Tag: mercy

Tracer might be gay but everyone wants to f*** Mercy (Part Three)

On By longandshortofitallIn Longer rants, Questions of cultureLeave a comment

The ongoing success of a game, franchise or IP is reliant on its fan base, this much should be obvious. But is a fan base reliant on the fanart and fanfiction it produces and shares? That is a more difficult question to answer. In my (as always, admittedly uneducated and inexperienced) opinion the short answer is “no”. The longer answer is still “no,” only with a “but it’s still important to a great many fan communities, and clever developers and publishers recognise that fact” attached. But we’ll come back to this in a minute.

In Part One of this series I explained how the decision by Blizzard to put Tracer in a canonical same-sex relationship – thereby making her the first canon LGBTQI character in Overwatch – was the safe choice when considering the less-than-LGBTQI-friendly portion of the Overwatch community, since it didn’t affect their power-fantasies. Part Two I explained the “everyone wants to fuck Mercy” thing, how she is both the most conventionally physically attractive character on the roster (by current societal standards and stereotypes of beauty) and also fulfils the broadest range of character archetypes, making her the most appealing (fuckable) character on the roster. In this final post we’re gonna tie those two things together, and we’re gonna do that by talking about fanfiction. Buckle up kids, it’s gonna be a wild ride!

No. It isn’t. It’s actually pretty tame. I’m sorry for lying to you like that.

The easiest way to claim that Mercy is more popular than Tracer in the fanfiction/fanart community is to punch their names into a search engine and look at the numbers that come up. When I typed “Tracer Overwatch fanfic” into Google.com.au it came up with 112,000 results. Typing “Mercy Overwatch fanfic” on the other hand achieved about 225,000 results. Problem is that if you swap “fanfic” for “fanart” then Tracer is the winner, with about 725,000 results compared to Mercy’s 672,000 results. Not exactly a two-to-one difference like the former, but evidence against my argument nonetheless. Change things a little though, specify, add “Tumblr” on the end and the numbers change back: Tracer gets 794,000 results against Mercy’s 846,000. Trade “Tumblr” for “Twitter” and Mercy wins again with 774,000 results while Tracer languishes with a mere 536,000 results. But these numbers are malleable and inconsistent with each other, not to mention ever-changing (what is correct as I type this will be incorrect tomorrow). Punching certain words into Google (AUS) is simply not scientific, not to mention I can’t be arsed dragging up the numbers for every single character on the roster.

But I don’t really feel that scientific evidence is necessary to the point I’m trying to make. To quote The Castle, “it’s the vibe of the thing” that I’m trying to get at, and that vibe is that Mercy is the most appealing and, therefore, the most shippable.

For you folk who’re new to internet fandom – which I imagine is actually fuck-all of those reading this, but whatever – to “ship” characters (or sometimes real people) is to imagine them in a (usually) romantic or platonic relationship. It’s one of the most common themes in fan communities and the art they create, and Overwatch is no different. At least one website I’ve visited marks the original ship as being between Widow and Tracer, mostly because they were amongst the first characters revealed, and because of the Alive short that saw the two trying to actively kill each other (nothing says “I love you” like attempted murder). Another popular ship is between Soldier 76 and Reaper, two former friends and comrades ripped apart by jealousy and betrayal (again, attempted murder). But the most frequently shipped character that I have seen, personally, is Mercy.

Before everyone’s favourite sniper granny, Ana, was introduced I saw her frequently shipped with older heroes like Reinhardt or Soldier 76, the perceived maturity I mentioned last week placing her in a maternal role (while whoever she was paired up with filled in as dad). I’ve seen her laugh at Tracer’s enthusiastically delivered jokes, get drunk with Mei at a college party while talking microbiology, blush at the sight of Zarya at the gym, gently chide Junkrat for not caring more about his own safety as she patched him up, and be protected by an opposing Widowmaker. Most commonly though it’s Pharah that seems to have won her heart. The Pharmercy ship might be the most famous and popular ship in the community, it’s hard to say. It’s the vibe I get, but maybe I just follow a lot more artists that ship them than anybody else. Going back to Google again, however, and comparing Pharmercy against Widowtracer (as I said, arguably the original Overwatch ship), the former got 482,000 hits against the latter’s 232,000 hits. Even people who don’t agree with the ship acknowledge its popularity and prevalence in the community.

So what does this have to do with Blizzard’s decision to make Tracer its first canonically queer character? Well, let’s go back to that question I asked in the first paragraph and extrapolate (love that word) a little more on the answer.

