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A thousand apologies for how late this is, but!!
The results of the 6th Gency Week polls are finally out!
Artists have been contacted already for the banners! We really wish we could accommodate everyone who applied for a spot, but we’d like to thank you from the bottom of our hearts, once again, for applying!
The dates have been moved a little so everyone has a little bit of extra time to get ready!
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On this masterpost you can find all the content and information about the 6th Gency Week and the submissions, all in one (bookmark it if you need to!) The intention of this blog and this post is to archive all of the community’s efforts that will be going into this!
♚ Information
Date: 5 - 11 April 2020
Run by: The staff of @dovesandsparrows!
Gency Week Official Banner: by Zee (who needs to have a break tbh)
Join Our Official Server: https://discordapp.com/invite/2sRvffX
❄ We will be reblogging late posts too, so don’t worry about deadlines or not being able to make it!
❄ We will not be reblogging NSFW posts.
❄ Please tag all Gency Week content with #gencyweek ! That will be the primary tag that we will be checking :) Make sure that the #gencyweek tag is in your first five tags, because tumblr won’t have it show up in the tags otherwise!
❄ This event is a community effort, and every prompt is chosen by community vote!
❄ If we somehow missed your post after the end of the day, do let us know so we can reblog it!
♚ Prompts:
(click ‘x’ for the banner prompt posts, click on ‘day #’ for all posts submitted for that prompt.)
🌕 Day 1: Moon (x)
🌧 Day 2: Rain (x)
☀ Day 3: Sun (x)
⛈ Day 4: Storm (x)
🌌 Day 5: Aurora (x)
🌊 Day 6: Sea (x)
🌲 Day 7: Forest (x)
♚ Content tags (more to be added as it updates; in the mean time you can enjoy our older Gency week posts!):
❈ All Posts
❈ Fanarts
❈ SFM
❈ Fanfics
❈ Headcanons
A little late but here’s some Genji and Mercy reminiscing with photos!!!
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Genji stood in the doorway of the apartment--their apartment--well, it was about to be their apartment, before, it had just been her apartment, but now with Genji staying over practically every night, they figured they might as well make things official.
“...You have to have more than that,” said Mercy, putting her hands on her hips.
“I... lived with monks and was raised by ninjas,” said Genji with a shrug as he adjusted the duffel on his shoulder. There was a single box in his arms with some of his things as well. A handful of the things in the box were just things he had picked up since answering the recall and coming to the Watchpoint. There were some wooden frames of his disassembled sword stand sticking out of the box, but not much else.
“I mean, I knew you were always a bit of a minimalist, but...” Mercy trailed off.
“You’re minimalist too,” said Genji.
“I... I decorate! I have my relief tchotchkes!” said Mercy.
“I love that you travel and save lives all over the world and people pour their heart outs to you and give you heartfelt gifts for your relief work and you just call them ‘Relief Tchotchkes.’” He craned his neck to look into her office, “Most of them are in one place though, anyway.”
“...I just... this is going to sound weird and obsessive, but if we’re both living here, I.... I want this place to feel... lived-in, you know?”
“Your office is definitely lived in,” said Genji, smugly.
“Har-har,” said Mercy, rolling her eyes.
“We could do the college dorm thing--hang up christmas lights, get some tacky movie posters...” Genji walked past her with a smile in his voice, “You like ‘They Came From Beyond the Moon,’ right?”
Mercy huffed and snickered. “...Pictures,” she said after a few beats.
“Mm?” said Genji.
“We should put up pictures--like, in frames.”
“Like an old couple?” said Genji.
“Athena can make some high-quality prints--we have pictures of ourselves, right?”
Genji paused and put his box down on the table. “Do we?” he tilted his head.
----
“Agents--It’s been a while since you’ve made your way back to my primary terminal,” said Athena.
“Well you are everywhere, technically,” said Mercy.
“I do like having you take the time to come here, though,” said Athena.
“We like the big screen,” said Genji.
Athena giggled. “What can I help you with?”
“This is going to sound odd but, do you have pictures of us?” asked Mercy.
“Many Overwatch agents dump their photos into my data stores when they run out of storage on their own comms but won’t delete them. I can run a cursory facial scan?” Athena suggested.
“That would be wonderful, Athena, thank you,” said Mercy.
“Scanning,” said Athena, the screen blipped for a few seconds, “Excluding official and bodycam footage, I have 249 image results for Agents Shimada and Ziegler. I can filter it by photos containing both of you where you are among the center subjects?”
