#moira ephemeral

[quartztwst]

Moira's first day on the job

Bro skipped the training and literally started his shift 😭😭😭 most of the tips are from venting students that Moira comforted

[moiraephemeral]

Moira can I also have good rizz so I have rizz up miss azul too.... 🥺🥺🥺

.𖥔 ݁ ˖ Ohhh! Are you the Quartz girl? Hellooo!!

(˶´ ˘ `˶)⸝

You don't seem sooo bad but uhhmmm.. I'm really sorry but my unique magic drains my magic really fast.. I'm sorry I can't grant your wish!! But I wish you luck!! ˖ ࣪‧₊˚⋆✩٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و ✩

Also you have grammar errors!!

[quartztwst]

I've never did these before uhhhh h-h-hey guys….

(Rielle and The cat twins are not included bc I still need to work on them lol)

GET TO KNOW YOUR TWST OCs (and their relationships)

(Or how I make up excuses to blabber about my OC lol. Most of the "who" questions are aimed at the twst cast, but feel free to include other twst OCs as well!)

Name: What does your twst OC's name mean? Why does Rook/Floyd call them [insert nickname]?

Inspiration: Is your twst OC inspired by any villains? Concepts? Anything Disney-related?

Age/Birthday: How old is your twst OC? When is their birthday? Whose birthday (among the cast) is closest to your twst OC's? Does the horoscope lie or do they get along well?

Dorm: Which dorm is your twst OC in? Why? Which qualities they have make them suitable for said dorm? Do they have a roommate and how is their relationship?

Class: Who is your twst OC's classmate(s)? How would you describe their relationship? Did they have different classmates in previous year and did they get along?

Height: How tall is your twst OC? Are they conscious about their height? Are they close to someone with similar leg length?

Hair/Eye color: What are your twst OC's hair and eye colors? Who got the closest/opposite palette to them?

Homeland: Where is your twst OC from? Do they know anyone from the same hometown prior to NRC?

Club: Which club does your twst OC join and why? Is there anything memorable about the club fair day/their first day at the club? Which clubmate is their favorite?

Subject: What is your twst OC's best subject? Worst? Do they study with another whom excels at the same subject? Do they ask anyone for help with the subject they are bad at?

Hobby: What are your twst OC's hobbies? Who among the cast will they possibly ask to join in their pastime?

Pet peeves: What are your twst OC's pet peeves and which one in the cast accidentally (or not) commit the "crimes"? How will your twst OC deal with that person?

Food: What is your twst OC's favorite and least favorite food? Why (optional)? Is there anyone they can share their favorite food? Is there anyone they can count on to take over the food they dislike?

Talent: What is your twst OC's talent(s) and who can properly appreciate that?

Unique Magic/Signature spell: What is your twst OC's UM (if applicable)? What can they do? What is the incantation? Is there any weaknesses/loopholes and who can exploit those?

Quote: Give me something your twst OC will say. Either something they always say or something iconic they said. Something that helps solve the problems or something that is a catalyst to even more issues.

(Ok I'm kinda running out of ideas here) Personality: Give me 3 adjectives to describe your twst OC. Or an essay. Whichever works. Whose personality among the cast is closest to your twst OC and do they get along?

Backstory: Tell me anything about your twst OC's backstory. Their childhood, their parents, their siblings etc. Does their backstory affect how they are as a character now and how they interact with the cast?

Pick only one: Let your twst OC pick only one and explain the reasons: only one favorite from each dorm, only one favorite housewarden/vice housewarden, only one favorite first/second/third year etc.

(For my beloved yume shippers) Partner: Who do you ship your twst OC with? Are they in a relationship? If yes, how did it start/end? If no, why?

[quartz-oc]

╭── ⋅ ⋅ ── ✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ ──╮

𝖂𝖊𝖑𝖈𝖔𝖒𝖊, 𝕶𝖎𝖙𝖙𝖊𝖓𝖘, 𝖙𝖔 𝖒𝖞 𝕺𝕮 𝖇𝖑𝖔𝖌...

╰── ⋅ ⋅ ── ✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ ──╯

This is where I'll put my OCs (TWST or not TWST) since it's so hard to find them on my main account ( @quartztwst )

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

✦ MASTERLIST

Twisted Wonderland

Cynthia (Yuu OC) ⋆𐙚₊˚⊹ ᡣ𐭩

Cedric Étoile ᯓ★

Edmond Pierre 𖤣.𖥧.𖡼.⚘

Rene Pierre ⋆˚✿˖°

Moira Ephemeral ⋅˚₊‧ ଳ ‧₊˚ ⋅

Chariya Saiyaithong ᓚ₍⑅^. .^₎♡

Chailai Saiyaithong ᓚ₍ ^. .^₎

Ok thanks

[dunbonnets]

a COMPLETE MASTERLIST of all the fanfiction original characters created by DUNBONNETS, what fandom/fanfiction/series they belong to, their ships, and where you can find edits specifically made for them.

sonja smith from of dreams and freedom, an attack on titan fanfic. ( armin arlert ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

sayuri kameda from gilded lily, a demon slayer fanfic. ( giyuu tomioka ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

misaki kobayashi from blood red sun, a demon slayer fanfic. ( tanjiro kamado ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

brian randall-fraser from deep heart's core // the sands of time saga, an outlander fanfic series. ( oc pairing ) ✶ character tag. ship tag. ship tag.

reiko matsuda from until i found you, a demon slayer fanfic. ( inosuke hashibira ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

vetra stormont from weather the storm, a black clover fanfic. ( finral roulacase ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

reva nebbia from electric love, a black clover fanfic. ( luck voltia ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

moira hawethorne from deep heart's core // the sands of time saga, an outlander fanfic series. ( oc pairing ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

katherine johanson from deep heart's core // the sands of time saga, an outlander fanfic series. ( oc pairing ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

marjorie graham from where the heart is, an outlander fanfic. ( fergus fraser ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

lady juliette lockhart from steel magnolia // love is a garden series, a bridgerton fanfic series. ( anthony bridgerton ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

lord ambrose bridgerton from paper rings // a series of love stories, a bridgerton fanfic series. ( oc pairing ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

lady clara whittemore from paper rings // a series of love stories, a bridgerton fanfic series ( oc pairing ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

zakaria zatara from mystical bond // the divine justice saga, a young justice fanfic series. ( conner kent ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

zeppelin zatara from mystical bond // the divine justice saga, a young justice fanfic series. ( cassandra sandsmark ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

giovanna zatara from mystical bond // the divine justice saga, a young justice fanfic series. ( oc pairing ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

spencer barnes from follow your arrow // the divine justice saga, a young justice fanfic series. ( artemis crock ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

virginia adler from out of time // the earth-5871 series, an mcu fanfic series. ( steve rogers ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

astrea voss from infinite galaxies // the earth-5871 series, an mcu fanfic series. ( peter quill ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

viper/madame hydra from viper // the earth-5871 series, an mcu fanfic series. ( tony stark ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

edwina brock from symbiosis // the earth-5871 series, an mcu fanfic series. ( hope van dyne ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

ares from catch the wind // the earth-5871 series, an mcu fanfic series. ( sersi ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

alan milne/christopher robin from the weight of us // the heart of a hero series, a once upon a time fanfic series ( emma swan ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

princess gilrien from ephemeral // the maidens of middle-earth saga, a the rings of power fanfic. ( elrond ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

lenore gilbert from broken wings // the bloodlines saga, a the vampire diaries universe fanfic series. ( stefan salvatore ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

erika mikaelson from cursed, a the vampire diaries universe fanfic. ( elijah mikaelson ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

calliope gomez from my bloody valentine, a post-teen wolf au fanfic. ( stiles stilinski ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

maris navarro from siren song // the monsters & myths saga, a teen wolf fanfic series. ( scott mccall ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

keelie kepner from bad moon rising // the children of the moon series, a teen wolf fanfic series. ( stiles stilinski ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

sophie torres-kepp from somewhere only we know, an the umbrella academy fanfic. ( diego hargreeves ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

anita levine from no time to die, a mission impossible fanfic. ( ethan hunt ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

maude fletcher from genesis, an inception fanfic. ( eames ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

jean abbott from downward spiral, a true detective fanfic. ( rustin cohle ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

freya oleson from dark days, a 30 days of night fanfic. ( eben oleson ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

heather macher from everybody dies // the hereditary horrors series, a scream franchise fanfic series. ( sidney prescott ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

kiara goldstien from die for you // the hereditary horrors series, a scream franchise fanfic series. ( tara carpenter ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

reagan strode from the devil walks amoung us, a halloween franchise fanfic. ( oc pairing, corey cunningham ) ✶ character tag. ship tag.

[razorwiires]

[ @spiralshift tagged me to post 5 or more characters I’ve rped as in the past ]

GLaDOS - Portal

Smoothie - Happy! (an obscure syfy show)

Moira O’Deorain - Overwatch

Shuu Iwamine - Hatoful Boyfriend

Margaret Clemmons - Ephemeral Rift (an ASMR youtube channel lol)

[biotic-raptorian-angel]

Paint- Moicy

Moira had spent more time in Angela’s backyard than she ever cared to admit. It started on a bright spring morning, during one of their rare days off. Angela had invited her over for tea—an unspoken attempt at getting Moira to leave the lab and experience a slice of normal life. Moira was certain she wouldn’t enjoy it, but the instant she stepped into Angela’s garden, she’d felt an unexpected calm wash over her.

The garden was a wild symphony of color and shape. Blossoms in shades of crimson, gold, and lilac danced in the gentle breeze. Delicate vines climbed a trellis in the corner, and neat rows of herbs lined the outer edges of the bed. Bees buzzed among the petals, collecting pollen, and the soft hum was more soothing than Moira ever would have predicted. Her critical mind, used to scanning data charts or adjusting gene splicers, was momentarily stilled by living beauty.

Angela’s eyes glimmered with pride as she showed Moira around that first day. She spoke of each plant like a dear friend—how she had nursed the hydrangeas back from a harsh winter, or how the rose bushes had thrived thanks to a new organic fertilizer. The sincerity in Angela’s voice was as captivating to Moira as the blossoms themselves.

