to agree with you, but this one time I have to disagree with you ONLY bc I’ve kept this promise for more Pharah lore damn near memorized in my heart (i know, im a freak sorry) and I think both of us would want to see more Pharah lore so I really hope I’m right:

It was in an interview about the plans for the franchise’s story with Jeff Kaplan. The excerpt reads: "And while many characters have seen special spotlights from in-game brushes with story, or the fan-favorite animated short series, there are some characters that Kaplan can’t wait to bring into the spotlight.

‘I worry about characters like Symmetra,’ he said. ‘I think we could do a lot more with her, and we have a pretty cool arc we’d like to see her go through.’ Fans have been clamoring for more of the support character, even in terms of cosmetic upgrades; Symmetra hasn’t even received one Legendary skin from the last five in-game events.

‘Pharah is pretty underrepresented too,’ Kaplan continued, ‘but we have huge plans for her, so I’m not worried about her.’"

I can see how that would be interpreted as talking about a skin, esp bc they just talked about cosmetics, but if you read Jeff’s entire quote together he was only talking about story, and the comment about the cosmetics is just an interjection from the article author, Jeff wasn’t even mentioning cosmetics himself. To me it reads as Jeff was saying Pharah is underrepresented in the story, but he is not as worried for her as he is for Symmetra because they’ve been planning for Pharah to become a part of the main story (and also it’s been hinted at a lot that she’s gonna join the new Overwatch eventually) since the beginning.

(and also, RIP - Symmetra is my second favorite hero and why da heck would they just ignore her like that? but that’s another discussion…)

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An official comic.

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all this time and i thought i was the only one lmao (pre-reflections comic ofc)

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Right?! What’s done is done, but I’m still hoping they end up good friends.

That’s a fair point in-general, but it’s very hard to sympathize with a view from people that go full-on slander against the writer just because a ship isn’t happening. I have seen some people just calmly or playfully express their disappointment without freaking out, but it seems like too many others just can’t help trying to turn their personal disappointment with the direction he chose into some objective issue with the writer or the lore.

I understand that logic, but I’ve just never understood the emphasis on it, at least not with things like this. There’s so much OW fanfiction content out there. Why does it matter if it’s coming from an official source or not? Major events are one thing, but romance in this setting really has no significant effect on the world and could be ignored entirely, unless it were a situation where Genji and Mercy have a kid and he/she becomes a hero that leaves a large impact on the world.

Widow/Tracer has died down, but I think canon is only part of it. Another part is the lack of content featuring Widowmaker, lack of lore in-general, and just people moving on from Overwatch altogether. Additionally, that’s always been a long shot pairing that has more to do with the characters’ tight tights than story potential, so it could never sustain itself. Canon may have had an effect, but I don’t see why. People can’t have actually thought that was going to happen.

Well I don’t know about all that, but if something he saw from a fan inspired him, that’s pretty cool. He can’t use every idea though. That’s the unfortunate reality of it, conflicts of interest.

It would not shock me to see that drawing of Roadhog and Mercy riding on a motorcycle in their office. I doubt they only use art they intend to make canonical.

Well that’s because they are “prosthetics,” at least that’s implied by the original artistic design. I imagine that’s why he said that. It’s the result of whoever designed Hanzo deciding it would be a good idea to give him the cybernetic legs originally intended for Genji (or the original “Hanzo” concept).

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Hopefully Pharah could get something nice in this Winter event, although she had for Frost skin. Still, Pharah isn’t easy when it comes to skins because of her armor. Unlike Mercy & Mccree, they can basically wear anything and then add a pair of wings for Mercy & a hat for Mccree.
A new emote can be great too. Her Archive emote is kinda boring.

They do like the fan contents. When it comes to Overwatch ships, Jeff said he liked how the Internet came up better ships than the ones that Overwatch team could think of.
Chris Metzen developed the Overwatch story till his retirement, which is around Sombra’s release. And then Michael Chu came in as the lead writer. Gency was one of the fan-ships and Chu was likely to push that to canon because he likes that ship.

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Dude, I was totally thinking she needs a fireworks highlight intro!!! I don’t know why she doesnt already have one >:(

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I bet Gency isn’t the only one Che likes if that is the case. In the end they said the ships.

And well, Metzen developing to Sombra release means he wrote the base of the story so Chu knows how to go with it.

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Sorry for taking this long to reply, life has been busy.

I think the disappointment with the writing has been just pilling up. People have shown their displease in the writing direction since the game’s release. With: the “game is not canon”, the voice lines/interactions are “what ifs”(only for them not to be later) and the overall tone-deafness of their diversity and storytelling. There were a lot of heroes releases/teasers with mistakes in them. Even overwatch 2’s website was released with a mistake in the timeline. This is no surprise since Jeff jokingly confirmed in a recent interview that there is no overwatch bible. You could even make a point that people dislike his writing since his work on diablo 3 because a lot of fans hate the story of that game.

Because people like to gatekeep. Rub on other people’s faces when they “win” saying “what you like is not canon, and stop being delusional”, "your art is not canon, make the canon stuff ". Just look at this topic. People are mad and passive-aggressive at fans that are expressing disappointment because it’s the second short story that takes place at Pharah’s map after it was mentioned a bunch of times in lore and Pharah has no importance in it. Her mother is a character, they talk about the organization she works in(more like keep bashing it), the people that live there, the Temple of Anubis, how it’s Helix’s job to secure the place, the Raptora suits, etc.

It’s more about their established rivalry that people expected to be developed. We even got to know who Gerard was, but that wasn’t to develop Widow’s character, it was for Reaper’s character. (How dare people expect character development for female characters in video games.)

Taking inspiration is more like the “Love Actually” fanfic that the Reflections comic is. The examples that I’m talking about are more direct…
This being a fact, nullifies calling people entitled when the writer had entitled some fans by making their stuff canon.

You are joking, right? Because I prefer to believe that you are joking than implying that I’m dumb and don’t know how to differentiate a fanart from twitter/tumblr to a comic that’s uploaded on blizzard’s site.

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You might want to supply a source to whatever non-official comic you are talking about then. The only scene in Bastet I can think of that is based off of a comic is the Vincent scene, which is based off of a panel from Reflections.

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Weren’t you talking about Reflections? From the way you said it, it sounded like you were implyng that Reflections was a fan-made comic, not something official that was written by Michael Chu.

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I can’t post them here, because I could get banned(as much that would make some people happy). It’s not adult content by the way. But I gave info on how to find it, and it isn’t about Vincent. It has to do with Ana, Soldier, and Reaper.

I see it now, it was miscommunication. Sorry about that, English isn’t my first language. I was talking about Bastet. One of the scenes in it is based on a fan comic and the commentary the fan artist that made in the comic.

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Which scene? I’ve never heard about this.

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