The Bible Salesman
Overwatch fanfiction and related resources - TheBibleSalesman @ Archive of Our Own
I’ve created a Twitter account just in case (I’m honestly not sure where else to go) - https://twitter.com/Bible_Salesman
Just be aware I probably won’t post anything on it until my next fanfic update. After that I will try to migrate or update the resources I have here to there.
I will continue to post here too until I get tired of appealing flags.
Someone asked where the name “Bars” came from for the sniper in Reunion- it’s from the Lorecraft: Creating Memorable Characters panel at Blizzcon 2018, where the cinematics team discussed the animated short.
The designs for the Deadlock Gang came out of the cinematics team at Blizzard, and not specifically the
Overwatch team.
The panel retreaded some of the content from the What’s Next panel re:Ashe
and B.O.B.’s designs but they also covered the others in the gang.
Speakers: Cate Gary (Senior Editor/Franchise Development), Mio del Rosario (Storyboard Artist/Cinematics), Jason Hill (Project Director/Cinematics)
Some quotes from Jason Hill about the Deadlock Gang:
(On the Deadlock Gang) A group where we wanted to create really unique characters, and characters we can hopefully see again in the future.
(On B.O.B.) [To Mio] I pitched ‘giant omnic enforcer’, because at this point we don’t want to see the humanoid omnics, and we’ve seen Bastion-style. Omnics can be all shapes and sizes. There’s no reason they all have to be the same model, so let’s do something unique with him.
(On the Triplets) We wanted some characters that could be in the gang, but not upstage Ashe and B.O.B. […] If you look at the bottom [looking at the concept art for the Triplets], you see some of them started to become a little too strong, a little too dominant, whatever you want to call it. They started to come into the foreground, so we pushed them to the background, and came up with some really nice designs that let them sit into the shots, be a part of the Deadlock Gang, but not take your attention off of what Ashe was doing or what McCree was doing in the moment. And yes, they are Starcraft fans.
(On Bars) The final member of the gang was Bars, the sniper. This is another character who’s only in about four shots, but once the designs started coming through, we were like “these designs are awesome!” This character- every one of these characters could be a hero on their own.
Q: Is Echo related to Athena, or are they completely unrelated?
A (Jeff Kaplan): They’re completely unrelated, but I don’t blame people for calling her Athena. Let me explain how the confusion happened. So, Arnold Tsang, way back when we started the Overwatch project, he drew (you’ve probably seen it) this amazing character lineup which has evolved over time: some heroes have changed, some heroes just aren’t there anymore. One of the original heroes he drew when he made that picture was Echo and we always said “she’s amazing, she’s going to be a hero, can’t wait to get to her”.
Originally, we had a different internal name for her, but something that artists do a lot of the time when they’re drawing characters is trying to decide how to use space, and Arnold felt like she needed an insignia on her - like, that the character had too much white so he had to put a logo on her. So he literally just took the Athena logo, at one point she even had the Vishkar logo, and it was just one of these things like “I need to fill space”.
So he put it on there and we never even thought about it, so it was funny when people went back and mapped onto the logo and started saying “that’s Athena!”. And we were like, wait a second, Athena is Winston’s AI and the narrator of the game! Athena’s not running around doing hero stuff, like, that’s not her character. So we’re like “well, they got that because we put the Athena logo on there, whoops!”
A (Nicole Gillett): They’re too smart (hahaha), so observant!
From /r/Overwatch Blizzcon 2018 interview with Jeff Kaplan and Nicole Gillett.
“Bars” the Pointy Boots Sniperbot Appreciation Station™
May you not get repeatedly owned in your next appearance.
Comparing Echo’s concept art to the cinematic model. In the oldest concepts she was “Iris”, then Athena as denoted by her logo. In the original Overwatch Theatrical Trailer, a radically different form of her appears in the museum, still with the Athena logo. There is also a brief shot of a hologram-less version of her with a slightly different head design in Recall. I am thinking Blizzard wanted to use the concept but realized they could not have someone voice both an announcer and a (eventual) hero, thus “Echo” was born.
Interactions from Junkenstein’s Revenge 2018. I don’t think I’ll have time to collect any more interactions, so I wanted to post everything I could find for Brigitte, Genji, McCree, Torbjorn, Tracer, and Zenyatta in one place. This video is alphabetical based on who is speaking first in a conversation.