“It’s all a bit messy,” Angela had mused aloud, tucking a stray strand of blonde hair behind her ear, “but I like to let nature take its course.”

“It’s… lovely,” Moira had murmured, the word slipping out before she could measure it.

From that moment on, a quiet fascination took root in Moira’s heart. She found herself returning to Angela’s place whenever she could, camera in hand—an old but reliable piece of technology that she’d long since shelved. Angela didn’t mind. She was simply pleased that Moira seemed curious about something beyond her usual realm of biotic research.

At first, the photographs Moira captured were purely reference material. She wanted to study the way light fell through leaves, the subtle differences in petal shape. But each time she clicked the shutter, a calm focus settled over her—a gentle hush that reminded her there was more to life than scientific breakthroughs. She began to appreciate the ephemeral: how a bud opened in the morning sunlight, or how the late afternoon rays made the garden glow, painting the petals with gold.

Over time, Moira’s casual note-taking turned into a deeper pursuit. She visited an art supply store one late afternoon, slipping inside with the hood of her jacket drawn up, feeling out of place among paint tubes and canvas boards. Carefully, she selected what she needed: brushes, oil paints in hues that reminded her of Angela’s flowers, and a stack of small canvases. She didn’t tell Angela about it, uncertain whether this new endeavor would yield results worth sharing.

For months, Moira practiced in solitude. Her lab became more than a place for scientific testing; half of the sprawling tables were soon overtaken by canvases in various stages of completion. The sterile scent of antiseptics mingled with the tang of paint thinner. It was an odd fusion of worlds, one that felt surprisingly right in its own messy way.

She struggled at first. Her logical mind wanted every line and curve to be exact. But painting, she learned, was as much about feeling as technique. She discovered how a single brushstroke could convey warmth, or how a careful blend of colors could recreate the velvet softness of a rose’s petals. Little by little, her paintings began to capture the very essence that drew her to Angela’s garden in the first place: life.

Late evenings often found her hunched over a canvas, losing track of time as she layered shades of lavender and periwinkle to mimic delicate blossoms. Sometimes, she became so absorbed that she forgot to eat—only to have Angela poke her with messages to remind her that mealtime had passed hours ago.

“Just a minute more,” Moira would mumble, eyes fixed on her painting. Each time Moira whisked herself away to solitude, Angela offered a curious smile, but never pried, respecting Moira’s secret project.

Finally, a warm breeze blew in from the west one evening, signaling the approach of summer. Moira decided she was ready. The paintings—five in total—were complete. Each one captured a corner of Angela’s garden: the rose trellis at sunrise, the bed of hydrangeas in cool morning shade, the bright swirl of zinnias at midday, the herb rows catching twilight’s last rays, and a silhouette of Angela herself, kneeling among the blossoms, lit by the golden glow of dusk.

With meticulous care, Moira arranged them in a simple wooden box, adding a short note on top. The next morning, she arrived at Angela’s doorstep right after dawn, the wooden box cradled in her arms.

“Moira?” Angela answered, blinking away sleep. “Is everything alright?”

Moira nodded, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear. She felt uncharacteristically nervous, her usual composure frayed by anticipation. “I wanted to give you something,” she murmured. “For all those afternoons you let me roam your garden… and for the peace it brought me.”

She handed the box to Angela, who lifted the lid, eyes widening at the sight of the carefully wrapped canvases. One by one, Angela revealed them: vibrant snapshots of her own garden—transformed through Moira’s patient brushstrokes into swirling hues and soft textures. Angela’s breath hitched when she saw the painting of her own silhouette, quietly tending the flowers.

“Moira…” she whispered, a hand over her heart. “They’re stunning.”

Moira managed a shy smile, a far cry from her usual stern expression. “I’m still learning,” she said, voice tight with vulnerability. “But I wanted to thank you. Your garden… it reminded me that there’s more beauty in the world than what we examine under microscopes.”

Angela gently set the paintings aside, then pulled Moira into a tender, grateful hug. The warmth of their closeness mirrored the glow of the summer sun just starting to rise. “They’re perfect,” she said into Moira’s shoulder. “Thank you. This… this means more to me than you could ever know.”

Moira released a slow exhale, the tension in her chest finally easing. “I’m glad,” she murmured.

They stepped into the garden together, the morning light making the real flowers shine. Angela set the paintings on a small wooden table near the patio, a protective hand still hovering over them.

As they strolled among the blooms, Angela’s hand found Moira’s, and they wandered in a companionable silence, side by side. Moira, in an unspoken promise to herself, vowed to keep painting. Perhaps her next piece would capture the way the morning dew clung to a rosebud—or how Angela’s laughter rang out in the early sun.

Whatever came next, she knew this: Angela’s garden had sparked a quiet passion in her, a reverence for creation that even her scientific mind couldn’t fully explain. It was more than an appreciation of nature; it was an unspoken reflection of how Angela had come to blossom in Moira’s life, reminding her that beauty—like a flower—could flourish, even in the most unexpected places.

A-Z Prompts

I've decided to try and keep up with daily writing by doing 1 prompt a day for each ship via the A-Z prompts I came up with below. If you like it or have suggestions for other prompts, please let me know!

Adoration

Bravery

Chivalry

Devotion

Ethereal

Friendship

Glamour

Healthy

Idol

Jukebox

Kingdom

Letter

Moss

Nude

Observation

Paint

Quiet

Rejection

Sea

Turntable

Unanimous

Vermin

Wings

Xenomorphic

Yitten

Zephyr

[paganimagevault]

Zeus & Typhon - Hydria, by The Inscription Painter 540-530 BCE

"When the Gods saw him rushing toward the sky, they headed for Aigyptos (Egypt) to escape him, and as he pursued them they changed themselves into animal shapes. But Zeus from a distance hurled thunderbolts at Typhon, and when he had drawn closer Zeus tried to strike him down with a sickle made of adamant. Typhon took flight, but Zeus stayed on his heels right up to Mount Kasion (Casium), which lies in Syria. Seeing that he was badly wounded, Zeus fell on him with his hands. But Typhon entwined the God and held him fast in his coils, and grabbing the sickle he cut out the sinews from Zeus' hands and feet. Then, placing Zeus up on his shoulders, he carried him across the sea to Kilikia (Cilicia), where he deposited him in the Korykion (Corycian) cave. He also hid away the sinews there in the skin of a bear, and posted as guard over them the Drakaina (Dracaena) Delphyne, a girl who was half animal. But Hermes and Aigipan (Aegipan) stole back the sinews and succeeded in replanting them in Zeus without being seen. So Zeus, again possessed of his strength, suddenly appeared from the sky in a chariot drawn by winged horses, and with thunderbolts chased Typhon to the mountain called Nysa. There the Moirai (Moirae, Fates) deceived the pursued creature, for he ate some of the ephemeral fruit on Nysa [i.e. the intoxicating grape of Dionysos] after they had persuaded him that he would gain strength from it. Again pursued, he made his way to Thrake (Thrace), where while fighting round Haimos (Haemus) he threw whole mountains at Zeus. But when these were pushed back upon him by the thunderbolt, a great quantity of his blood streamed out on the mountain, which allegedly is why the mountain is called Haimos. Then, as Typhon started to flee again through the Sikelian (Sicilian) Sea, Zeus brought down Sikelia's Mount Aitna (Etna) on him , a great mountain which they say still erupts fire from the thunderbolts thrown by Zeus." -Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1. 39 - 44 (trans. Aldrich) (Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.)

https://paganimagevault.blogspot.com/2019/11/zeus-typhon-hydria-540-530-bce.html

[mossyvil]

ꕥ Life’s Joy ꕥ

this was definitely not a series i planned for 500 followers and then impulsively decided to do now idk what you’re talking ab-

these will be posted every dayyyy i hope you like them bc i put a lot of work into them lmao

Wafture- waving

ꕥ Sugawara Kōshi, angel and demon au

Ephemeral- short-lived

ꕥ Midoriya Izuku, bakery au

Tristful- deeply yet romantically melancholy

ꕥ Kageyama Tobio, arranged marriage au

Viridity- naive innocence 

ꕥ Kirishima Eijiro, pro hero au

Redamancy- the act of loving someone who loves you

ꕥ Tendō Satori, college au

Tacenda- things better left unsaid

ꕥ Takami Keigo, really no au?? idk what i would call

it

Mizpah- the deep emotional bond between people

ꕥ Sawamura Daichi, spy au

Saudade- a nostalgic longing to be near again to something or someone that is distant

ꕥ  Mirio Togata, road trip au

Hygge- the ritual of enjoying life’s simple pleasures

ꕥ Kuroo Tetsurō, mermaid au (my favorite shh)

Kef- drowsy contentment

ꕥ Uraraka Ochako, witch au

Alate- having wings, being lifted up in flight

ꕥ Oikawa Tōru, mafia au

La douleur exquise- the pain of wanting the affection of someone unattainable

ꕥ Yaoyorozu Momo, android au 

Filipendulous- hanging on by a thread

ꕥ Kozume Kenma, streamer au ;)

Orphic- mysterious and entrancing

ꕥ Ashido Mina, pro hero au

Moira- a persons fate or destiny

ꕥ Bokuto Kōtarō, fashion designer au

Apricity- the warmth of the sun in winter

ꕥ Bakugou Katsuki, dragon bakugou au bc im a simp

[mydearthisbe]

Ayesha Liveblogs One Tree Hill S1

No matter how many times I watch the pilot I consistently forget that Nathan and Peyton used to date

“Don’t bother showering tonight” is that really your come-on Peyton I will never understand sports

Lmao @ Nathan and Peyton “OTP: Distracted Driving”

“You’re despicable, you know that,” said Dan, a literal future murderer

I’m always so thrown when ppl in shows start drinking at their workplaces like what kind of bold behaviour Whitey you work at a high school

“What are you wasting your time at now?” Nathan ur a terrible boyfriend

“I say that the people who pray here are wasting their time. God doesn’t watch sports” I know Lucas is pretentious as all hell but this is my favourite line in any sports show ever

Karen is such a good mom ahhhhh like she just wants Lucas to be happy and she knows he’ll put other people’s happiness first 