Simple fact is that, in order to thrive, fan communities rely on new and canonical content from the owners and creators of that property. They need it to exist in the first place so of course they need it to continue. Yes, a fandom can putter on long after a property has effectively died. They can even grow, as new people discover these games, shows and books that have long since ended. I still saw fanwork for Psychonauts well before the prequel/sequel things were crowdfunded, and I still see fanwork of shows from the eighties and nineties that I haven’t even been looked at – as far as we know – for a reboot (Swat Kats fan for life motherfcuker). Shit, there’s a reason nostalgia-driven crowdfunding has been so successful and every other toy commercial is being remade. But for a fandom to really thrive it needs canonical updates from the creators (or the current owners, if the original creators aren’t available). Notice the sharp uptick in the Legend of Korra fandom’s artwork when the first preview for the new comic came out, or the art the appears whenever J.K Rowling mentions anything to do with the Harry Potter universe (I imagine mine wasn’t the only Tumblr dash swamped with images of Professor McGonagall announcing her retirement after Rowling announced that it was one of Harry Potter’s sons’ first day of school).

This doesn’t mean that fan communities can’t self-perpetuate (fucking hell, a fair few modern reboots and at least one recent movie I can think of could very easily be called fanart or fanfiction), but even the eternal fandoms (Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who, Studio Ghibli etc) keep on fighting the good fight waiting for new, official, canon material to be released.

But that doesn’t mean that fan art is unimportant. You dismiss it to your peril, and the peril of your bottom line. There’s a reason why most developer and publisher social media accounts will have days and competitions that highlight fanart (though rarely fanfiction). It’s creators connecting with creators. A very simple way to acknowledge and appreciate the people who love what you have made enough to make something of their own (and, let’s be honest, are providing a bit of free advertising as well), especially since these artists and writers – in my opinion – by their very nature tend to make up the loudest part of a fandom. So fucking be nice to them.

And that’s why Mercy couldn’t have gone down as the first canonical queer character. Because she’s the star of too much fanart and fanfiction.

Y’see, Blizzard had already announced plans to reveal characters as non-heteronormative well before the release of their Christmas-themed comic book (fuckin’ hell, this has taken me a long time to write) but there were only so many choices available to them in how the reveal would happen. A character simply announcing that they’re into the same gender would be considered half-arsed at best, awkward and shoehorned in the middle, and ignorable at worst. A bit of side-eye or flirting would amount to the same. So would, quite frankly, a character waking up from a one night stand. Yeah, I know, but a surprising number of people seem to think that sex doesn’t prove sexuality. You’d have more than a few blokes going, “yeah, Zarya woke up next to a strange woman she picked up at a bar in Vladivostok, but the rest of the time she’s all about the penises.” Well, maybe not in those exact words but you know what I mean. It comes from that same ridiculous and homophobic train of thought that produces lines like “how do they know they’re gay if they’ve never even fucked a [person of the opposite gender]” and “all that lesbian needs is for a man to give her a good fucking.” Additionally this would go against the character archetypes of quite a few Overwatch characters.

Now, that might all sound anecdotal (it is) and based on my own completely baseless opinions on the thought processes over at Blizzard (totally baseless), but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong (it probably does) and following this path (because it’s my blog and we’re gonna assume I’m right anyway) the best remaining choice for Blizzard was to put whichever character they chose into an actual long-term relationship (again though, totally baseless). Long term relationships – when they’re not being actively used to propel the conflict in a narrative – generally show a character happy, comfortable and content within their sexuality, whatever that may be, and make arguments by observers that “it’s just a phase” much more difficult (but fuckwits’ll do what fuckwits must anyway).

This raises a fresh question though: who do you put your character in a relationship with? Do you pair them up with another character from the roster, an already introduced character from the background lore or someone completely new?

Most likely it would be the former or the latter. Glancing through Blizzard’s released material there aren’t a whole lot of plausible candidates amongst its non-hero characters, but people love it when folk in the background are brought to the foreground. Again though, there’s not a tonne of options there so it would either be another hero or someone completely new.

The problem with putting two heroes together is that you’re revealing two characters are LGBTQI at the same time, and that is a risk I expect most developers (that don’t rhyme with “Mioware”) aren’t willing to take. People still got upset when they found out that Tracer was gay, and while Zarya might fit the cliche of the butch lesbian fuckwits would still have been annoyed to have it confirmed. Double the game characters coming out of the closet doubles the outrage from a single comic. Unless creators have a reputation for queer relationships (which Blizzard don’t) they just aren’t that brave. (How fucking sad is it that revealing characters as LGBTQI is still considered brave?) Creating a new character is the safest option, bringing outrage down to a minimum and giving the fans someone knew to draw or fit into their fanfictions. Thus we have ranga named Emily sharing an apartment with Tracer, officially and canonically pashing on the couch.