“That works.”
“Right. I have 45 photos from the ‘general’ folder of other agents, and 11 photos from a file recently dumped by Agent McCree titled, ‘Watchpoint Cryptids.’”
“...’Watchpoint Cryptids?’” repeated Mercy.
“I believe it’s a joke on how difficult it is to get a photo of either of you,” said Athena.
“Well.. scroll through what we have?” said Genji.
“Understood,” said Athena.
There were very few photos from Genji’s Blackwatch days--both for the obvious reason that Genji was in Blackwatch, and the fact that back then Genji didn’t like having his photo taken. Mercy looked frazzled and overworked in nearly every photo of the old days. There was the old lineup of Winston passing the physical for active agent duty with Tracer cheering next to him, but both Mercy and Genji were practically on opposite ends of the photo there. From there photos of both of them seemed to be taken more frequently, no doubt thanks to being put on a strike team with Tracer, who tended to take a lot of photos to deal with gaps in her memory from Chronal disassociation.
There were a handful of group photos. There was a photo of the first time their strike team was all suited up---Genji seemed more confident in this photo than almost all the other previous photos combined with his new prosthetics. They agreed to frame that one. There was one photo of Mercy and Genji sleeping on each other’s shoulders on the orca with Tracer in the foreground holding a marker. Then there was a blurry bluish selfie of Tracer, still holding the marker, with Genji chasing her in the background with a crudely drawn mustache on his faceplate and Mercy chasing after him. There was a photo of Winston and Tracer victoriously holding up empanadas after the Havana mission (it would have been a nice photo to frame if it hadn’t caught Mercy mid-chew.) Then there was another selfie--apparently taken by Genji given the angle of his arm, taken within Mercy’s lab. Mercy had dark circles under her eyes and was dramatically posing at a petri dish.
“...I don’t remember that one,” said Mercy.
“You don’t remember that one? You were half-crazed from caffeine overdose and what must have been 30 hours without sleep. You had just cracked a new compound that would reduce the number of individual nanobots in the biotic tether without sacrificing healing output and you had me take this photo for posterity.”
“You remember that?” said Mercy.
“You passed out two minutes after this was taken,” said Genji, “I had to carry you back to your on-site apartment.”
Mercy reddened a little. “Oh...” she said quietly, “Sorry about that.”
“I didn’t mind. You’re carrying the team half the time, someone ought to return the favor now and again.”
Mercy smiled, then looked up at Athena’s screen. They scrolled through a few more---Reinhardt grinning with his arms wrapped around them both, easily dwarfing them.
“I like this one,” said Mercy, “I could see it framed.”
“I think he cracked a rib of mine when we took that,” said Genji.
“I healed you,” said Mercy, “Let’s frame it.” Genji just chuckled.
“What was the first one we ever took together?” said Mercy, scrolling back through the archives.
“This one’s from you, Agent Ziegler,” said Athena bringing up a photo of Mercy looking sweaty and frazzled in a sweatsuit with Genji’s arm strung over her shoulders. Genji had his very first prosthetics, rudimentary leg blades and a somewhat omnic-looking prosthetic arm. Genji’s face was covered by a surgical mask and several bandages. Both were giving a thumb’s up. It was clearly a clumsy selfie being taken by Mercy.
“...Your physical therapy,” said Mercy.
“I can’t believe I didn’t make you delete that,” said Genji.
“It was your first steps since the--since we met,” said Mercy.
“I was on so many painkillers...” muttered Genji.
“Oh you can tell,” said Mercy. She looked at Genji and smiled.
“What?” said Genji.
Mercy nodded her head at the photo on the screen.
“That one?” said Genji.
“It’s our first photo together!” said Mercy.
“I look like a disaster,” said Genji.
“We both look like disasters!” said Mercy and then she said, with deep ache in her voice, “It’s our first photo together!”
“’Greasy topknot and sweats’ is a very different disaster from ‘freshly tenderized pork loin wrapped in metal and bandages.’”
“Genji...” Mercy squeezed his arm slightly.
“...we’ll make one print, but that doesn’t mean we’re framing it,” said Genji, folding his arms. He gave a glance to Athena, “What about something more recent?” asked Genji.
“This one was... 5 months ago. In Nepal,” said Athena, bringing up a photo of Genji with Mercy next to him, Zenyatta on the other side, and several Shambali monks behind them. Genji’s mask was off and his scars were crinkling with his smile.
“Oh that one’s much nicer,” said Mercy, “We can frame that one.”