Dan calling Lucas ‘this kid’ like he’s not his wholeass son what a dick

It’s not lost on me that Keith telling Lucas stories about his father means that it’s Lucas’s grandfather Keith Scott is truly the only dad in this show who matters

“So why’d you just tell me all that” because he loves to monologue

“If I could [change the fact that Lucas exists], I would” Dan answer your door I need to send you a very rude telegram

I am in love with Moira Kelly and also I want Karen to punch Dan

The music of this show is really.... transcendent 

Djhfkjhfkjh since Lucas is implied to have like, five friends.... is that crowd of supporters hugging him just a bunch of people who think Nathan is a dick

I admire Lucas for deciding he was gonna put up with all this bullshit to do something he loves

Omg I forgot that Brooke wasn’t in the pilot she’s such a major character

“Nice hands” “Nice legs” Emo flirting in a jock setting lmaooooo

My inner 2007 angst awakens every time I hear Gavin Degraw. He is THAT bitch

“You ever think I might want to talk” Peyton and Nathan’s relationship is truly nothing but blind horniness they have nothing in common at all in this juncture of their lives

“I didn’t invite you to come in, I just asked if you wanted to” Peyton is so weird but I kind of want to marry her. Is this what Lucas feels like

Lucas’s economic status is really part of Brooke’s romance criteria at the age of 17 they teach the bourgeois early huh

Oh my god I cannot BELIEVE Jake recommended Atlas Shrugged to Lucas jhjhgjhgjh the undertones of this basketball show really are about capitalism

HAHAHAH Nathan’s word being “revenge” calm down Sasuke Uchiha

I haven’t said so yet but Haley is so very endearing she’s great

God. Lucas turning around to reveal to Dan that he’s cast away his name. HE is that bitch

Ghjkghjkgh Keith hissing at the rude Boosters mum. Love of my life

“Maybe he’s gay” “No, I think he’s just nice” who writes this dumbass show

“Do you even care that it’s slipping away” maybe it’s because I went away for university but the idea that someone is this deeply invested in their kid’s high school basketball career is. A lot

Nathan simultaneously trying to bother Lucas and pass English while about to fall in love: I can multitask!!!

Update: He also managed to trash Lucas’s favourite basketball court somehow in all his business. He really can multitask!

“If it makes you feel any better I called some woman a bitch the other day” [giggle] I love Karen and Lucas’s relationship

Haley is such a good friend to Lucas and hoo boy Nathan when do you grow a conscience

“You’re both so broody. You could brood together” that’s it, that’s Peyton and Lucas

These emails and VCR references are really dating this show

Nathan is a straight up sociopath in these early eps my god he humiliates Lucas publicly twice at this party and just pops over to Haley like “Hey cutie :) Idk why Lucas is so mad :) I’m rlly nice :)”

Nathan really taking his girlfriend’s car to hit on another woman how much of a crapbag

As soon as I said this he (drunk?) drove her car into a streetlight my god 

Deb and Karen having a nice lesbian coffee shop AU would be a pleasant turn in this show instead of literally anything that happens in either of their narratives

“Why would you even go there” “Because I loved getting dumped on” That is... accurate

“I’ll call you when you’re not so PMS” said Nathan, when his (ex) girlfriend rightfully lambasted him for crashing her car

I take it back Peyton and Nathan do have one thing in common it’s their disregard for traffic laws

HELL YEAH Keith IS your dad Lucas <3 <3 <3 <3 

Whitey talks a lot of shit for someone who advised Dan to abandon Luke 

I had been wondering why Lucas had the Scott name when Dan is such an ephemeral piece of shit and I guess there’s my answer thanks Karen 

Does Haley ever find out about the shit Nathan pulled at the party I feel like these are relevant details in her budding affection

“Dad send you to spy on me? Poison my drink?” This is the second time in two episodes Deb has been accused of being Dan’s spy I wonder if she still considers that a red flag 17 years into marriage

“One of the boys doesn’t have a father” BUUUUURN Dan

Rhkgjhgjkh the last moment of this scene:

Keith: There is enough room in my heart for each of my brother’s mistreated sons even the rude ones Nathan

Nathan, experiencing a split second of paternal love: :O

Ghkjghkjgh the Scott bonding in hatred of Dan continues with Lucas asking Nathan if he too would like to spite Dan:

Lucas: You will be receiving your “I Hate Dan Scott” Club invitation in the mail shortly Nathan, mom, Uncle Keith and I hold meetings biweekly

Nathan: Biweekly as in every two weeks or twice a week 

Lucas: Both! See you on Tuesday

“Does this mean we’re dating” yes it does the mixed CD is emo code

“Good luck with your game” “yeah, you too, Ma” hehehehe

Someone revoke this college medic’s license hoo boy

Ghjghkgh Lucas keeping his money tucked into his boxers what a doofus

I can’t believe Nathan and Lucas’s second big bonding moment is threatening dudes while in their boxers after beating on each other what a brotherly bond lmao

Okay but highkey if ur a lady and ur friends are gonna leave you alone and vulnerable at night get new friends

“I can live without my shirt” Nathan is thirteen shades of petty lmaooo

Dan is such a bad (abusive) father that Nathan literally would prefer to have none at all my god 

“Can I tell you a secret? I pretended too” just get marrrried 

“Thanks for cutting Lucas some slack” talk about accepting the bare minimum Haley kjhgkjhgkj

Brooke is really unbearable in this episode is it any wonder her, Lucas and Peyton’s relationship is as dysfunctional as it will soon become 

Hoo boy the one (1) time Nathan doesn’t do something douchey and he gets blamed for it 

LMAO @ Lucas approaching the one girl at this school with commitment issues with a bold “I wanna be here [in your heart]” hahaha

“Yeah, they can have their world,” said Lucas to Haley, about the two people they would literally go on to marry

The fact that Peyton doesn’t turn off her webcam and just covers it also really speaks to the era

This Gabe dude is really ready to assault a minor like he’s not just a r*pist he’s also a predator double KO 

It is not lost upon me that it looks like one pill has been popped out before so he is also a serial r*pist big fucking yikes

“What, you got a cellphone too, dawg? Things sure have changed” also quite dated hahahaha

They really went out of the way to redeem Brooke not only did she give Nathan and Haley a very very cute date she also saved her friend from being assaulted

“So you don’t have any brothers, do you” jhgkhgkhg Brooke please 

“Why are you only nice to me when we’re alone” a very legitimate question Haley

Nathan’s dating methodology: There’s nothing in life that can’t be solved with make-outs

Deb is really so nice but every time I look at her I think of her drinking a lot and sleeping with Nathan’s friends lmao

Haha that North Carolina sign explains the mild Southern accents 

Aieeeeeeeeeee you kiss that man and follow your dreams Karen

Even if Nathan is still A Lot this season him and Haley are so cute:

Haley, smiling: We can’t do this here right now

Nathan, giggling: We just did

Lucas says more to Dan by constantly leaving with a look of disgust than any words ever could

“My heart’s racing too. That’s what happens when I’m around you. (And on drugs. I’m very unstable Haley.)”

Lucas and Nathan’s very intentional “pressure from your dad” and “you don’t know anything about my dad” bc Lucas will not acknowledge that Senor Crabag Sr. is anything resembling a father bless 

Drunk tattoos with crush’s bff Lucas has decided to make all mistakes at once and I respect it

Poor Keith he is trying his best but Lucas just chose this week to hit his rebellious phase

YESSSSSSSSSS DEB KICK THAT ASS OUT OF THIS HOUSE

“Do you really think that Nathan would choose you over me” uh???? Are you not aware you are... the worst father in town

Brooke you were fully aware of Peyton and Lucas’s vibing and actively pursued him/interfered so you have no moral high ground to be like “:) I’d never choose a boy over my friendship”

Skillz and Mouth accurate “hoo boy don’t look” when ur friends start PDA

“Mom doesn’t want things to get back to normal, she wants them to be better” hell yeah Nathan gaining emotional intelligence

Lucas quit projecting your childhood issues onto Jake he too is a child let him decide how he wants to live Jenny’s 6 months old not like she’s gonna remember lmao

Damn Nathan LET LOOSE on Dan fuck that dude

JGFHJGFJGFJH I forgot Gavin Degraw had a cameo hahahahah

Did Luke.......... break into Jake’s house. His parents work at night how was he able to get into Jake’s coffee table

“You do not have to feel like a third wheel” The pure dumbass energy.... Peyton is literally CRYING do u really think her issue is “third wheel” you KNOW she and Lucas had a thing Brooke???????

Me watching this team form a brotherly bond over their mutual love of basketball: Mayhaps sports are... good 

Hahahaha Lucas threatening Peyton’s dad with a rake is weirdly endearing

“Hey you.” “Hey you, and you,” is a good summary of this seasons Brooke/Lucas/Peyton dynamic lmao

Why is Dan’s head... shaped that away. It is like a bar of soap

“I don’t mind you playing ‘Daddy’ to one of my offspring, but leave the good one alone, will you?” Dan. Meet me in the Denny’s parking lot at midnight and we’ll have words

“The whole Nice Guy thing is wearing kind of thin” foreshadowing for all the dick moves Lucas is about to pull lmao

“He’s got you skipping school now?” “Lucas talk to me when you get your tattoo removed”

Lucas:

Lucas is such a meddler lmao how many family dynamics is he going to alter

I don’t trust Dan being nice for a minute all he wants is the upper hand with Deb in the inevitable custody battle over Nathan

Props to Nathan and Haley for somehow, some way, being the only normal couple on this show despite their incredibly dubious origins lmao

Scott family dinners are bananas I count four (4) major revelations and they haven’t even revealed that Deb and Dan are separated

Lucas and Peyton are really hitting every fictional couple trope in this ep - road trip, bed sharing, hurt/comfort, truly the YA bases 

“The truth? In this house?” Props to Deb for drama lmao 

Brooke saying ‘I love you’ you’ve been dating for like two episodes but okay kjhgkjhg

I can’t say I understand Nathan’s logic lmao but I guess they have to bring him back to basketball sometime

Wow Lucas zero hesitation on that second kiss lmao u r a mess

This scene is the definition of “that escalated quickly” they go straight to undressing 