And everything ultimately comes back to that single word, with all its suffixes and synonyms. Canon. In order for them to reveal without any doubts that Tracer was gay (or Bi or Pan or whatever, labels suck) they had to put her into an official and canonical relationship with someone on the same end of the gender spectrum. And the simple fact was that Mercy was too popular to be put in a canon relationship.

Fandoms need canon material to thrive. Few things excite a fandom more than when a theory has been called correct or a favourite ship is made official (as the reactions to Bubbline and Korrasami’s official status amongst the Adventure Time and Legend of Korra fan communities, respectively, shows). But it de-legitimise fanart and fanfiction more often than it does the other way. How many fan theories have been brought down by a quick “nay” from an author, how many ships declared null and void when a favourite character hooks up with the wrong fucking person?

But thinking about fan reactions is important to a lot of creators, and Blizzard has a solid reputation for listening to and communicating with the fans of its game. And that’s why I don’t think we’ll ever see Mercy put in a canonical relationship. She’s just too bloody popular, and to put her in an official relationship would be to de-legitimise every single bit of fanart and fanfiction, every ship and theory, floating around the internet. Tracer was the safer option because her and Emily was less of a tragedy than what Mercy would have been.

Everyone wants to fuck Mercy, so no one can. At least that’s how I see things as having happened.

Sort of reminds me of how the Medieval church fetishised Mary (Jesus’ mum), but I wanna wrap this up so we might talk about the Virgin Mercy another time. Thanks for sticking with me. And seriously Blizzard, well done for putting your poster-girl in a same gender relationship. That took guts.

Tracer might be gay but everyone wants to f*** Mercy (part two)

On By longandshortofitallIn Longer rants, Questions of cultureLeave a comment

tracer-mercy

Guys, gals and preferred, I’m gonna be very blunt in my writing over the next few paragraphs, I’m a straight white male, I’m going to be assuming both knowledge and agreement over a few issues, and everything is going to be very anecdotal. That tends to make things a bit problematic, but I’m trying not to be. It’s just the way I tend to write things. I’ll also remind you that I don’t play Overwatch but am claiming peripheral awareness. Feel free to disagree with me, and please let me know why you disagree. Did I need another disclaimer after last week? Maybe. Fuck it, I felt like another disclaimer.

Alright, so last week I claimed Blizzard’s revelation that Overwatch poster-girl Tracer is not heteronormative (we discover in a Christmas comic that she’s in a romantic relationship with a ranga named Emily) was a laudable (seriously Blizzard, well done) but ultimately safe decision.

The first reason I gave for this is that, bluntly, making a character like Tracer gay (or however she identifies) is less likely to inspire the kind of hate or backlash that making any of the male characters would have. Tracer is a high speed manic pixie trickster and a joyful giggling optimist, so is already outside the brooding, hyper-masculine power fantasies of characters like Reaper and Soldier 76. Her being gay thereby doesn’t crush any fragile and probably homophobic masculine egos, thereby being the safe choice to put in a canonical same-sex relationship. At least to start with.

But today I want to talk about how Tracer is the safe choice when it comes to the ostensible pro-LGBTQI fandom as well, at least in the way Blizzard chose for her to “come out.” And for that we have to talk about how fuckable Mercy is in the eyes of the fandom. I’m not just talking aesthetically either, but that’s as good a place to start as any.

Let’s get it right out of the way, Mercy is the most conventionally attractive character in the Overwatch roster. She is the most objectively hot character in the game. Now, I know what you’re likely screaming impotently at your screens right now. That you can’t objectively judge a subjective topic like beauty and attractiveness, especially with regards to a fictional and stylised computer generated character. That my standards of beauty can’t be applied to others. You don’t think she’s all that hot. You prefer a woman with more curves or more angles or something. In fact, you don’t prefer a woman at all. You think I’m a fucking idiot and Bastion is the hottest character in the roster. Oh yeah, you want you some sweet, hot and oily robot lovin’. Well guess what? This is my article and my opinion is the only one that matters right now, and I say that Mercy is the most conventionally attractive lady on the roster.

