“My home is a paradise.” The Summoner’s voice is heavy, every word with a tug of command. “I have made it so with my own fire. There is no further need for my intervention there. Here I detected the cries of the wretched, so I am putting to order what I can.” She lowers her foot until it touches the balcony, indicating her garden of skulls below.
Chapters: 7/10
Fandom: Overwatch
Rating: Teen - Graphic Depictions of Violence
Tags: Doomfist: The Successor | Akande Ogundimu, Tekhartha Zenyatta, Genji Shimada, Hanzo Shimada, Widowmaker | Amélie Lacroix, Lena "Tracer" Oxton, Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Symmetra “Satya” Vaswani, Junkenstein's Revenge, Alternate Universe - Fantasy
Summary: To find someone who has been left behind by everybody else, the monk and hero Akande Ogundimu enters the cursed Wilds.
For me, when it comes to writing Gérard LaCroix, basically the most we can glean about his personality from the “Retribution” comic is that he’s a clean-cut and likable dude who’s very focused on going about things ‘the right way,’–everything above board, all the t’s crossed and i’s dotted sort of thing. This is a guy who has worked a desk job and knows a shittily filled-out form only gunks up the works and can be counterproductive to what you want to do.
And like, that doesn’t necessarily make him boring, because you have to put this in contrast with Genji “Therapy… yes I have heard of it” Shimada, goth theater dad Reyes, Moira “I can come up with 8 bioethics violations before breakfast” O’Deorain, and a fucking cowboy. Gérard is the member of the friend group whose life is weirdly together compared to everyone else, but he isn’t judgy or anything, and he’ll definitely help you move, and everyone’s like “Oh yeah Steve, we like Steve.”
Since Soldier 76 was raised Catholic does that affect how you write him?
...okay when I saw this I immediately went, “Soldier 76 is catholic??” and headed to the wiki to verify--so like, here’s the thing, the “source” on the wiki page for the blurb that says he’s catholic literally just links to the wiki page for his skins. I can find no actual official source from Blizzard mentioning his faith--which like, is the case for most of the cast of Overwatch. Most characters’ faiths in that game are ultimately ambiguous. Like, Ana’s hood is inspired by hijabs, but she also has skins where her hair is fully exposed, Hanzo’s incense burning in Dragons is a funerary practice used in both Shintoism and Buddhism, and Junkrat has a voiceline on Nepal where he says, “Now this place? Makes me wanna be an atheist” implying he has some kind of faith??? But yeah, the only character who has a clear religion is Zenyatta. As far as like, my general headcanons go for Soldier 76, I gave him a line in one fic where he’s talking about Bloomington, Indiana and he says, “You know I couldn’t let myself stay there” but that line is also... meant to be ambiguous--Jack is described in “Fading Glory” as both a “Rambunctious youth” and a “Salt-of-the-earth Farmer’s son” so what I assessed from that is that Jack kind of reflected a solid, no-nonsense concept of morality from his upbringing, but also couldn’t resign himself to live and die in the same small town. I feel like, faith in a fictional character is a hard thing to do well, because our own concepts of faith can be enormously personal and complex. So like, I guess that explains why Zenyatta, Overwatch’s one unambiguously religious character, is sort of a “religion-as-worldbuilding” thing and also his religion takes up a huge part of his personality.
Gabriel Reyes is an atheist, and Jack Morrison is a Catholic, per their dog tags on Soldier:24 and Commando. Jack’s tag is very low res so it’s a matter of deduction on his end, but it follows the same pattern as Gabe’s.
He turns the page and there is portrait of the Countess wearing the same jacket and boots that she is wearing tonight. Another turn and sketches of other outfits appear, complete with hem lengths and ingredient lists for dyes. A suit of armor and a webbed sword, a red evening robe, a servant’s tailcoat paired with a wooden mask.
He turns the page. Aside from that one comment on the horse, this handwriting is not meant to be read. It is for filling the eye, making spectacle. The page feels like touching lightning. Its colored inks cast sunlight and make shadows. He grins boyishly. It is only when the bifocals slip down his nose that he thinks to start finding letters.
Chapters: 4/7
Fandom: Overwatch
Rating: Teen - Graphic Depictions of Violence
Tags: Doomfist: The Successor | Akande Ogundimu, Tekhartha Zenyatta, Genji Shimada, Hanzo Shimada, Widowmaker | Amélie Lacroix, Lena "Tracer" Oxton, Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Junkenstein's Revenge, Alternate Universe - Fantasy
Summary: To find someone who has been left behind by everybody else, the monk and hero Akande Ogundimu enters the cursed Wilds.
a lot of people are thinking that the new hero will be Toshiro and Asa's daughter... Asa is also a Nigerian name 👀 it is actually possible that this fox girl hero could be Blasian!!! but i dont want to bring my hopes up..