HAHAHAH NATHAN BEING SHIRTLESS IN HALEY’S DREAM FOR NO REASON 10/10 TEENAGE ACCURACY

“How do you explain being with me and not her?” “Because with you, I saw a future” that’s Dan code for ‘I’m a gold digger’

You’re literally macking on Peyton in the middle of the hallway while you’re dating the other most popular girl in school Lucas how are you this ridiculous and bold BREAK UP WITH BROOKE U DUMBASS

“So what are we going to do” I’ll tell you what you should do BREAK UP WITH BROOKE

Keith it is still daylight out stop bringing alcohol into this high school you have a drinking problem

“Can’t control love, you know?” THAT’S NOT ADVICE LUCAS BREAK UP WITH BROOKE

I really can’t handle watching Keith and Lucas self-destruct this episode how is Nathan the only Scott in a happy, healthy relationship

“You know that this is... wrong, so that makes it feel... deeper?” Lucas asks, as if he were not entirely in the wrong by carrying on with Peyton (who is not in a relationship) while dating Brooke

“I don’t want to hurt Brooke,” he said, about to start his third secret cheating makeout session of the week

“But then again our spouses aren’t here are they” [Deb opens door] COMEDIC TIMING

Gjjhgkjhg Nathan revealing his messed up intentions with Haley entirely by accident Scotts have no self-control whatsoever it’s their kekkei genkai

Lucas evading responsibility for his romance crimes by literally dying

Hahahah Karen’s confused vibes at Brooke are kind of the highlight of this episode 

How funny would it be if Lucas woke up to Karen scolding him about his tattoo

Hahahaha for such dysfunctional partners Nathan and Peyton are excellent exes 

AHHHHHHHHH LUCAS WAKING UP TO HIS BROTHER... MY HEART

Keith rlly was gonna propose after zero (0) days of dating I’m telling you no self-control is truly the Scott clan kekkei genkai

Ahhhh bless Karen’s compassion 

Dan is literally blackmailing his son into staying in his custody he is in Deb’s words an “abusive son of a bitch”

Fucking finally Lucas ends this sham of a relationship with Brooke

It’s wild that Nathan is the only Scott with a happy and healthy romantic relationship 

Nathan divorcing his parents is a real power move 

I’m glad Haley announced Sheryl Crow’s name because let me tell you I would not have recognized her on sight

“How’s my daughter” Lucas really chooses exclusively to hook up with people who have devastating emotional consequences for his immediate friend group huh

“Funny I didn’t know you were forgiving at all” Lmao Peyton is that really the position you’re going to take after cheating with your best friend’s boyfriend 

All the deodorant product placement lmao ‘this ep sponsored by Secret’ 

All things considered I think Lucas is handling Haley’s constant ditching p well 

Bfhkghghjg Keith buying a new shirt just to go to dinner with Karen stop

OH MY GOD THE EP REALLY WAS SPONSORED BY SECRET IT’S GOT SECRET ON THE CHEER COMPETITION BANNERS AND A LITTLE GIFT BAG RANDOMLY IN ALL THE CHEERLEADER CONFRONTATIONS JKGHKJGH

The comedic timing of “hungover idiots” panning to Karen and Larry kills me

“She used to be this totally original.... Haley” what does this mean????

I don’t think Nathan and Haley are being entirely fair to Lucas bc he was only a dick once she ditched him twice (or thrice?) in one weekend 

This boy toy auction as a concept is so inappropriate on so many levels

“I get Nathan for free” Fhjkfhkfjh Haley pls

God I was so very concerned about whether or not Nathan and Peyton were gonna kiss 

“You’re not a mess, you’re just in love” [Ole Del Paso Girl voice] Why not both?

“She’s nine months old, just in case you forgot” to be fair I assume Nikki gave birth so she would remember that you can’t hold that one over her 

It must take Lucas some mental disconnect to assume Peyton and Nathan are cheating when he also kissed Haley

Fhjfhkjfhjfh Keith fulfilling my fave trope of ‘we are not even dating but how about we get married bc we’ve been repressed in love for years’

“You know I asked your mom to get an abortion,” said Dan, to his literal son

I really can’t figure where this pregnancy storyline is going bc I know Brooke doesn’t have a baby

Nathan and Haley really need to consider oral or smth there’s a middle ground between making out and having vaginal sex

“It all hurts just the same” Brooke really out here trying to say that cheating is in any way equivalent to faking a pregnancy (even if only for a week)

Peyton and Brooke are way more invested in each other than Lucas 

“I got you a high five” Hahahhaa I love Peyton 

Gary like: Wow Nathan it’s humanizing that your father is an abusive dick

“Maybe this is the one that changed him” Lucas joining Dan as the second and only non-Dan member of the Dan Scott Apologism Club

It’s wholly unreasonable that Haley expects her boyfriend not to look at p*rn lmao

I love all this Lucas and Nathan bonding but I hate that it comes at the cost of Dan being near them at all u stay away from those boys u manipulative fuck

Ah the foreshadowing about Peyton changing in front of her webcam finally pays off

I’m no legal expert but I don’t think that taking your daughter out of state will help you in the custody battle in the long term Jake - nor will dropping out of high school

“What do I get out of it” r u 4 real Keith u dont get payment for loving your family

“I’m leaving because I can’t look at you anymore without my heart breaking” I like you Keith but that sounds like a You Problem

This is a fun way to shoot this episode One Tree Hill has such good directing tbh

Nathan discarding the Scott name from his jersey just like Lucas did in ep 2: 

Haley: Having sex will solve all of my problems Nathan what are you talking about

I remembered that at some point Deb and Keith have sex and I’m glad they fuck things up early bc I could not deal if it was later on

“I’ll miss you too, little brother” 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

KJKGHKJHGJHKJHGKJHKJ I CAN’T BELIEVE NATHAN AND HALEY GOT MARRIED JUST TO HAVE SEX THIS IS WHY THEY DON’T LET PEOPLE YOUNGER THAN 18 VOTE

[segadores-y-soldados]

Reunion: Shadows at High Noon

McCree: This is all your fault, Reyes!

Reyes: I’m never gonna hear the end of this, am I?

McCree: I’m sure I’ll get over it…eventually.

Reyes: Good.  Because I’m gonna need you, Jesse.

---

Ashe: …Jesse McCree.  Been awhile.  You promised you’d write.

McCree: Well, Ashe…I’ve been kinda busy.

---------

Sombra has always been a core component of the “Reaper is a double-agent looking to enact retribution on Talon” theory (or “Masquerade theory”, if you want a snazzier name) - in fact, I’d argue that Sombra is the core component of the theory.  While most of my analytical content in the last year has really focused a lot on Gabriel Reyes/Reaper, Moira, Jack Morrison/Soldier: 76, Akande Ogundimu/Doomfist, Talon, and their respective connections to Retribution, Sombra has never stopped being relevant to the discussion.  If anything, she is the network, the axis, the center that keeps it all together.

And that is a pretty literal description of her and her role.

In most of these posts, I’ve avoided discussing McCree directly because, well, there simply wasn’t as much evidence about his connections to the “masquerade” that Reaper, Sombra, and likely Soldier: 76 and Ana are playing with Talon.  Prior to “Reunion,” this is the evidence we had that McCree was at least on Sombra’s radar:

A picture of him along with a picture of Jack Morrison in Sombra’s room.

An image of him connected to Overwatch and Ana (who is unmasked, by the way), and the word “Escanear” (Scan).

And a comic panel of him maybe meeting Sombra at the Calaveras bar in the Castillo area of Dorado.

Granted, this isn’t poor evidence by a long shot.  The evidence around Soldier: 76 and Ana is much more ephemeral, but with logic, there’s enough ways to sleuth through the contradictions and outright lies by Reaper and Soldier: 76 to deduce that there is something going on (again, this says nothing about how much Soldier: 76 and Ana approve of Reaper and Sombra’s plan, just that they’re aware of it in the present (Recall-Masquerade-era)).

The last piece of evidence that seemed to hint at McCree’s role in the Recall-Masaquerade-Searching-era was a key interaction from Retribution:

McCree: This is all your fault, Reyes!

Reyes: I’m never gonna hear the end of this, am I?

McCree: I’m sure I’ll get over it…eventually.

Reyes: Good.  Because I’m gonna need you, Jesse.

---

The final line by Reyes certainly implies he had plans for McCree after the Venice Incident - that he would need McCree to do some sort of work for Blackwatch...and for Overwatch as a whole.  However, it was hard to say exactly what Reyes had in mind.  For example, it could be argued that Reyes anticipated more openly aggressive moves by Talon or other extremist groups, such as Null Sector:

And we know that he specifically used McCree as the agent to sneak into the hot zone of London and get ground-level views and images of the situation.

But with “Reunion”, we now have much more overt evidence that McCree is “up to something” -

That “something” being that he’s actually doing work either for Reaper (through Sombra) or following Sombra’s own objectives.

(An extremely long post under the cut.)

(TL;DR: Jesse McCree appears to still be operating under a set of mission orders from either Gabriel Reyes himself, or he is cooperating with Sombra who is effectively coordinating former members of Blackwatch (such as McCree and Reaper) and Overwatch (Soldier: 76 and Ana Amari/“The Shrike”) either on her own terms or on her own “objectives” that she was given by Reyes.  While no specific parts are set in stone, the story of Overwatch is implying that Sombra is running a massive network of coordinated roles between characters like Reaper, Soldier: 76, Ana Amari, possibly Zarya and/or Symmetra, and Jesse McCree himself.)

Again, this says very little about how much McCree approves of the plan, just that he’s in on it.  Like all of Sombra’s relationships - canon or implied - there’s a level of ambiguity about how much each character fully trusts her, how much they want to work with her, and if there’s some sort of compromising, deal-making, or blackmailing going on.

Personally, I believe that all the characters Sombra is connected to - canon or implied - are willingly working with her.  Michael Chu’s exact statement on how Reaper “views” Sombra is that he knows she is “effective” at what she does, which is a part that has three main roles.

The first role Sombra has is:

Reaper: Try to stick to the plan, Sombra.

Sombra: Look, someone has to be ready when all your careful planning doesn't pan out.

