Why Do People Say Mercy Has “No Personality”?

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Ofc, I feel there is a lot we should learn about Mercy. She lacks in lore, I won’t deny that. I would love to know more about her.

But why do some people in the community insist she has “less personality” compared to other characters? To me, she is well characterized as any other hero. Her voice lines indicate she is a pacifist and not a big fan of violence, yet extremely serious and perfectionistic about her work/ideals. In her interactions with Reinhardt and Ana, she is very direct about disapproving some of their actions (in Reinhardt’s case, dragging Brigitte/‘the poor girl’ with him in his adventures).

Yeah, in the worst case scenario, the character could follow a Mary Sue-ish route, but I think Blizzard will do better than that.

Still find the character’s personality OK, though.

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There’s a lot of stereotypes and assumptions about Mercy, a lot of them carried over from the way people view her gameplay and her assumed players and fans.

Namely, it’s really easy to see her lack of lore and jump to a conclusion there’s nothing interesting about her because she’s a “generic white woman angelic healer” character that was made with the specific purpose of appealing to a very hated and often abused subset of female players that don’t usually play games like this. It’s not surprising that their in-game avatar (so to speak) receives the same type of stereotyping and hate that her players receive in gaming circles.

That’s not to say people aren’t allowed to dislike Mercy as a character. Everybody has the right to not enjoy a character, for whatever reason.

However, that would make more sense if we knew anything substantial about Mercy as a character. What usually happens is that her lack of lore leads into the assumption that she’s simply that boring and awful that there’s no lore that can be made about her. There’s a lot of overlap between how the community views her gameplay, her fans and her as a character in a story.

Basically, she has very little known personality and background due to a lack of lore and the little we do know people easily label as “boring” (or even “nonexistent”: I’ve seen arguments like “She’s a doctor, of course she’s a kind pacifist, that doesn’t count”) because of stereotypes.

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People say that about anyone they don’t like. I like her and find her interesting.

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It’s 'cause she has no melanin.

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People confuse lore/story with personality.

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The character is fine, you’re correct. Mercy’s personality is actually shockingly exhibited in the game. She has enemies, friends, ex friends, and romance interests. We know a good deal about her place in the universe and how she’ll react to many pieces of the puzzle.

its because the whole cast lacks lore and any real depth to their characters, but for some reason or the other she’s drawn the ire of more for the faults that are in fact spread evenly amongst the cast.

essentially, misogyny along with a malalignment of her characteristics as a character who wants good in the world, interpreting this as being “vapid” and “empty”, which is in and of itself a reflection of a double standard for women both as characters and people. Other characters who draw this type of ire include Brigitte and D.va. Their characters are equal in terms of character development, but their characters aren’t as “interesting” because of this unfair, unseen double standard. Male characters largely escape this rabbit hole because fans invest more time padding their largely bare and empty characters with lovingly made invested story that they figure by filling in the blanks.

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The problem with Mercy’s character is that she is presented as this genius war orphan that succeeded in all that she did, that is selflessly working for the good of mankind and putting her life at risk at the battlefield. Defined by a motherly personality, a positive atitude, being caring, soft spoken and looking younger for her age. However, don’t forget, she is also sassy, because that seems to be the only sense of humor that is attractive for a woman in popular culture.

All of this makes Mercy easily relatable for female fans, because it’s a set of characteristics that are perceived as positive for a woman in our society. She is portrayed as this perfect wife with Barbie’s looks and intelect, which makes her desirable for the male fans.

The issue is that her personality reads like a mold or a horoscope, so it’s easily classified as “no personality”.

When the game came out, there was a datamined voice interaction that indicated that Mercy accidentally gave Reapers his powers. Fans cogitated that she could be a double agent or something. Even though I didn’t agree with the fan theories, it was fun speculate what had happened. But the lead writer quickly shut down any theory, because how dare fans try to have fun with a narrative and make the perfect wife not so perfect.

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What does that even mean?