It’s funny because the top reason I think Asa will not be a hero is that her name is so similar to Ana’s. And it’s weird they chose such a similar name even if just for a side character (who, like Ana, happens to be a mom and a protector). So maybe there is something more to it like you suggest!
Asa does sign her name as 朝 which is one of the typical ways you can write the Japanese version.
Breathe, Akande. Pick one of the trees and study its historied bark. Watch the rich brown scales of its lifetime flow upwards on a river of energy. Tiny leaves crack through the frost. His fists settle back at his sides. Not as cold here as he thought. This forest teeters on the verge of Spring.
You came here for a reason.
He looks past the grove where he stands to the line of bitter colorless firs at the bottom of a hill. Shadows between evergrey needles smile toothily back at him.
He is…looking for someone. He remembers the mission is not a self-directive, but that is hardly unusual. He has always been generous to those who are useful to him. Use is the foundation of friendship. Someone who gives him the framework to practice his mind. Someone with a skillset not found anywhere else. Someone flooded by life’s greatest treasure—experience—bought at its highest price. The rare desire to hunt and kill in pursuit of higher standards of living. That is a friend.
Who is he looking for?
Chapters: 1/7
Fandom: Overwatch
Rating: Teen - Graphic Depictions of Violence
Tags: Doomfist: The Successor | Akande Ogundimu, Tekhartha Zenyatta, Genji Shimada, Junkenstein's Revenge, Alternate Universe - Fantasy
Summary: To find someone who has been left behind by everybody else, the monk and hero Akande Ogundimu enters the cursed Wilds.
I have nothing against Japanese people ofc, but I would find it sad if the new hero will be one because we already have the Shimadas. I saw a comment somewhere saying she could be Blasian because fennex foxes are from Africa. I hope thats true. Before Echo, I was hoping Liao would be Singaporean because we already have Mei and that came true! and if Sanjay were to become a hero he would be of Pakistani or Bangladeshi descent
That sounds pretty rad to me!
While I’m happy Liao is from Singapore, I’m not really chill with what happened to her. Jeff Kaplan said during an interview that she would be explored more in another media format (outside the game), so fingers crossed for that too.
Right now I think there's a missed opportunity to work backwards from the Ayutthaya map and add a larger Thailand map and a Thai hero. I say "work backwards" because usually FFA maps like Necropolis or Kanezaka are based off an existing regular map and reuse assets from that map, but at the moment Ayutthaya is sort of standalone.
So a Thai hero or another hero from a SE Asian country are pretty high on my personal wishlist. I think SE Asia is outside the comfort zone for the US gaming industry, but Blizzard has the resources to pull it off- and they've even mentioned a character from Vietnam! And...he's in Talon... So how about someone who's not in Talon, but aside from that please go for it.
I can tell you from experience that it is not a burden to make a global cast. It is a joy, a learning experience, and an asset to the creative process. And if you take time to actually invite people from the population you are representing into the conversation, you end up with rich, convincing characters for people around the world to find themselves in.
Sometimes it's not a clean split like people from the US identify with the US characters or every Japanese person loves Genji (definitely not true), but authentically conveying someone's country invokes pride and love and familiarity, like Sigma's voiceline about stroopwafels or his spray where he eats salted herring. They also did a good job with Echo, except Echo is a robot so who cares lol.
I'm biased here- Genji is my favorite hero. I spent 3 years making up Shimada lore because I couldn't get enough of it. Yet even with that, I'm not completely sold on another Japanese hero that is part of the Shimada. I don't know that we need another hero to continue telling Genji and Hanzo's story, and my worry is that this person will be another anachronistic "I don't know what a gun is" caricature like the brothers (and like a lot of Japanese characters across all media).
It might be even worse than that. Genji and Hanzo bear a resemblance to a theatric character in kabuki called a hitogami ("man-god"), a warrior who grants possession of their body to a guardian deity. The presence of a dragon spirit connected to an elite family relates to a similar concept called ujigami. Hitogami tend to be protagonists in kabuki, and ujigami is also a positive concept.
But while foxes in Japan can be revered as messengers of the divine, they also have shades of trickery and possession by a fox is associated with witchcraft. There are also stories about foxes transforming into beautiful women and seducing men so that they can cause mischief. From the GameInformer silhouettes article, it seems likely that this new Shimada hero is female, and the "messenger of the divine" from Japanese Inari worship probably translates more to "servant of the Shimada" in Overwatchverse Japan.