Be his backup.

You know.

In case he gets himself trapped again.

The second:

Play “the fool” to Reaper’s “loyal commander” act.

By this, I mean that Sombra provides the “distraction.”  Like any good “smoke and mirrors” act, Sombra is the distraction for Talon members to focus on while they start to increasingly rely on Reaper and continue to pull him into the fold and chain of command.  By pretending to undermine each other, Sombra and Reaper do a tactical sleight of hand on the other Talon members to effectively boost Reaper through the ranks while still passing information to Sombra herself.  Both Sombra and Reaper achieve what they want while still being able to cover each other’s back should something go wrong (you know, like Point 1 above).

Sombra does this role very -

Very -

Very -

Sombra: Isn't it a little embarrassing to get beaten up by a monkey? Doomfist: Have you ever been hit by a giant, genetically engineered gorilla? I could arrange it for you...

---

Moira: Started any wars lately? Sombra: I'd have to check my schedule.

---

Sombra: Ah, my favorite spider. I wonder what sort of web you're spinning now. Widowmaker: It'd be a shame if something happened to you on our next mission. A real pity.

---

Very well.

Note how in the second image shown that Sombra says, “You’re making me think you don’t trust him,” and Doomfist immediately replies with, “I don’t trust anyone.”  It’s pretty clear the implication of his words are directed towards Sombra herself (though we miss whatever her reaction is), but this is followed up with the in-game interactions between Sombra, Doomfist, Moira, and Widowmaker, which makes it much more blatant that no one in Talon trusts her, but that she’s too “effective” to not work with.

(Additionally, note how different her interactions with Reaper are:)

Sombra: What are we doing today, Gabe? You don't mind if I call you 'Gabe,' do you? Reaper: Stick to the mission. --- Reaper: Try to stick to the plan, Sombra. Sombra: Look, someone has to be ready when all your careful planning doesn't pan out. --- (On Oasis) Sombra: So what are we doing here, boss? Reaper: I need to pay a visit to a friend. (Moira)

---

Reaper “tolerates” Sombra much better than the other Talon characters, which again, plays back into their dual-roles of the masquerade they’re playing.

The third role that has been hinted at but not shown outright in canon story events or materials is:

Sombra’s “network.”

Again, while this isn’t shown or stated outright, there are too many details in-game and in the comics that show Sombra having connections with at least three other characters: Soldier: 76 (Jack Morrison), The Shrike (Ana Amari), and Jesse McCree.  This is partially due to Sombra being the “ultimate plot convenient” role and also due to actual canon which demonstrates she’s been in contact with certain people.

Lynx-17 knows that Sombra has an established connection with Soldier: 76, though they do not seem to be fully aware of Sombra’s connections to Ana (probably because Lynx doesn’t realize Ana is still alive and is hiding as The Shrike).

In-game, both Sombra’s room and the Necropolis are littered (quite literally) with evidence that implies Sombra is managing a network of rogue Overwatch and Blackwatch agents (again, to stress, this does not imply how much anyone likes working with her).

She knows who Jesse McCree and Jack Morrison are.

She knows Ana’s masked persona of “The Shrike.”

She appears to either be establishing or facilitating connections between McCree and Ana.

And on Necropolis:

She’s giving Soldier: 76 and Ana updates on Reaper’s movements.

Note that since the Necropolis map was made before “Masquerade” was released, Reaper’s (and Sombra’s) visit to Venice isn’t included in the map.  However, the other locations all have actual events or connections to them:

Los Angeles, California: “Reflections”

Numbani, Nigeria: either the “Museum Heist” or retrieving Doomfist from prison

Watchpoint: Gibraltar: “Recall”

Oasis, Iraq: visiting Moira’s lab

Volskaya Industries in St. Petersburg, Russia: “Infiltration”

Again, the game makes it pretty clear that Sombra is the one doing this.

All the shots are from “Infiltration”.

This exact shot is from Sombra’s perspective.

(She might even be sending Jack and Ana live footage from the Volskaya mission.)

Like I said above, it’s easier to logic out that Sombra is working with Soldier: 76 and Ana than it is that she’s working with McCree directly.  So much of Overwatch’s in-game details of environmental storytelling are tantalizing and imply a significant amount, but rarely do they show anything super concrete.

For example:

Does Sombra know who McCree is?

Yes, she does.  We can say this with certainty.

Is she working with McCree?

Prior to “Reunion” the answer to this would have been “I can’t really say one way or the other.”

But then “Reunion” came out.

And the evidence got much more overt.

---------

On the fringes

Like the Recall-Masquerade-era Soldier: 76 plotline, the implications of Sombra’s work and information is easier to suss out when we work through “Reunion” logically.

In Soldier: 76′s plotline, there are numerous gaps where the easy answer to the questions are “Well, Sombra.”

How did he know Ana was “The Shrike”?

Well, Sombra.

How did he possibly coordinate “the trap” with Reaper to lure Ana out of hiding (to come protect him)?

Well, Sombra.

Why would he and Sombra work together?

Well, Reaper (okay, that one’s a little different, but still.)

Obviously, this is a simplistic summary of things: there’s a lot more going on with the Reaper, Soldier: 76, Sombra, and connected characters plotline (such as Moira, Doomfist, Talon, Retribution, etc), but basically...

We have been shown Sombra knows who Soldier: 76 is, that she knows what his motivations and interests are on a personal level (Reaper), that she knows how to “bargain” with him somehow (re: the Lynx-17 panel), and that she appears to have facilitated the “trap” between him, Reaper, and “The Shrike”.

This applies to McCree almost to a tee - 

Down to literally helping him “set up” a situation where he can recruit an ally.

As I wrote in “Reunion: Quick Bites” and “Echo Notes”, even though the short only has two main chunks of dialogue, there’s so much going on in the details that it’s actually a pretty sizable burst of expanding McCree’s plot and his character.

Taking it step by step:

1. Echo: the crate and key.

Again, just repeating what I said in “Echo Notes”, Echo’s crate is currently being transported by some sort of military train (which is also hauling more munitions and weapons).  It appears to be moving roughly east to west (we’ll get into that again later).

A train this fully-armed would never have a public timetable or schedule - if it’s even on one.  It may very well be an infrequent, single-trip transport.  That means finding this information requires digging deep.

Or, you know.

Hacking some sort of confidential military system.

Don’t get me wrong - McCree is smart, and I have no doubt he set up the whole situation in “Reunion.”

But he’s consider a vigilante and is wanted by the United States law enforcement.

Gonna be a little hard for him to just walk into a military base and do the intel-digging by himself.

Good thing that’s something someone else is very, very effective at doing.

Like Soldier: 76′s story, Sombra fills in the first big “plot hole” in “Reunion”.  In fact, it’s almost unfair to even call it a plot hole, because it really isn’t one: Overwatch has been slowly building the implication and connections in Sombra’s network for two years now (since her release).

The team doesn’t want to tell you that she’s helping McCree: for starters, that’s the worst way to do a story (“show, not tell”).

Secondly, the lead writer himself wants you to figure this stuff out:

“One of the things we really like doing with Overwatch is playing with perspective.  We utilize perspective when we analyze or when we tell stories about characters, what they’re thinking, what their goals are.  And we have a lot of unreliable narrators.  We want people to pay careful attention to what characters think about in particular situations.  We want them to use their judgment and their knowledge of a character’s thoughts to come up with their own ideas about the universe.” (Bold for emphasis)

- Michael Chu, GDC Spring 2017

The stuff about McCree has been in Sombra’s room in Castillo since the map was released in May 2017.

The animated shorts take several months - likely up to a year - to make in advance, but even then, this means the Castillo map and all its easter eggs and lore details existed well before Story and Franchise started storyboarding “Reunion”.  I would argue that “Reunion” was actually specifically written to help build these links between Sombra and McCree, again, with just enough specific “gaps” in the story and just enough tantalizing wording by McCree to “show, not tell” those connections.

If Echo’s crate is being held by a military branch, institution, or a security force contractor like Helix Securities, it’s likely that her key was also being held by that same group, but in a different location.

This is obvious from the fact that McCree already has her key at the beginning of the short.

It has to have been in a different, separate location than Echo herself.

If what McCree implies about Echo is true (“they want me, but really, [Overwatch] needs you”) then Echo is being set up to be a strong character.  Keep in mind that game balancing means she will never be, you know, unkillable - even Reaper dies in-game - but she’s certainly important to the former organization, and likely will be a powerful ally for the small, ragtag Recall team from a lore perspective.

This is a standard “spy thriller”/“secret treasure” trope in media: the “key” to unlock something Really Super Special is in a separate location.  It’s especially common in video games, where a developer can quickly expand a quest by making the key a separate object to locate and retrieve first.

And if Echo is as powerful as McCree implies, then it makes sense that the organization “safeguarding” her physical body would remove the key and put it in a separate, secret location, especially if it’s another military base.

Because who’s going to be crazy enough to try and physically infiltrate a hostile, militarized base all on their own?

(It’s almost like there’s a pattern here.)

And this leads to:

2. “Well, Ashe...I’ve been kinda busy.”

So Sombra figures out the location of both Echo’s crate and her key.  As I said in “Echo Notes”, we don’t exactly know where either of these are, just that the train is moving from east to west.

Given that we know now for sure that Deadlock Gorge is in Arizona, this means - in extremely broad terms - that Echo’s key was closer to Arizona (or even in the state) than her crate at or around the time of “Recall”.

Or at least -

That the key was closer to McCree than the crate was.

Granted, it’s possible McCree already had the key or was given it by someone else, but considering again that a non-Overwatch organization is in command of Echo’s crate, it seems unlikely that the U.N. or organizations like Helix Securities would just let an Overwatch agent hold onto the key after the formal disbandment of the group.

And it seems especially unlikely that they would let a former Blackwatch agent and currently-wanted “outlaw” like McCree to hold onto it.

I think it’s much more logical that Sombra found the information for both Echo’s crate and the key, and then passed this intel onto McCree.

After all -

McCree is actually really, really good at sneaking into places and/or fighting his way back out.

And he specializes in heists.

Specifically heists of military-grade goods.