…I found even more Zenyatta interactions despite two attempts at getting all of them. Hopefully someone datamines all of them eventually to provide clean audio and any interactions I am still missing.
Happy Halloween! :)
This is great!
I have a google doc I’ve been trying to write down everything I hear or see on clips in and I think the only one I have that you haven’t got a recording of on here is a Tracer and Brigitte one? (Tracer: In my former life, I would’ve gladly fought by your side! Brigitte: And I would fight with you in the next!) if you wanted to try and record it before end of event, though I may have missed it in your video, sorry if I did.
I think McCree might also say to Tracer “you move so fast I can barely see you” to get the response about advantages to her curse - but that could be me totally misremembering the line when I wrote it down
I definitely haven’t heard that Brigitte/Tracer interaction or the follow-up for McCree/Tracer. I don’t think I’ll have time to record any more, but if I get to play between now and Halloween and I chance into those, I will update the video.
Interactions from Junkenstein’s Revenge 2018. I don’t think I’ll have time to collect any more interactions, so I wanted to post everything I could find for Brigitte, Genji, McCree, Torbjorn, Tracer, and Zenyatta in one place. This video is alphabetical based on who is speaking first in a conversation.
…I found even more Zenyatta interactions despite two attempts at getting all of them. Hopefully someone datamines all of them eventually to provide clean audio and any interactions I am still missing.
Happy Halloween! :)
Zenyatta-related interactions from Junkenstein’s Revenge 2018. I can’t say it’s comprehensive since it’s a little hard to get JR teams that aren’t McCree-Torb for DPS.
On the canonicity of JR, Michael Chu said, “The Halloween stories have their own little worlds with their own little plot arcs (at least in my head ;)). Obviously there are some (intentional) similarities to the real world, but it’s not intended to be one to one.”
Also: Tracer never forgives. Tracer never forgets.
Ceremonial Heart
As the bench’s disturbed sway returned to silence, he noticed a scarecrow beside the distant fluctuation of the road. He had missed it on the drive in, though its arms were not propped properly high. It was so absolutely still, he could make out the ripples of the sack cloth around its skeletal frame. The sun sank behind, and even his visor trained across the flat kilometers could not discern if the pale suggestion of scarecrow’s head was a squash or a pumpkin. But like in the movies, crows flew down on their supposed enemy, fearless, and picked at its mushy skull.
Chapters: 26/?
Fandom: Overwatch (Video Game)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Relationships: Genji Shimada/Tekhartha Zenyatta, Genji Shimada/Angela “Mercy” Ziegler, Jesse McCree/Genji Shimada
Characters: Genji Shimada, Tekhartha Zenyatta, Angela “Mercy” Ziegler, Jesse McCree, Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Tekhartha Mondatta, Hanzo Shimada
Additional Tags: Body Horror, Brainwashing
Summary: A meditation on Genji Shimada’s journey from murder victim to harmonious badass.
[ *UPDATE*: Chapter 27 - Where Are Your Horses, Jesse McCree? ]
I like the Blackwatch Genji skin a lot, but the lack of scarring on his face always bothered me. I glanced back at the concept art for Blackwatch Genji in the Overwatch artbook, and it doesn’t look like it was a concept-to-modeling issue- the scars were simply never part of the BG face design. Maybe it’s too small a detail, but the skin as a whole is pretty crazy with tiny details. It feels weird that they did not include the nod to the cinematic. There are elements from the concept art that did not make it into the model, such as all the skin ripped off his back…actually, it’s okay they left that out.
I guess some other possibilities are: 1) They redid the concept for Genji’s “death” when they designed BG, or 2) Genji got his face blown up during his time at Overwatch or in the period after.
The Doomfist origin story shows Genji in his classic skin and potentially supports (2) by suggesting his construction had to be redone/finalized, as does the fact that his classic skin has the exact same design for both arms, and it doesn’t really look like armor fitted over beefy human muscle.
The problem here is the Doomfist origin story came out shortly after Uprising, so BG may not have been on the radar during its production. And as cool as it is to nerd out that “the dimensions of a human arm would not fit here”, I actually think the infamous “Genji’s dick” Michael Chu Q&A translated by @nalintant points toward hypothesis (1)- that to design BG the devs expounded on the exact damage Hanzo did, and Genji got a bunch of human bits back in the process.