So this female character would be a servant or assassin of the Shimada, who probably ran into Genji when he was on his "destroy the Shimada Clan" mission, and whose history is now tied to the brothers instead of being allowed to introduce new ideas.
And that's the real reason I think you'd want to add a new character from the same country- to show us new things about the culture, to explain that not everyone in Japan owns a katana, stuff like that. Sombra's initial concept was a Japanese hero named Omniblade whose theme was street fashion- I think that would be an awesome hero!
And I'm not trying to say you can't have a Japanese female hero associated with foxes. In fact I really like folktales about foxes (try watching the first 12 minutes of Akira Kurosawa's "Dreams", though tw for a suicide mention).
Rather, in this case it's the combination of factors that are setting off some alarm bells in my head right now. There are even things that aren't even from Blizzard that I think about, like the "Good Hunting" short from Netflix's Love Death + Robots last year, which is about the Chinese hulijing (fox spirit from which the Japanese kitsune inherited a lot of its more negative traits) and contains a ton of misogyny and sexual violence. Basically, I've seen this subject mishandled before.
It's also because I know Blizzard has in the past Google-translated Japanese on Hanzo's skins/the infamous Hanamura map scroll, which suggests to me that there aren't any Japanese people working on these Japanese characters. To be fair I think it's gotten a lot better in recent years- the Tengu skins, for example, are awesome. Hanzo's dance is awesome (I'm a real sucker for anything involving dancing or food). Weirdly enough, although Hanzo's skins have been the butt of jokes, Genji's Oni skin from 2017 not only had appropriate translations but really cool connections to actual figures from Japanese history.
And getting translations and cultural points right is a big deal. People can tell if you're a white person trying to write a Japanese person's story without study or visiting the country. If you have the resources, you absolutely should have cultural consultants and sensitivity readers, or even people from other countries directly on your dev team!
Like I mentioned Sigma, who was developed with the help of Dutch staff, but did you know that this year Blizzard shut down their office in The Hague? It was not a dev office, but if you're shutting down your links to a community, how are you going to make heroes that connect to that community? In a similar vein, the person who added an explicitly SE Asian character to an Overwatch story was of Filipino & Chinese descent herself, but now she's left the company. And Michael Chu, who for better or worse has been considered the face of Overwatch's story, has also left.
I don't know enough about this hero to comment further, but those are my current thoughts. I'm real interested to see the starting line-up for Overwatch 2. At the moment I think this hero, Sojourn, Mauga, and Junkerqueen are guaranteed. It would be cool if they added Asian heroes outside of Japan/China/Korea, but I would still appreciate another MEKA pilot or another Japanese hero too, so long as they are showcasing something different.
Looking at Zenyatta from the perspective of Overwatch 2, where the expressed intent is to move the story forward:
Zenyatta needs to establish why he is the one Genji chose to be his teacher,
Zenyatta needs to interact with people besides Genji (Symmetra, Doomfist, D.Va, Echo, and Reinhardt would be my picks)
Zenyatta is a traveler, so let him show how to travel without colonizing
Zenyatta is a protector, so let him THROW SOME BALLS (but give an explanation that goes beyond "Zenyatta sees someone getting beaten up and intervenes", like what London Calling is doing for Tracer)
Zenyatta is both master and student, so eager for knowledge that he left his friends and his refuge, so show him learning (and with Genji, show how they have reached a level of equality- they learn from each other)
Zenyatta is an omnic, so continue what started with London Calling/Mondatta/Iggy and use him as another lens into the life of civilian omnics
Zenyatta is spiritual, so explore how spirituality affects his perception of the world (avoid technological explanations- not only because midichlorians suck, but because saying the Iris is actually an AI or whatever breaks the spirit of Zenyatta's story, which is that your own curiosity can counter the program for your life)
*All* of these points need to be addressed for Zenyatta to succeed as a character, because Zenyatta does not have just one identity (omnic/monk/teacher/student/wanderer/protector), he has many simultaneously. The juice is in the interplay of his many facets, and how that interplay causes him to respond in different ways in different situations.
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One other point for Zenyatta, and for the made-up Shambali culture that informs his character, is that when borrowing from religions, practices, and peoples, you need to treat them as *living* concepts. Characters like Zenyatta become more powerful if you focus on honoring the foundational voices for his fictional background.
I'm going to try and give some examples of what I mean:
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A recent example of how NOT to approach these ideas is Zenyatta's Huitzilopochtli skin. This skin is made with a texture of cracked stone and covered in moss. It is a skin born from an outsider perspective peeking in on another people's pillaged sacred spaces. It's a Legends of the Hidden Temple caricature. It is not true to how Huitzilopochtli was depicted by the people who honored him.