McCree had already made a name for himself as a member of the notorious Deadlock Gang, which trafficked in illicit weapons and military hardware throughout the American Southwest, when he and his associates were busted in an Overwatch sting operation.

- McCree’s Hero Profile

In fact, the covert ops mission that McCree is actually really, really bad at is:

Moira: McCree...we need to talk about your...Italian accent.

McCree: Well, I watched a bunch of old Spaghetti Westerns.  I thought it was pretty good!  Bone-a serr-a, signora.  Can I-a get chu-a somethin’ ta drink?

Moira: Please, never do that again.

---

Reyes: This mess was all worth it to see McCree try and pass himself off as a waiter!

McCree: I thought I did just fine.

Reyes: ...You got fired from your cover job, Jesse.

McCree: The lady was being rude!  She had it coming.

---

Going undercover.

(We’ll come back to this.)

Basically, I think it’s a lot easier - and actually pretty decently established in McCree’s character and lore - to reason that Sombra got the intel about Echo, handed it off to McCree, and let McCree do what he does best:

Steal stuff.

But then something interesting happens.

Recall occurs.

It’s possible McCree gets the key after Recall, of course.  The timing of him actually getting the itself isn’t super important - just the fact that he already has it at the start of “Reunion” really implies a lot.  But because most of the Recall-related shorts happen within a few days to a few weeks of “Recall” itself, it seems pretty likely that everything is kicking off all at once.

(In fact, I’m of the mindset that Reaper intentionally botched the “steal the Overwatch agent database” mission in order to push Winston into making the decision - the little clip at the end is very vague but seems to imply that Reaper is actually quite pleased with Winston’s decision.  The entire mission is pretty pathetic in its design, and Reaper has several opportunities to kill Winston but never does.  Yes, I am aware that Winston has plot armor, but it’s real weird that Talon’s using tasers when electricity puts Winston in super charged mode.  But this is tangential, tbh.)

Again, while never stated, it is implied that several things begin moving and happening all at once, either directly because of Recall (e.g. Genji’s confrontation with Hanzo in “Dragons,” Mei’s awakening in “Rise and Shine,” Reinhardt’s decision in “Honor and Glory,” and now McCree’s shootout in “Reunion”) or as an overall consequence of Recall.

One of these is:

Soldier: 76 beginning a series of attacks and thefts from “multiple former Overwatch bases”.

So this is something that a few followers pointed out (and yes, something I had been considering for awhile):

Are Soldier: 76′s movements and attacks on former Overwatch bases being coordinated by Sombra, possibly in tandem with McCree’s work in the Southwest?

The answer is, possibly disappointingly, “I can’t say for sure either way.”

But it is interesting.

We already know that Sombra has some sort of connection to Soldier: 76.  When exactly that connection is established is tricky to place: it could come after “Hero”, when she’s potentially able to strike a deal with him to get him to leave Dorado (e.g. “Ana Amari is alive.  Want to know where she is?  Get out of my city and I’ll send you the info.”).  It could also come before that: we know Jack Morrison is pretty restless in the time between the fall of Overwatch and Recall (a span of 6 years), so they could easily have made contact with each other during that period.

There’s also the very tantalizing - if a little bit shoehorned in - possibility that Olivia “Sombra” Colomar is a Blackwatch agent.

There’s a single line in the second page of the Blackwatch Venice Mission dossier which states:

“Agent [REDACTED] also secured a position [REDACTED].”

There is the possibility that this line reads something like “Agent [McCree] also secured a position [as a waiter at Antonio’s restaurant]” or something...

But I don’t think it is.

For starters, McCree’s name is actually declassified in the memo:

In fact, the four main agents in the mission are completely declassified, so while it’s definitely possible that one of their names is in the Redacted spot, it seems unlikely.

It’s also possible that there is a future Blackwatch character we haven’t actually seen or met yet in the story.  I’m not counting that out yet.

But I think a lot of people miss a few critical details about Sombra:

Sombra’s teddy bear Arturito has an Overwatch logo on it.

And though she absolutely was associated with Los Muertos:

Her relationship with the gang is more ambiguous and ambivalent than her Hero Profile implies.

And this is something I’ve said with stuff like Moira, and which is now pretty clearly demonstrated by things like Wrecking Ball and Ashe:

Team 4 deliberately leaves large gaps in character stories so that they can potentially fill those gaps with other connections or characters in the future.

People were shocked when they revealed that Genji was explicitly a Blackwatch agent and not just an Overwatch agent, but prior to that moment, nothing in Genji’s Hero Profile or his known backstory explicitly said that he was not a Blackwatch agent.

Similarly, in all the teasers, messages, and lore details that we knew about “Hammond”, nothing ever stated he was an ape or a monkey.

With Moira, her Hero Profile actually implied she was a Talon agent before she ever joined Blackwatch.

“...The shadowy Talon organization had already been supporting her for years, aiding her experiments in exchange for utilizing the results for their own purposes.”

(And frankly, I take a good deal of pride in having read the clues correctly for this well before the mode was playable: [Tweet 1] [Tweet 2])

And now Ashe.

Personally, I think Ashe is complicated because it’s pretty clear she wasn’t actually intended to be anything more than a single-short character (which has been stated several times by Story and Franchise and Team 4 alike), so while she was never originally part of McCree’s backstory, there was enough room in his story for her to be placed in.

Point is:

We go through this song and dance every time a new hero or plot twist is revealed.  Sometimes - like with Moira or Wrecking Ball - the implication is already there, or the absence of evidence does imply something more.  Sometimes - like with Genji and Ashe - there’s enough of a gap in a character’s history and backstory that something can be developed in a way the fans weren’t expecting.

So here’s the thing about the idea of “Blackwatch Colomar”:

Is there space in Sombra’s backstory for this “plot twist” to exist?  Yes.

Will Team 4 actually do it?  Only they know.

But as this entire post has shown:

Sombra has numerous connections to numerous characters - many of them Talon-aligned, yes, but several of them are former Overwatch or Blackwatch agents.  Hell, she’s even connected to Zarya at this point, and Zarya is effectively a non-aligned character at the moment.  She is implied to be the only character Reaper trust remotely genuinely in Talon, implied to be giving information to Soldier: 76, and is now implied to be working outright with McCree.

People seem to think that unreliable narrators can only work if they’re forcing a limited perspective on a situation or concealing “bad” truths from the audience.

But that isn’t necessarily true.

An unreliable narrator can conceal good intentions just as much as they conceal bad ones.

McCree: Is this what we’ve become, Gabriel? Gabriel: Blackwatch has always had one purpose: to do the real work of keeping the world safe.  I thought you had the stomach for it.  Looks like I was wrong.

And, as storytellers, the Overwatch development team is not beholden to tell you the truth - good or bad - either.  They’re creating a story: they would much rather show you Sombra’s intentions - or Reaper’s, or Soldier: 76′s, or McCree’s - than tell you outright.

They’re not going to tell you that Sombra has a soft spot for Overwatch.

They would rather show you.

And to loop this all the way back around:

They’re not going to tell you how McCree got the information about the key -

And they’re not going to tell you how McCree knew the crate was on the train because -

"All I want is that crate.”

The dialogue shows more about his character and the situation than literally stating it.

So before we move on, just to summarize:

How did McCree get Echo’s key?

Well, Sombra probably told him after hacking some Helix or military system for it.  McCree’s covert ops specialty is conducting heists and thefts, particularly in military bases, cargo, and supplies.

Where was the key located?

In the Southwest United States, or maybe somewhere on the West Coast.  Just in the west, I guess.

Why was Echo’s case being transported?

Probably because whatever organization was “safeguarding” it started getting nervous about Soldier: 76 locating her first.  Or because Recall was initiated.  Either way, the organization runs the risk of her getting found and effectively rescued by either Soldier: 76 or Recalled Overwatch.

Why would Sombra help McCree and/or Soldier: 76?

Because it’s entirely possible for a character to be both ambitious, chaotic neutral, and renegade in nature while also being nostalgic, sentimental, or entertained by “the good guys.”  It is canon to Sombra’s character that she actually does her hardest to motivate others to change themselves, to see the truth, or to find empowerment through information.

“Which brings me…to ‘Perspective.’  One of the things we really like doing with Overwatch is playing with perspective.  We utilize perspective when we analyze or when we tell stories about characters, what they’re thinking, what their goals are.  And we have a lot of unreliable narrators.  We want people to pay careful attention to what characters think about in particular situations.  We want them to use their judgment and their knowledge of a character’s thoughts to come up with their own ideas about the universe.  You know, I’m asked often - with characters like Sombra or Soldier: 76, you know, ‘Are they anti-heroes?  Are they villains?’  And I think, you know, you look at someone like Sombra, and it’s all about looking at, ‘What does she want?  What is she willing to do to get it?’

“And you have to remember that when she’s telling you something, she’s serving her own ends too.  So you know, you have to kinda make the decision for yourself.  And I think you can take a character like Soldier: 76 - like obviously, he has this mission that he is on that he believes is good, he seems to be sometimes willing to do things which are… maybe not super heroic, and so it makes him complicated.  We always have a lot of fun, uh - every once and awhile we’ll try and plot all the characters on like the traditional D’n’D alignment scale, and I think, you know, it’s fun exercise, but at the end of the day, I think what’s interesting about characters is that those alignments change depending on what situation you put them in, what’s important to them, and what decisions they have to make.”

- Michael Chu, GDC Spring 2017

Sombra can be and is the same character who has the ability to tease Reaper with a nickname only his “partner” has been allowed to call him, both as a reminder of what she knows about him and a callback to his internal motivations (protecting Jack).

In this regard, this aligns Sombra with characters like McCree, Soldier; 76, and Ana in methods and ideologies more than people realize.  In the Recall-Masquerade-Searching era, none of these characters have any qualms about “breaking the rules” at this point, and yet all of them still find their motivations to be unified by a few things:

A sense of personal, often ambiguous justice.

A belief in protecting the innocent - but also punishing those who commit crimes.

The adaptability to work well “in the shadows”.

And mixed emotions on the newly recalled Overwatch.

And all this harkens back to:

Gabriel: Blackwatch has always had one purpose: to do the real work of keeping the world safe.