So much like how Dragons is now the only place you can find Scatter Arrow, it’s also the only place you’re going to find ol’ burnt-up bacon Genji.
Some screenshots of Hanamura I took while trying to interpret the appearance of the village for some recent fanfiction chapters.
Ceremonial Heart
He appeared like he did in Hanzo’s dreams: older, hardened by his years, collected back together from the hundreds of pin lights fading over gnarled garden trees. Lion’s jaws opened from the apex of the legless eel’s spine. Flushes of lightning coated his body in glowing scales. The new dragon donned his matching crown of horn and membrane. A neon swipe of the Assassin’s sword detached him from its chest and arm, and green swam out to crash into blue.
Chapters: 26/?
Fandom: Overwatch (Video Game)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Relationships: Genji Shimada/Tekhartha Zenyatta, Genji Shimada/Angela “Mercy” Ziegler, Jesse McCree/Genji Shimada
Characters: Genji
Shimada, Tekhartha Zenyatta, Angela “Mercy” Ziegler, Jesse McCree,
Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Tekhartha Mondatta, Hanzo Shimada
Additional Tags: Body Horror, Brainwashing
Summary: A meditation on Genji Shimada’s journey from murder victim to harmonious badass.
[ *UPDATE*: Chapter 25 - Assassin & Chapter 26 - Two Dragons ]
How Storm Arrow Works
An appreciation post for the concepts and art assets associated with Hanzo’s new ability, Storm Arrow. This post is GIF-heavy.
Abilities in Overwatch are intended to broadcast the themes and character of the hero they belong to.
Are abilities canon? Some have shown up in cinematic or comic form, like
Primal Rage, Death Blossom, and Translocator. Reaper’s wraith form is
arguably much stronger and almost constant in his cinematic form. Sombra
can use her Hacking ability to actually puppeteer machines.
But when discussing Zenyatta’s Harmony and Discord orbs, Jeff Kaplan said:
In some cases we want things to just exist for gameplay reasons that don’t necessarily need to be supported by lore in the game. So, not everything is explained as canon lore–when you’re playing 6v6 Overwatch–that might happen in the game. That’s why you can have a Tracer and a Widowmaker on the same team even though they don’t like each other, and they’re fighting against another Tracer and Widowmaker.
So in-game abilities aren’t necessarily canon. Of course in Hanzo’s case we’ve already seen some of his abilities enshrined in glorious cinematic form, so we don’t have to guess about whether they’re “real” or not, and it gives us some room to guess how his other abilities fit in.
Yesterday I learned that “keep reading” and “expand” are not available
on the tumblr app, so I have split the post in half to make it play nicer
on mobile. EDIT: I figured out how to make it all one post and not huge by just linking to the finished private post in the intro. *galaxybrain*
The pre-Dragons/undamaged version of Hanamura Point B, seen only in the early Overwatch beta.
And the same painting in Genji’s room in Nepal. The translation of the text on the left is something like “the soul freezes in the dragon’s breath”.
Clean your room, Genji…
Ceremonial Heart
“Why is the door open?” a voice asked. The noise came closer, squeaked at the door, then tumbled back in a flapping of cloth and the rocking of tangled weights.
“Stop, stop, it’s him!” another voice scolded. “You want to die?!”
“Why is he there?” the first whispered.
“Who cares. Just leave it– leave it outside for him.”
Something soft landed on Hanzo’s doorstep.
Chapters: 24/?
Fandom: Overwatch (Video Game)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Relationships: Genji Shimada/Tekhartha Zenyatta, Genji Shimada/Angela “Mercy” Ziegler, Jesse McCree/Genji Shimada
Characters: Genji Shimada, Tekhartha Zenyatta, Angela “Mercy” Ziegler, Jesse McCree, Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Tekhartha Mondatta, Hanzo Shimada
Additional Tags: Body Horror, Brainwashing
Summary: A meditation on Genji Shimada’s journey from murder victim to harmonious badass.
[ *UPDATE*: Chapter 24 - Take Me With You ]
(Source: archiveofourown.org)