Just because those people are dead does not mean you should treat their ideas as dead. Take inspiration from Mondatta in London Calling, even- "We are messages. We are ideas." And bear in mind that the descendants of those people exist today, and the primary reason they don't still honor Huitzilopochtli is because he was stolen from them.
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Another example: When I was faced with writing Zenyatta for a story, I spent a long time reading about Nepal's history, food, language, indigenous peoples, modern-day events and politics, about Hinduism and Buddhism... Then, because the story was about Genji and Zenyatta, I started looking at how the cultures of these different countries could intersect, and what the two of them might recognize in each other. The most beautiful things I discovered from study I was happy to quote directly, like poems from Nepali poets Mohan Koirala and Balkrishna Sama who protested the Rana regime, or jataka stories like the tales of Prince Sattva and Rathasena.
By reading these stories I not only felt better prepared to ground Zenyatta's role in actions that make sense for someone who has lived in Nepal, but I was able to grow and differentiate Shambali spirituality so that it contains its own unique ideas.
And that ability to characterize culture was really important for scenes like, say, Mondatta's funeral.
Zenyatta does not attend for various reasons, but Genji does and so he goes alone to the Shambali monastery in Nepal. There he finds the Shambali are waiting 3 days to go through their funeral rites. This ends up not being part of the Shambali religion, but rather a request from the Buddhist humans in the village below the monastery.
The Shambali and the villagers live in an equal relationship and consider each other as family, so even though it is painful for them they honor the request. And Zenyatta's non-attendance and his own way of mourning Mondatta serves to differentiate him from the other Shambali. He and Genji discuss these differences when Genji returns.
The Visual Sourcebook states the Shambali took over an abandoned monastery. Nepal has a history of Buddhist monks being driven out of the country. Knowing that history allowed me to decide the villagers would be Buddhist in a country that is 80% Hindu and figure out why the monastery was "abandoned" in the first place.
And it's not just history that became important- little things like traditional foods, vegetarianism and how that applies when you live in the mountains, music (look up Nepali music videos on YouTube!), and clothing all made Zenyatta's story so much more of a joy to write without me even having to make anything up.
It almost felt like to convincingly write Zenyatta I had to become Zenyatta little bit. I learned a lot.
And I always tried to treat the concepts I was dealing with as part of a living environment, never a sepia-toned portrait or something only found by dusting through ancient and long-forgotten hallways. I don't know that I always succeeded. One person alone cannot authentically convey all of Overwatch's characters because one person alone will not ever have the required life experience. Like no, traveling to the Caribbean for your holiday does not make you an expert on Baptiste. But were I a major game studio like Blizzard, I feel like I would have the resources to give some religious figures in Nepal a call and learn together with them about their culture. Give them a voice in how Zenyatta develops.
===========================
I just realized I have a note in a current WIP that I'm supposed to add a bit of dialogue for Genji where he says, "When I look at my past from the outside, it rarely makes sense to me. I could not write it down as a story, even with one of Father’s pens. When all I have are my eyes, I can never realize the whole memory. I can only feel out what I do as I do it. And in feeling does it become real to me."
===========================
PS - I previously did a lore summary for Zenyatta here: https://thebiblesalesman.tumblr.com/post/185324820424/all-the-lore-i-know-about-tekhartha-zenyatta-with
I maintain that you can probably learn more about his lore from his Junkenstein interactions than from his "real" interactions.
The cynic in me thinks Blizzard saw amazing animation works coming from other games and decided to pay students on the cheap for it. Also, what is one supposed to do with 20 game licenses for Overwatch Legendary edition?
I gather it’s more they want to know who out there has the chops to make excellent animations for games. They have commissioned outside artists before, such as Wolf Smoke Studio for the Doomfist Origin Story, or Dillongoo for Bastet Rises. If you follow the careers of the artists on their team, you will discover that several of them started off by making fanart of Blizzard characters. That was the case for Wolf Smoke, and also Ying Liu, Nesskain, etc.
I think the prize’s intent is to have the winners distribute licenses to their fellow students as part of the conversation about this animation contest they won. That’s a pretty archaic view on how people experience and converse about videogames, which is why it’s perfect for Blizzard.
Hero of Numbani new canon brands, products, tech, concepts, etc.
*SPOILERS FOR The Hero of Numbani AHEAD*
This list does not include Yoruba or Afro-Brazilian food/clothing/cultural concepts, which probably deserve their own list.
344X-Azúcar - A wireless signal used by Sombra.
3-D Puzzle: Horizon Lunar Colony - Efi and her cousin Bisi spent 400 hours putting this together.
Alatise Parkway - Street in the Numbani Arts District where a gray market auction house can be found.
Bankolé’s Grocery - A neighborhood grocery store.