In all seriousness, there are a number of attractive ladies (and lads… and robots) on the roster, but I’d argue that Mercy fills out more of the boxes than any of the others. White flawless porcelain skin, long-ish blonde hair, looks like she’s aged somewhere between 25 and 35, larger bust and hips but with a narrow waist. While other female characters are conventionally attractive, they don’t quite fill out a suit of flying armour like Mercy does. Pharah is muscular and aggressive looking, Zarya is just muscular, and Mei appears overweight. Symmetra and Sombra are dark-skinned and the Western culture that I am a part of has spent decades teaching the idea that brown is not beautiful and should quite frankly be ashamed of itself. D.Va is too young and Ana is too old. Even Widowmaker and Tracer, the femme fatale and the other petite-yet-curvy white girl, might be called too stylised (I’ve read more than one comment about Tracer’s “anime hair”). Now, while you can argue that none of the characters are unattractive and will appeal to a wide variety of tastes, fact is that institutionalised sexism and racism are – ironically – equal opportunity employers. So I stand by my remark. By current standards of beauty, Mercy is the most attractive female character on the roster.

Do I personally think she’s the hottest character on the roster? I don’t know man, Sombra looks fun and Reinhardt seems like he’d be a tender lover.

But it goes beyond looks. Honestly, how conventionally attractive a character is doesn’t really mean much when it comes to fanfiction and fanart. If you’ve ever perused a fanart board (I don’t use the word “peruse” nearly often enough) you’d know that what a character actually looks like matters very little. Fuck all. Changing weight, gender, body hair, race, disabilities and age are just par for the often unsettling and frequently prejudiced course. Good fanart, however, stands out when it maintains the personality of the character despite these changes. You might draw a punk rock Pocahontas, but she better have a garden and play her wooden electric guitar beneath a willow tree. Definitely have a mohawk. So yeah, it’s all about the personality, corny as that shit sounds, and it’s her personality that makes Mercy so fuckable. Corny as that sounds.

More accurately it’s the collection of tropes that she fills, tropes that other characters do not, which appeal to a wide variety of kinks, fetishes and interests. Taking a walk through TV Tropes (as you might have noticed, one of my favourite sites to take a walk through) it’s not hard to find that she fills a number of archetypes. Her height alone (she’s 200cm according to the game’s website, about six foot six) makes her a Statuesque Stunner, while her place in an arena shooter makes her an Action Girl by default. But her position as healer, her apparent pacifism, and her choice of aesthetic makes her a White Magician (and her place in the party makes her a Combat Medic). It being a fairly feminine aesthetic (not quite tit-armour but it’s more than a little form-fitting, and very clean) makes her a Girly Bruiser.

I could go on. And I will, in a moment. The point I’m making here is that she falls within a broad range of archetypes, possibly even the broadest of all the characters on the roster. Just looking at the lady characters Pharah is a Hot Amazon (as is, arguably, Zarya); Widowmaker is not, despite the accent, a Femme Fatale, but she is a Manchurian Candidate, arguably a Lady of War and the falls under the broad Ice Queen umbrella; D.Va is an Ace; Tracer is a rather Nice Tomboy and Genki Girl. Now I’m not saying they don’t themselves slot into other archetypes than the one’s I’ve mentioned, just not as attractively as the broad range that Mercy does. And then there’s the archetypes that the fans have put her into, in the art and fiction not put out by Blizzard. The ‘fanart’ and ‘fanfiction’ if you will. Crazy, right?

What I mean is that there are certain roles that the fandom has applied to her that they haven’t really applied to the others. A lot of this is because of relatively unconscious assumptions based on stereotypes drawn from the official character background. In a little plainer English, we draw automatic conclusions about a personality from what we know about a person’s background, and that goes doubly for fictional characters. Mercy is Swiss, so we expect her to be efficient and punctual. Mercy wears flying, angelic ‘Valkyrie’ armour, so we expect her to be partial to the odd bit of Wagner. She’s a doctor and so we bloody assume. We assume she’s educated, because doctors are educated by default. We assume she’s disciplined because getting that education requires discipline. Because Mercy is a female doctor, we assume kindliness and good bedside manner (because only male doctors in pop-culture are arseholes). Most of all we assume that she is mature. Paternal. She becomes an Action Mum, a Substitute Parent, the Team Mum, or at the very least a Big Sister character, at least in the fanfiction and fanart.

And that’s what we’re gonna finish on next week. Swear to God it won’t take me another month and half. Pinky promise.