“It will be nice to have a piece of Nepal in our home,” said Genji with a slight smirk in his voice.
“Our home,” Mercy repeated the words and looked at him. She couldn’t really place last time she called a place ‘home’ let alone said the word ‘our’ in front of it.
“And this one,” said Athena, bringing up a photo of just Mercy and Genji, also a selfie, being taken in front of one of many of Nepal’s mountainous vistas.
“That one’s beautiful...” said Mercy.
“That one’s my comm lockscreen,” said Genji.
Mercy snorted. “So we’re framing that one,” she said with a smile.
“I can live with framing that one,” said Genji. He started counting on his fingers, “So there’s the group photo with our strike team, the photo with Reinhardt, the physical therapy photo---which, we are not putting that one up in the living room---and the two pictures in Nepal. I’d say that’s plenty!”
“That’s only five,” said Mercy, folding her arms.
“Well... we’re going to take a lot more, and so many of these are just work-related. We should take pictures of us on dates, on vacations, pictures at parties, holidays, wedding photos--”
“Wedding photos?!” Mercy sputtered.
“...hypothetical wedding photos,” said Genji.
“You’re just moving in and now you’re talking about wedding photos,” said Mercy with a smirk.
“Hypothetical wedding photos,” Genji said a bit more insistently, “What if we get married and I say, ‘Oh Angela, I want to put this picture of us at our wedding up, but then where will we put this photo of our Strike team eating empanadas?’”
Mercy snickered. “You’re thinking very far ahead.”
“I’m a ninja. We pride ourselves on being prepared,” said Genji.
Mercy just smiled and looked back at the screen. “I suppose home is a thing you build, then--we shouldn’t just push everything out there all at once...”
“Well, yes,” agreed Genji, “At the same time, looking at these photos... you’ve been home for me for a long time, Angela.”
Mercy blushed and tucked her hair back. “You’re home for me too,” she said quietly. There was a beat and then she elbowed him. “We are not putting the empanada picture up.”
“No we are not,” said Genji with a chuckle in his voice.
(The only other one I was able to do. Thanks to all the content creators who put out such excellent pieces this week!)
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Love, Genji.
He always ended his letters in the same way. Angela knew better than to accuse him of a lack of originality: few people shared his circumstances, and even fewer his outlook on them. Everyone was unique and meaningful in their own ways, but Genji truly stood out.
No, the repetition with which he capped off his correspondence was very much intentional. It was for the same reasons that he sent her the letters at the same time of the month, every time, and awaited her equally well-planned reply.
Their lives had been chaotic, subsumed with conflict and danger and the most unwelcome kinds of change. They’d lost, started again, and watched it all fall away a second time.
Now they had each other, a rock of constancy in a violent sea, and they wouldn’t let go. Routines were comforting, and consistency alleviated anxiety. Even with the safety they’d found now, their lives were still turbulent. Genji grappled with the political and religious intersections between Zenyatta’s beliefs, the Shambali, and the governments around them. Even a life full of meditation such as his could prove difficult to make peaceful. Angela, meanwhile, was back in the field working with Médecins sans frontières to help heal the human cost of the recent sectarian crisis rocketing up the Balkans. Even in a post-conflict environment, risks reared their head at every opportunity, to say nothing of the stress at the possibility of losing patients.
In the world they’d found themselves in, keeping this communication alive was immeasurably helpful. They both knew the pain of disappointment: meeting and exceeding expectations had never been as fulfilling.
They’d already made plans to take the next step, to permanently remove the distance between them with marriage and a new life where neither of them had to deal with the tumult that had defined them so far. The spark that had been there before had reignited when they’d met after the recall, and now lit their way to the future.
Why did they rely on letters? Holo-phones could connect them instantly across vast distances, erasing the barriers that had impaired human communication and travel for thousands of years. With a touch of a button and a strong connection, Genji could hear Angela’s giggle as she got overexcited about a particular piece of research, or she could hear his poetry out loud instead of reading it.
But the ease had never been the point. The lack of convenience, the long stretches of time, the risk of losing communiqués, all the antiquated mailing systems...it made the moments when they got in contact, and kept it, all the more meaningful.
Genji would always send her letters, and Angela would always send one back. Until next they met, this would do, even if they didn’t need to stay in contact to remember how much they loved each other. He’d never let her down, nor had she him, and now wasn’t the time for her to start.
Angela took quill to inkwell, adjusted her desk lamp, and began to write, starting her letter the same way she always did.