Bello tower - Tower where Efi’s cousin Dayo lives.
Bisi’s laptop - An extremely high-end laptop that Bisi tries to gift to Efi. Capable of 3D holoprojection. Can crush logic exercises that cause “the most advanced omnics” to struggle in seconds.
Blanchet771 - A literary icon beloved by Efi’s father.
Breaking Circuits trilogy - A Flash Brighton movie trilogy where Flash is a human pretending to be an omnic pretending to be a human.
Carnival Calabar - Real-life Nigerian festival that occurs December 1-31. Efi mentions that Unity Day rivals Carnival Calabar in size.
Chinua Achebe - Real-life Nigerian novelist (1930-2013). A literary icon beloved by Efi’s father.
Compass Point Insurance - An insurance company used by Efi’s family.
Court-appointed cybernetic surgeon - Employed by world governing organizations for removing cybernetic implants from war criminals. One such surgeon removed most of Doomfist’s implants after his trial, a procedure apparently broadcast out to the whole world.
CraftLife 5000 - Premium power tools including a hard-light screwdriver.
Cybernetic brain upgrades - According to Efi, Sojourn has these upgrades, which consist of “bionic neurons” injected into the brain
Cyborg African wild dogs - These are things that exist. Efi encounters two dogs with spinal implants and flickers of green light in their eyes.
Dagger Sect - Enemy agents in the Breaking Circuits movie trilogy
Declaration of Unity - A declaration read and signed by Gabrielle Adawe during the founding of Numbani.
Delivery drone - Used to deliver things. Some are powerful enough to carry an 11-year-old.
efi_was_here_v3-39x.aipm - The name of Orisa’s personality matrix.
eNaira - Electronic Nigerian currency.
FacePunch - Site where Efi finds a lot of jokes and memes, such as Marley the Dancing Coconut.
Fadeout/Fading out - An omnic condition induced by a malicious code that self-replicates and overwrites the omnic’s native functions one-by-one. The name comes from the lights on an omnic’s head fading out when it is affected by this condition. Omnics experience severe program malfunctions during fadeout. For example, an omnic forklift operator might keep driving the forklift into a wall over and over again, or an omnic artist might destroy her own work. Fadeout also causes an omnic’s private wireless port to become publicly accessible, and if the malicious code is allowed to operate for long enough the omnic can lose all original programming and memory. Fadeouts were induced in Numbani by Sombra for a time after Doomfist’s attack on the airport. Because fadeout causes omnics’ wireless ports to become publicly accessible, an “antidote” code can be administered to one omnic and will be automatically distributed to all other affected omnics in the area.
Flash Brighton - An action movie character with numerous franchise films such as...
Flash Brighton and the Omnic Crusaders: Forty-Four Hours Till Midnight - Movie where Flash Brighton abandons werewolf pups to go looking for his brother’s assassin with a time machine.
Flash Brighton and the Omnic Crusaders: The Duel to Infinity - Movie starring Kam Kalu, Thespion 4.0, and A.I. Schylus, among others.
Flexxon Pro Micro T1 reactor - Alternative to the miniature Tobelstein reactor. Cannot maintain a graviton charge for more than a few seconds.
Free Thinkers - A website where Efi gets most of the open source code for her robots.
Harmony Key - A symbolic key presented by Gabrielle Adawe to the leader of the Numbani Omnic Union during the founding of Numbani.
HollaGram (or Hollagram) - Social media service where users can make multimedia posts and other users can award likes, claps, or shares and leave comments.
International Baccalaureate - A real-life instructional programming standard based out of Geneva, Switzerland. Efi is taking senior-high level IB instruction in calculus and physics at age 11.
Ipanema - Real-life neighborhood in Rio. Efi planned to take surf lessons here, and Lúcio’s studio is here.
Junker reactor - A graviton reactor purchased by Orisa when a miniature Tobelstein reactor cannot be found. Cobbled together from mismatched parts, with some graffiti on the side. Efi notes that it is probably irradiated and likely to blow up in Orisa’s face.
Junie (Junior Assistant) - A robot stand-in for social and professional situations, capable of broadcasting holograms of people and recording video/audio with a 360-degree camera. Hologram features can be upgraded with hardlight conversion kits. Invented by Efi Oladele. Holograms produced by Junies are referred to as [name-of-the-person-being-shown]-Junior. For example, Naade-Junior for a hologram of Efi’s friend Naade.
Lagos - The largest real-life city in Nigeria, on the coast.
Maxwell Interpreter - Part of Efi’s robot creation kit. Used for creating simulations by autosorting “eight billion permutations into virtual hash matrices.”