3. “You’ve never been one to shy away from a good tip.”

Let’s say that Soldier: 76′s actions - regardless of if they’re being coordinated with McCree’s via Sombra or not - do actually drive Helix Securities or whatever organization is holding Echo to desperation.  They fill up a train with military weapons and her crate, hoping to transport it east to west to the other side of the country.

Perhaps they’re concerned that Echo’s key has gone missing, but they’re significantly more worried about the dude with an autoaim visor who just got the upgraded version of his favorite gun back.

This plays into McCree and Sombra’s hands pretty ideally -

Because what’s McCree really, really good at?

Heists.

And why is he good at heists?

Because even when he’s working alone, he still knows how to orchestrate them.

Because even though it’s been decades since they’ve actually last met -

McCree can still read Ashe like a god damn textbook.

Big train full of big guns, big bombs, big weapons?

That’s the kind of “merchandise” Ashe just can’t resist.

Work smarter, not harder.

The dialogue between McCree and Ashe implies that he was the one who “tipped off” the Deadlock Gang about the train:

McCree: Well, Ashe…I’ve been kinda busy.

Ashe: We’re pretty busy ourselves, so it’s awful convenient you showin’ up today.

McCree: …Yeah, you’ve never been one to shy away from a good tip.

Ashe: Hey!  We worked hard for this score!  You best move on now.

---

And even though it’s been decades, McCree still manages to get under Ashe’s skin right away.  She doesn’t realize what McCree was actually implying (that he was the one who tipped off the gang), but instead bristles at what she thinks is the slight in his comment (that they get “easy tips” and therefore do “easy work”).

However, the whole conversation is meant to show you that McCree deftly set up the gang to basically do the whole heist for him.  He rolls in after his phone call to the diner (which is actually operated by the Deadlock Gang), and thinks he has a enough time for a slice of pie and a cup of coffee.

He’s just a little bit off, though, because he only has time for two bites and one sip.

(But to McCree’s credit, maybe that’s all he wanted.  He thinks the coffee at the diner “tastes like boiled dirt” anyways.)

So just a short one:

Who tipped off the Deadlock Gang? 

Probably McCree, because he needed a way to get Echo’s crate off the train and he’s not really interested in repeating “Train Hopper”.  Also because it looks like the military train was automated and running on a fast schedule.

4. “I’ve got some business to attend to.”

McCree: Well, that’s a story for another time, but I got a call.  They want me, but really, they need you.

(McCree starts to walk away.)

Echo: Jesse, wait!  What are you going to do?

McCree: I’ve got some business to attend to.

(McCree takes Ashe’s bike.)

McCree: Say hi to the monkey for me.

Echo: Monkey?

McCree, laughing: Scientist.  Whatever.

---

At the end of the short, we get one last hint about what McCree’s been up to, where he’s been, where he’s going, and - more importantly - who he’s been around.

Again, just like Soldier: 76′s story, the timeline of McCree’s story skips ahead from the end of “Reunion” to this particular scene:

This is just like Soldier: 76 in that Soldier is literally shown in Dorado -

And then this is his next actual appearance in the plot.

The only thing that appears to have occurred in between “Hero” and “Old Soldiers”?

It’s hinted at in “Searching”, Sombra’s room in Castillo, and the Reaper sightings image in Necropolis.

Either Sombra is already connected to Soldier: 76 before “Hero”, or - like Zarya - she makes some sort of deal with him to get him out of Dorado and put him on the path to find The Shrike.

We can only guess at what McCree does in the few month span between “Reunion” and “Reflections”: perhaps he messes with Deadlock and Los Muertos some more.  Perhaps he tracks their trade routes and arms-purchasing partners.  Perhaps he keeps an eye on Helix-run facilities in the U.S.  Perhaps he collects a few bounties.  We don’t know for sure, but again, he leaves “Reunion” on Ashe’s bike and appears several months later in Dorado.

Again, the story isn’t going to tell you why he’s there or what he’s doing, especially if the Masquerade subplot is steadily being built up, but at this point, the evidence is pretty strong.

All in all, when we phrase it as a series of questions and look at the details provided throughout the game, comics, and shorts, we get a few straightfoward answers:

How did McCree get Echo’s key?

Sombra probably found the information and passed it off to him.  McCree did what he does best and snuck into some sort of base and stole it.

How did McCree know Echo’s crate was being moved?

Again, the simple answer is that Sombra found the information.  The group keeping Echo may have been worried about Soldier: 76′s actions or Recalled OW making moved to get her back, so they shipped her crate off with a bunch of other weapons.

What has McCree been “busy” with?

And

What is the “business” McCree has to “attend to”?

This one goes all the way back to “Retribution.”

McCree: This is all your fault, Reyes!

Reyes: I’m never gonna hear the end of this, am I?

McCree: I’m sure I’ll get over it…eventually.

Reyes: Good.  Because I’m gonna need you, Jesse.

---

The straightforward answer is that McCree is still working as an underground Blackwatch agent.

As a reminder, another core component of the “Masquerade theory” is that Moira was the traitor who sold out the Venice Mission to Antonio, his forces, and probably the whole of Talon.

A key part of understanding Retribution is the realization that only four people knew the mission was occurring in the way that it was happening.  These people were: Gabriel Reyes, Jesse McCree, Genji Shimada, and Moira O’Deorain.  Jack Morrison and Fio the Blackwatch pilot knew the mission “was happening” but they did not have the details about it, and therefore are unlikely to have been the ones to have compromised it.

In fact, there are several interactions in Retribution that pretty blatantly imply this:

McCree: Aww, even though we snuck that surveillance system into Antonio’s office, our intel’s a little spotty. Genji: Next time, you should leave it to me.  I can spy upon our enemies - unseen…and undetected.

A surveillance system was secreted into Antonio’s office and yet the Blackwatch team still missed key intel - because it is implied that someone on the team warned Antonio that his office was bugged.

Through the interactions with McCree and Genji, the player is meant to learn that both these characters are genuine and did not betray Talon.  McCree is 100% furious about how the mission goes sideways, and Genji shows time and again that he hates criminals to a very personal and actually pretty harmful level (the implication being that a lot of his lingering resentments over his own family and brother are still present on his mind and emotional state).

That leaves Gabriel Reyes and Moira O’Deorain.

The game wants you to believe that Reyes somehow betrayed Blackwatch and Overwatch, but again -

What it shows you is actually very different:

Moira: Pity we’ll miss the masquerade - I have the perfect costume. Reyes: Didn’t think that would be your scene. Moira: There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me…

(source)

Moira: You did what needed to be done, Gabriel.  Don’t apologize. Gabriel: I never have, and I don’t intend to start now.  Someone has to be the one to get things done.

McCree: Better to kill them now than wait for another surprise attack! Moira, to herself: …ha, ironic.

McCree: …You seem awfully calm. Moira: I take it all in my stride.

---

The game wants you to play the detective and figure out the actual story being broken up and semi-concealed by four different, limited-perspective, unreliable narrators.

In fact, this is exactly why McCree becomes the lead narrator of the event, even though Reyes himself was the narrator in the comic.

This narrative shift has been used multiple times in Overwatch story events.  The other obvious one is Uprising, where the comic is from Morrison’s perspective but the event shifts to Tracer narrating the intro and outro.  However, you can see similar shifts in narratives in comics like “Old Soldiers” (starts with Soldier: 76, switches to Ana mid-way through), “Reflections” (starts with Tracer with interjections by Winston), and “Binary” (starts with Bastion, switches to Torbjörn).

And there are also many, many instances where a secondary POV character is implied but not explicitly told.

The list includes:

“Legacy”: main POV - Ana; implied POV - Widowmaker

“Masquerade”: main POV - Doomfist; implied POV - Reaper

“Searching”: main POV - Zarya; implied POV - Sombra

“Retribution” (the game mode) itself is effectively one of these, but with two implied POVs: McCree has become the main POV, but Reyes and Moira are the secondary, implied POV, and it is up to the player to sort through the mess of interactions and heightened emotions to realize the truth.

However, even if you don’t unlock the best interactions that show this, the ending by itself literally does:

It’s also pretty easy to figure out that - well - despite his anger, McCree doesn’t actually leave Blackwatch after the mission.

In fact, something Reyes says in his debriefing - to Morrison, Amari, Lacroix, and McCree (through the window) - convinces all of them that: 1) Reyes himself can still be trusted, 2) McCree and Genji can still be trusted, and 3) something much bigger than Antonio is threatening to undermine them.

Again, the game doesn’t tell you this, but it does show you what it is, 8 years later:

Moira: Our courageous cowboy… The years haven’t changed you much, have they, Jesse? McCree: Well, they certainly haven’t changed my feelings about working with you.

---

McCree: Always thought hiring you was a mistake. Moira: The best mistake one could ever make.

---

Soldier: 76: You were a disgrace to Overwatch.  If I had known what Reyes had been planning, I would never have allowed it. Moira: It seems to me that it was convenient for you not to look too closely into Gabriel’s business… (Audio link)

---

McCree and Soldier: 76 believe that Moira betrayed Blackwatch.

Soldier: 76′s statement is clear, McCree’s is more vague but still gets to the point.  Interestingly, neither Soldier nor McCree ever state directly that they think Gabriel Reyes betrayed Overwatch and/or Blackwatch.  Soldier: 76 alludes to “what Reyes had been planning”, but he never says what that “plan” actually was, and if you’ve followed this blog long enough, you know that I believe Soldier is referencing Reyes’/Reaper’s plan is his reverse-infiltration of Talon.  

But here’s the other thing about McCree and Soldier: 76′s awareness of Reaper’s goals:

It doesn’t actually imply their respective approvals of this method.

And we come back to the “issue” with Sombra again:

Connected characters don’t actually have to 100% like or approve of another character’s ideas, methods, plans, and strategies to cooperate with them.

It does not mean Sombra is or isn’t blackmailing them (or Reaper or Ana).  It does not mean that they do or do not like Sombra or Reaper’s methods.

It is entirely possible for characters to have the same “good” intentions and the same aligned objectives without actually liking each other’s methods and tactics.