Tracer might be gay but everyone wants to f*** Mercy (Part one)

On By longandshortofitallIn Longer rants, Questions of cultureLeave a comment

Let me put it right out there, I don’t play Overwatch. Two main reasons for that. One, I didn’t have access to a computer or console capable of playing the game when it came out, and I’ve never had a great experience joining a dedicated multiplayer community months after a game’s release. Two, I don’t play multiplayer games anymore. Haven’t for years, they’re just not for me. But in this day and age with a property as big and pervasive as Overwatch that doesn’t really mean a bloody thing. Sort of like how you don’t have to have ever seen an episode of Doctor Who to know what a Dalek’s favourite word is. More importantly for this particular conversation, the community and fandom that’s grown around the game since its release is a vocal one, as is to be expected from a Blizzard property. Being such a major property means that news is covered by the mainstream gaming press, since what happens with the game, surrounding media and community can have long-reaching repercussions for the medium. So if you care about gaming culture at all you care about what’s happening around Overwatch, and keeping an eye on the what’s what is as simple as visiting a few sites regularly, following a few mates’ social media and signing up for a Tumblr account. What I’m saying is that while I don’t play the game and am not a member of the fandom and community, I feel like I know enough to have an opinion on the matter. If you disagree let me know and I’ll happily tell you why your opinion doesn’t matter. Well, this has been a very long and possibly unnecessary paragraph. Fuck it, I felt the need for a disclaimer.

tracer-mercy

Alright, so, the other day Blizzard came out (heh) and released a Reflections comic centred around the character Tracer as she searched for the perfect gift for her romantic partner, a woman named Emily. Now once you get over the shock that a badass, time-hopping, cockney test-pilot is attracted to gingers, you might also note that Emily is in fact a lady, making Tracer the first canonically LGBTQI character in Overwatch‘s roster of playable heroes. As best I can tell she’s the first canonically LGBTQI major character in any of Blizzard’s properties (Blizzard fanboys feel free to correct me if this is wrong), and she’s not a small character either, having been included to some extent in several different videos (alongside Reaper and Widow), and is the face on the bloody packaging. She’s quite literally the poster girl for the game, so writing her as LGBTQI is no small thing. Blizzard deserves some respect for that, even if they also wrote her as being keen on rangas. Good for them. And yet I can’t also help but feel like Tracer was the safe choice to give a girlfriend.

Why is that? Well, let’s start with the lack of backlash. Now, I’m not denying that there was backlash from the less-than-stellar members of the Overwatch fandom, there definitely was. Demands for refunds on the Overwatch community boards and the like (with at least one great reply that it was too late, their money was gay now) popped up almost instantly. Upset lads declared that Tracer was no longer their “waifu.” There was anger that once again a game company was shoving their SJW/PC agenda down the white male consumer’s throat.

Usual homophobic shit that I imagine by this point most companies and developers just ignore, that being the easiest option and their opinion meaning about as much to Blizzard as my opinion does to the French (the champagne-guzzling poncy socialist bastards). But these are the kind of folk who’d throw a hissy if the comic had merely revealed that Tracer’s unseen third cousin Terry had brought his ‘special friend’ to the family dinner a couple nights back (and gran was not impressed). Any sexual inclusiveness at all was gonna receive some hate. Because some people are just arseholes.

Thing is though, Tracer being gay (or bi or however she identifies) doesn’t  effect the fantasy for a lot of other arseholes. Bloody hell, I suspect a few would reckon adding Emily into the mix an improvement on their fantasies. Which is gross, but arseholes generally are. But could you imagine the kind of backlash that might occur if Blizzard released a comic revealing Reaper or Soldier 76 – the characters meant to appeal most to teenage boys afraid of bright colours and the CoD crowd respectively – in a same-sex relationship? Mate, mate, mate, now that would ruin a few angsty adolescent empowerment fantasies right there. If you don’t think that would spark the kind of massed nerd-boy outrage that even monoliths like Blizzard and Activision would not be able to ignore, then you’re either part of the problem or are completely oblivious to it (in which case, welcome to the internet!)

I’d say this can be applied to any of the male characters, from Mcree to Genji to Reinhardt (with the possible exception of Junkrat and Roadhog, who are obviously a couple), but Reaper and Soldier 76 are the most obvious examples of the male empowerment fantasy that come to mind, with their gravelly voices, jaded anger and cynical worldviews. Tracer on the other hand, the cheerful laughing manic-pixie speedster, already falls well outside this fantasy of stoic masculine power. So making her gay is not as big a deal. She’s a safe option in that respect, one of the least likely to crack those fragile male egos and cause the shedding of bitter male tears.

Y’know what? I honestly doubt that Blizzard would have even dared thinking about announcing a canon LGBTQI male-identifying character first. A lesbian is far more acceptable (’cause lesbians are hawt) and a good way to measure the response to differing sexual orientations in your audience, even if in most mediums they have a pretty low survival rate. Especially recently.

Here’s the funny thing though, she was also the safest bet when considering the pro-LGBTQI Overwatch fandom as well. The artists, the identifiers and the shippers. Because, as I mentioned in the title, everyone wants to fuck Mercy.

Come back next week to find out what I’m talking about.