Modulated Biochemical Currency (MBC) - DNA-coded cryptocurrency used on the dark web. About the size of a sand dollar, they wiggle in your hand and contain synthetic blood with unique biological codes in it. Also known as bio gold, wiggle notes, glam clams, scritch scratch...
Nollywood - Real-life slang for the Nigerian film industry
Numbani civic codes - For example, Code 34-342b - Driving a vehicle with an expired registration. Code 92-574j - Pedestrian cross-traffic. Etc.
Numbani Civic Defense Department - Numbani government security forces/police.
Numbani Credit Union - A credit union. Efi stores her grant money here.
Numbani museum exhibits - Historical artifacts, omnic art, a walking tour of Overwatch’s presence in Numbani, Numbani native plants, and a diorama of the Declaration of Unity, among others
Numbani Omnic Union - An omnic representative organization present during the founding of Numbani. The leader was presented the Harmony Key by Gabrielle Adawe.
OmnicCon - A con in Numbani with a costuming contest.
OmniWorx - Company that produces synthetic greases in designer tins with different scents like mint and citrus. The product is used by omnics as an indulgence, such as on Unity Day in Numbani. Efi buys OmniWorx tins for her omnic friends.
OR15 auction - An auction that took place after the defeat of the OR15s by Doomfist at Numbani airport. The Numbani Civic Defense Department sold off decommissioned OR15s in lots of 10 that cost around 20 million naira. Bidders were not informed of the OR15′s defeat at Doomfist’s hands.
Overwatch cartoons - Cartoons Efi describes as “old” that are based on the lives of real Overwatch members like Sojourn.
Overwatch coin bank - Owned by Efi. Features Reinhardt protecting the bank with his rocket hammer.
Overwatch pajamas - Efi owns a pair of these.
Paper notes - Used to avoid digital filters at Efi’s school.
Peace Park - A park in Numbani which had a statue of Gabrielle Adawe. The statue ended up being destroyed by Doomfist.
Precision Core reactor - Alternative to the miniature Tobelstein reactor. Unit is the size of a car.
Rapid-X heliotherapy - A type of therapy that heals broken bones in the span of a few days.
Sky Postal - Delivery company that uses drones. Capable of executing Lightning-Priority deliveries.
Steppe Wanderer - A model of car.
Super Fun Family Time - A “game” Efi’s parents taught her where they hide in the interior bathroom of their flat whenever the warning sirens go off indicating a Doomfist attack.
Tiawo Boulevard - Street in Numbani that intersects Heritage Avenue
Tin Can Island Port - Port where Numbani omnics held a dockworkers’ revolt several years back.
Tonal Abyss - Omnic pop band with 38 members. Broke up at one point due to disagreements about which quantum clock standard to use as a time measure for their music. Reunited at Lúcio’s concert in Numbani.
University of Ibadan, University of Lagos - Real-life Nigerian universities that Efi’s cousin Dayo received acceptances from in the story.
Valor Matrix distributed computing project - Project that rewards loans of processing power with currency.
Version 3.44 VAvmpCompiler - Part of Efi’s robot creation kit. An alternative to a dedicated Maxwell Interpreter box.
Virtual Physician protocol - Downloadable physician protocol accessible to any robot or omnic.
Yankari National Park - Largest national park in Nigeria.
Yoku Voyager - A low-end car model with weak levrims.
Zobo Bot - Robot that makes juice drinks at Efi’s school. Known to be ornery.
Agba Aja - Nigerian female omnic artist with a love of bold fabrics. Efi feels more confident after being compared to her. Agba was affected by a fadeout during the opening for her new art collection and subsequently destroyed five of her own paintings.
Amber Oyeba - The coolest girl at Efi’s school. Friends with Hassana.
Auntie Yewande - Dayo’s mother. Very fussy about etiquette. Criticizes the use of the name “orisa” for Efi’s new defense robot. Used to practice capoeira martial arts. Does not like to talk about her life before the Omnic Crisis.
Bethany Steele - Female omnic reporter with Atlas News.
Bisi - Efi’s oldest cousin, Dayo’s brother. Was shunned from the family after a run-in with debt collectors led to Dayo’s hip being shattered. Eventually joined Talon, and tried to convince Efi to join. Nearly killed by Doomfist when he shows hesitation at the concert attack, but saved by Orisa.
Bolaji Oladele - Efi’s father, a professor. [BolajiOladele55]
Constantine - Omnic lead vocalist and founder of the band Tonal Abyss.
Chore Bot - Efi’s second drone creation, to...help with chores.