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That’s only because she has received no lore (aside from being a side character in other characters’ stories). Once we see more of her with her own POV and her own story, we’ll be able to understand her better.

Zenyatta, for example, is in the literal same position as she is. He’s a concept, he’s mostly used as background to Genji, he is easily defined by vague descriptors. But people never say he’s boring. They go out of their way to develop him and give him interesting traits and invent potential storylines and conflicts for his lore.

There’s no reason not to do it with Mercy. Sure, maybe someone isn’t personally invested in Mercy so they don’t care. That’s fine. But there’s no point claiming she has no personality then. Otherwise there’s no reason not to give her the standard fandom treatment.

It’s not a datamined voice line, as far as I’m aware, unless there was another one. The interaction is this (it’s still in the game):

Mercy: What happened to you?
Reaper: You tell me, Doc.

People jumped to a conclusion that this meant that Mercy is the one who created him, but that never made any sense to me. He’s just saying “You’re a doctor, you should tell me.” He’s not saying “You’re the one who made me, you tell me.” Why would Mercy ask him in the first place if she’s the one who made him?

It was cleared up because it’s not correct and because the writer obviously knew that it’s an upcoming character (Moira) who is responsible.

This isn’t stepping on the fandom’s right to innovate and be creative, it’s simply making a clarification on something that some people misunderstood.

Even then, fans are still free to have any headcanon they want, including Mercy being responsible for Reaper. It’s not the lead writer’s job to keep all theories within possibility though. Canon is canon, he can’t cancel Moira because some people want to HC Mercy as being responsible for Reaper.

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Probably because she’s had no story progression since her biography which was made around the time of Blizzcon 2014 after the games reveal.

I understand lore takes time however that’s ridiculous.

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Basically the romantic heroine. When I say romantic I mean, the european literary movement, that influences how people write to this day.
The romantic heroine shares all her traits with Mercy’s character, including her fair physical appearance. The only characteristic that Mercy differs is that she occupies a traditional male job.

There was another one, it was like this(paraphrasing):
Mercy: “This wasn’t what i wanted to happen.”
Reaper: “You knew exactly what you were doing.”

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There is not a single proof of these lines ever existing in the game.

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They were on the wiki. People got them from the alpha/beta. They were removed after it was confirmed that they weren’t canon.

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There is no video or audio evidence of them ever existing. The wiki can be edited by anyone.

It’s quite a popular strange case of people claiming to remember something that isn’t actually true. This phenomenon has even been written about in the articles.

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They were never in game they were ripped of the files. I never heard them in game, but it was available on social media/wiki while I was looking about the game lore.

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Again, no audio evidence.

The story around the lines is not consistent. Some people claim they’ve been datamined, some claim they’ve heard them in the game, some claim it was online…

None of it matters until there’s literal proof. And there isn’t. It’s fairly easy to fabricate this type of a thing, mostly because human memory is fallible and also easy to influence. People can imagine these lines in Mercy’s and Reaper’s voices and trick themselves into thinking they’ve actually heard them.

Until audio evidence shows up or Chu finally finds a document where they were written, we can firmly claim that these lines have never existed.

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Seriously, what does this even matter? I was just giving an example of a way that Mercy could be developed that made fans speculate. I even said that I didn’t agree with it. The lead writer shutting it down was completely unecessary, even if the voice lines were true, but never put in game. Because the game isn’t canon. There are voice lines and interactions in game that contradicts the lore.

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I mean, lore is confusing enough. If the writer never establishes canon rules, events and voice lines, how will we be able to follow the story? How will we be able to understand the characters and their decisions and personalities?

Blizzard enjoys when fans have their own interpretations, but the story is ultimately not a free-for-all chaos. Canon has to exist.

Mercy can still be developed in hundreds of different ways and people can still speculate about Reaper, regardless of it being shut down canonically. AUs (alternate universes) are an insanely popular fandom tool.

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So women doctors just, don’t exist to you?

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Women doctors didn’t exist in the XIX century. Look at the context of my sentence.