Dayo - Efi’s older cousin. Self-made tailor and cosplayer. Wears his hair in 157 tiny twists, after his favorite prime number. His hip was shattered after debt collectors pursuing his brother Bisi mistook him for Bisi and beat him up, and he now walks with a cane. [Dayo]
Efi Rotimi Opeyemi Oluwadare Gabrielle Oladele - Efi’s full name (I’m missing the accents- will fix later).
Fola Oladele - Efi’s mother. Was around Efi’s age when the Omnic Crisis started.
Gaxx Gator - Omnic bass player of the band Tonal Abyss.
Grandfather - Efi’s grandfather. Operated in front line triage during the Omnic Crisis.
Hassana - Efi’s friend. Artist and irredeemable Lúcio stan (bought some of his beard clippings off the internet). [ARTIST4Life]
Isaac - One of Efi’s classmates. Once brought a military-grade barrier to a class about semipermeable objects and got into trouble when he tried to activate it without being able to read the instructions. Later gave Naade information about where to buy a fusion driver.
Joké - Stage manager for the drama club at Dayo’s school. Wears a hijab.
Kam Kalu - A famous Nollywood action movie actor known for one-raised-eyebrow smolders and for playing Flash Brighton.
Mr. Bankolé - Owns Bankolé’s Grocery. Hires Orisa to help around the shop (not a great idea).
Mr. Egwe - Male omnic principal at Efi’s school. Originally designed as a librarian. Recently installed metal eyebrows so he can emote scowling at students.
Mrs. Eni - One of Efi’s neighbors. Efi created a robot to tend of Mrs. Eni’s cats while Mrs. Eni was taking care of a sick family member.
Ms. Okorie - Efi’s calculus teacher.
Naade - Efi’s friend. A less vocal Lúcio fan than Efi and Hassana, but still says he won’t ever watch his ears after Lúcio says his name once. [NaadeForPrez]
Ndidi - Female omnic who owns a clothing store in Unity Plaza. Affected by a fadeout that caused her to stop being able to see or acknowledge humans.
Penelope - A Junie belonging to BackwardsSalamander that malfunctioned so badly that she held her owner hostage. Efi blamed the behavior on Talon hacking.
R.J. Mohammed - Owner of a vehicle that nearly gets stolen. His Vehicle ID is 3984HHJ.
Sam - Member of the drama club at Dayo’s school. Had his leg broken when he wore a Doomfist costume and Orisa attacked him.
Sasha Rhymes - Omnic performance artist. Gets a lot of her materials from the auction house on Alatise Parkway.
Sibe Oye - President of the student council at Efi’s school. Widely known to hate Stevie, but dated him for a couple of hours once.
Sparky Bot - Efi’s first drone creation, made when she was four to stack block towers and give dolls rides. Efi refers to Sparky Bot with she/her pronouns.
Stevie Igwe - Captain of the debate team at Efi’s school. Widely known to hate Sibe, but dated her for a couple of hours once.
HollaGram IDs:
ARTIST4Life - Efi’s friend Hassana.
Anonymous088503 - Doomfist. As pointed out by @tacticalgrandma, the number is the number of his Helix jail cell.
BackwardsSalamander - One of Efi’s Junie customers. Ends up having a lot of difficulty with their Junie.
BigBadSuperFan - One of Efi’s HollaGram followers.
BolajiOladele55 - Efi’s father Bolaji.
BotBuilder11 - Efi.
Dayo - Efi’s cousin Dayo.
Lúcio - Lúcio Correia dos Santos. The only ID on HollaGram that has the (verified) status.
He opened a diagnostic panel on the workstation. He was a surprisingly fast typer. Didn’t look like he belonged though, just a soldier incongruous in front of the supercomputer and the flickering omnic brain. Using a couple snake-like red cables, he linked the CPU box to the workstation.
“Now, hold on!” Torbjörn grabbed his shoulder. Gabriel didn’t stop working. Torbjörn felt the muscle of his arm shifting minutely back and forth across keyboard and holonav. A three-dimensional block of omnicode flowered onto the monitor, bleaching his face. Torbjörn gnashed his teeth. “I’ll tell Jack!”
Gabriel’s hands stopped moving.
“Go ahead.”
Torbjörn blinked, shoulders keying back. Gabriel turned to him, the blue light harsh on the profile of his face. “Go on, tell Jack,” he growled. “He’s not Strike Commander yet.” Gabriel lounged back against the hard bones of the work-chair, eyes hollowing up at the ceiling as his fingers spread against the neat white and orange keys. A smile came out of him, graced his scars, bitter and fierce. “Even if he was…”
Chapters: 7/7 - It’s complete!
Fandom: Overwatch
Rating: Teen
Characters: Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Ana Amari, Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison, Sombra | Olivia Colomar, Fareeha “Pharah” Amari, Reinhardt Wilhelm, Torbjörn Lindholm
Summary: Dorado, 25 years before Recall. Commander Gabriel Reyes leads the UN’s elite “Overwatch” unit to the coast of Mexico, where they aim to destroy the omnium responsible for La Medianoche.
“I’m not surprised. We’re going to figure this out. I’ve already got a plan.” His hand rose off Jack’s shoulders to the command crew butterflying around the deploying load ramp. His boots crashed up the metal. Someone switched on his favorite rock streaming station as he entered. He grinned until he realized Jack hadn’t followed him.
When he turned around, Jack was shuffling his bag’s weight on his shoulder and pressing his lips. Gabriel realized he couldn’t tell what Jack was going to say. Something else about Vincent, maybe? A request for commiserating experience, how did you handle it? How did you tell someone you were never coming home? Well Jack, the answer is…
Jack smiled at him.
“You are gonna tell me what the plan is before you do anything, right?”
Chapters: 5/6
Fandom: Overwatch
Rating: Teen
Characters: Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Ana Amari, Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison, Sombra | Olivia Colomar, Fareeha “Pharah” Amari, Reinhardt Wilhelm, Torbjörn Lindholm
Summary: Commander Gabriel Reyes leads the UN’s elite “Overwatch” unit to the coast of Mexico, where they aim to destroy the omnium responsible for La Medianoche.
With a thud the pillar wall bowed in with a coffee cup-sized dent. “That’ll be Jack,” Gabriel rasped. Shouts like rusty nails roughed against the wall. The omnic paused, blue light strobing gently out of its body down its arms. Gabriel tabbed his earpiece, but as he’d guessed when he woke to silence, the line was blocked. “He’ll rip you into little pieces.” Another dull explosion clunked into the wall. Jack had found his grenade belt. Gabriel smirked at the enormous, helpless coffin of the omnium. “Let’s get this done before he brings the house down on us.”
Chapters: 4/6
Fandom: Overwatch
Rating: Teen
Characters: Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Ana Amari, Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison, Sombra | Olivia Colomar, Fareeha “Pharah” Amari, Reinhardt Wilhelm, Torbjörn Lindholm
Summary: Commander Gabriel Reyes leads the UN’s elite “Overwatch” unit to the coast of Mexico, where they aim to destroy the omnium responsible for La Medianoche.
“Where’s the kid?” Jack’s voice was a thresher in the dark as he returned to bandaging Lindholm’s shoulder. It wasn’t just the kid, Gabriel thought. Jack has been antsy the whole mission. Burning extra blue. Maybe even back on the shuttle, though he was quieter then. Cause has to be extraneous to Dorado. Jack was always comfortable in a war, and never made a habit of moods. They didn’t let you into SEP without a brain or a modicum of self-regulation.
Gabriel added a check to the list in his head for later. Writin’ you a check Jack, like the old days. Most people longed for the old days, before the omnics.
Chapters: 3/6
Fandom: Overwatch
Rating: Teen
Characters: Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Ana Amari, Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison, Sombra | Olivia Colomar, Fareeha “Pharah” Amari, Reinhardt Wilhelm, Torbjörn Lindholm
Summary: Commander Gabriel Reyes leads the UN’s elite “Overwatch” unit to the coast of Mexico, where they aim to destroy the omnium responsible for La Medianoche.
“You got too far ahead again.” Another blue coat joined Jack’s at the edge of the darkness. Gabriel Reyes, the Commander, closed his hand firm on Jack’s shoulder. “What’s going on?”
Jack paced the sharp square of his chin through a couple sheepish nods before pointing it at the crevice by their feet. Gabriel got down on one knee, resting the long black body of a shotgun in the mud. His self-assured smirk framed by his carefully landscaped beard faltered as his eyes moved across the crevice edge, the piles of dead lizards fertilizing puffball mushrooms. When he hunched to look inside, the curve of his mouth evaporated. He gunned a couple fingers at his earpiece.
“Ana…” His voice emerged a little wheedling. He cleared his throat. “You have an all-clear on the cloister, Amari?”
“For now,” came the instant cool crackle through the earpiece.
“Join us down here for a sec?”
Chapters: 2/5
Fandom: Overwatch
Rating: Teen
Characters: Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Ana Amari, Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison, Sombra | Olivia Colomar, Fareeha "Pharah" Amari, Reinhardt Wilhelm, Torbjörn Lindholm
Summary: Commander Gabriel Reyes leads the UN's elite "Overwatch" unit to the coast of Mexico, where they aim to destroy the omnium responsible for La Medianoche.
[ CH.1 - Noche de los Angelitos ]
&
[ CH.2 - Mission Church ]