Like I said above, I personally think all these characters do actually get along, even if they occasionally frustrate or irritate each other (or disagree over methods).  Taking “Retribution” and “Uprising” as windows into the different characters’ personalities and interactions before the fall, we see many examples where characters who are still allies or friends after the fall disagree or banter around with each other.  Canon character who will eventually cooperate with each other in Recalled OW are Tracer, Reinhardt, Torbjörn, and Genji, and again, if this Masquerade theory is correct, then Reaper, Soldier: 76, Ana, and McCree are also still working together.

That said:

There’s a lot to imply that what Reaper and Soldier: 76 are doing in the present-day is simply a more extreme version of the roles they have always played with each other:

They’ve both gone “rogue”, yes, but one of them (Reaper) is playing “the bad guy” in order to convince Talon he’s 110%, totally serious about being part of their organization, while the other (Soldier: 76) is playing “the fallen hero” in order to convince characters like The Shrike (Ana) to join their plans.

I can’t really stress how much McCree’s actions in “Reunion” effectively parallel Soldier’s in “Old Soldiers”.

Everything from getting intel from Sombra, “setting up” a trap with a “rival” (personally, I think Ashe was 100% unwitting about McCree’s intentions, whereas Reaper’s actions and words in “Old Soldiers” are so blatantly out of place that it’s pretty easy for the informed reader to realize they’re fake at this point), down to the actual recruitment narrations.

“But I got a call - we’re getting the band back together.  They want me, but really?  They need you.”

The twist though?

(“You need me, Jack.  You need someone to watch your back.”) Ana is not Echo.

And she quite literally “flips the script” on Soldier, to the point where he even jokes about it.

And like, even the last “conversation” in both the short and the comic parallel each other:

Ana: Just tell me one thing.  What around you going to do when the fighting’s over?

Echo: Jesse, wait!  What are you going to do?

Soldier: 76: I’m a soldier, Ana.  Our war’s never over.

McCree: I’ve got some business to attend to.

I’d say that Sombra’s network of characters currently works like this:

“In the shadows” half: This half is composed mainly of Reaper and Sombra.  This group is reverse-infiltrating Talon.  Sombra runs the distraction element in order to get the other Talon member to trust Reaper more.  Meanwhile, Reaper passes on information to Sombra that she either can’t access or isn’t “digital” (e.g. the identities of the Talon leaders).  Because Reaper is deep undercover, he can’t be caught being “friendly” with Soldier: 76, Ana, McCree, Winston, and/or Tracer, but because Sombra is effectively passing (or stealing) information from Soldier: 76, Ana, McCree, and Recalled OW, Reaper is still able to coordinate missions with them.  Many times, Reaper does something that “accidentally” causes these missions to fail (e.g. bringing tasers, not killing Winston, stepping on Winston’s glasses, etc).  This group is an extreme version of Blackwatch.  

Characters with a decent likelihood of joining this group in the future include: Widowmaker (if she can break her brainwashing), Moira (depending on if she picks Reaper over Doomfist), possibly Sanjay and/or Symmetra.

“Rogue vigilantes” half: This half is composed mainly of McCree, Soldier: 76, and Ana.  This group has ambivalent feelings about both the plans for reverse-infiltration and recalling Overwatch.  They’re not really for or outright against either plan.  These characters have their own sense of justice and either do not agree with Reaper and Sombra’s methods or are not capable of enacting them.  However, this group still has a massive pool of shared and individual skills that can still be effective in other situations, such as heists and thefts, information collection, bounty hunting, and “fringe support” in case something goes wrong.  This group is an extreme version of Overwatch.

Characters with a decent likelihood of joining this group in the future include: Zarya (who is “lost” after “Searching” and looking for a new purpose), Hanzo (who rebukes both Genji’s offers and Doomfist’s, but who is interested in Ana’s methodologies), Symmetra (who will likely defect from Vishkar in the future)

In fact, while it isn’t 100% canon, I don’t think it’s a surprise that one of the OWL finals sprays included this group:

The other three sprays include two “canon groups”: Winston, Mei, Tracer, and Emily, and Reinhardt, Brigitte, Torbjörn, and Bastion.  So while the above group of Hanzo, Zarya, Sombra, and McCree isn’t confirmed canon, it is definitely an interesting clustering of characters.

And this brings me to the very last part:

5. “Scientist...Whatever.”

McCree: Say hi to the monkey for me.

Echo: Monkey?

McCree, laughing: Scientist.  Whatever.

If the rest of the short didn’t implicate McCree’s connections to Sombra and Reaper, then this part sure as hell did.

There are only two other characters in the entire playable Overwatch cast who call Winston the incorrect and joke term “monkey”:

Athena: Winston!  He’s going to have all agents’ locations!

Reaper: I’ll be sure to send them your regards, monkey.

Winston: I’m not a monkey!

Reaper: (laughs)

Winston: I’m a scientist!

Reaper.

And:

Sombra: Isn’t it a little embarrassing to get beaten up by a monkey? Doomfist: Have you ever been hit by a giant, genetically engineered gorilla? I could arrange it for you…

Sombra.

The inclusion of McCree calling Winston “the monkey” wasn’t just a cute joke: it’s a pretty blatant reference to Reaper’s dialogue with Winston in “Recall.”

Considering McCree isn’t supposed to be in contact with his old commander and is also supposed to be mad at him, this is a pretty telltale sign of what he’s actually doing.

I went back and looked over Michael Chu’s statement about Reaper and McCree’s interactions in the Recall-Searching era and perhaps unsurprisingly, he doesn’t actually state that they’re not in contact with each other.

(source)

Question: “Some time back you said that McCree and Reinhardt don’t know that Reaper is Reyes.  Do they not know because they’ve never met face–errm, mask-to-face, since the incident? I get the feeling that if McCree and Reaper met, McCree would know almost immediately who was under the mask, and Reinhardt would figure out if he fought Reaper in battle (because his only quote, “Traitor!”, is triggered when he kills him).”

Michael: “To clarify about the Reaper/Reyes thing, yes it is because they have not met in the “current day” of Overwatch. The interactions in the game are meant to be what ifs. I do think that McCree would know that Reaper was Reyes if he encountered him.”

What he says, quite literally, is that “they have not met in the ‘current day’ of Overwatch.”

And this is the exact type of vague wording that allows the team to do things like Blackwatch Genji, or Retribution Talon Moira, or hamster Hammond, or create Ashe.

Michael does not say “they haven’t met since the fall of Overwatch.”  He does not say “they’re mad at each other.”  He doesn’t say “they never communicate after the fall.”

This gives him a lot of room to change this situation as needed.  McCree and Reaper could have met before Recall.  They could have met up two, three, four years ago.  They might not have met at all since the fall, and only communicate through Sombra, in which case, McCree picked up Reaper’s bad habit of calling Winston “monkey” through her.  

They just literally haven’t met since Recall, through Reunion, through Reflections, through Masquerade, and probably through Searching, a time period which spans roughly one year to eighteen months (Recall occurs in Spring 2076 to Masquerade in Feb-March 2077 to Searching which is after Orisa is built in 2077).

And the final possibility:

Michael Chu just straight up lied about it.

Because again, the team has no obligation to tell you the plot of their story.

People seem to think that the developers have to be honest with them, especially when answering direct questions about the character or the game.  This isn’t true at all.  In fact, literally only a month ago, Bill Warnecke blatantly stated that “This patch does contain some balance tweaks and bug fixes, but it isn’t large due to any secret data preloading.” when that exact patch actually contained Ashe for the PTR.

Michael Chu has every right to be cheeky and vague when answering plot questions, and he actually does that pretty frequently:

Just like a magician has every right not to spill their secrets, writers and development teams have every right to keep major plot points, characters, and gameplay changes secret until they’re ready to share them.

Granted, this in turn means that you have every right as a customer not to support them.  You shouldn’t take inappropriate or poor taste answers as replacement for good customer service or good fan interactions.  If you find answers or statements unsatisfactory, you have every right to stop supporting the game or its developer.  I’m saying this specifically because there’s one Big Name Game and Developer currently generating a ton of talk about horrific customer service and complete disregard for fans.  Activision-Blizzard itself is not free from criticisms, and several aspects of Overwatch are part of that larger discussion.

But over the last two years of playing this game and becoming deeply invested in the story and world it is building, I’ve come to realize that many fan expectations for the team and for Michael in particular are extremely unfair.  You wouldn’t expect your favorite book author or show runners to spoil their own content, and you shouldn’t expect that from a video game writer either.  As I said in the paragraph above, this is separate from criticisms about poor fan interactions or poor customer service, or even separate from discussions about game design and game writing.  I think there are arguments to be made that the writing in Overwatch struggles in many spots, or is too vague, ambiguous, and ambitious in other spots (such as Retribution, which had several subplots which went directly over most of the fandom’s heads), but expecting the lead writer to just tell you if McCree, Sombra, and Reaper are still paling around or working together to bring down Talon and help Recalled OW is in poor taste on part of the fans.

Summary:

To bring it all together, here’s how McCree fits into the Masquerade theory:

Eight years ago, the Blackwatch Venice Mission goes wrong.  Reyes discovers that his “new doctor” Moira O’Deorain has betrayed Blackwatch and is a double-agent for Talon.  He convinces Morrison, Amari, Lacroix, and McCree that Blackwatch and Overwatch as a whole are at serious risk of being compromised and endangered.  Morrison suspends the Blackwatch division but allows Reyes, McCree, and Genji Shimada to keep operating as agents.

Reyes - with or without the other characters’ approval - beings making plans to reverse-infiltrate Talon to enact retribution on them and bring them down.  At some point, he makes contact with Olivia “Sombra” Colomar.  She may or may not be a Blackwatch agent herself.  

However, the Venice Mission has shown Reyes something else:

McCree: Is this what we’ve become, Gabriel? Gabriel: Blackwatch has always had one purpose: to do the real work of keeping the world safe.  I thought you had the stomach for it.  Looks like I was wrong.

McCree is not the agent capable of going deep undercover to protect Reyes’ back.

As I’ve written in “Long Reasons” and “Retribution and Reapercussions”, there are multiple instances in Retribution where McCree isn’t fully “in” on the delicate cat-and-mouse game Gabriel and Moira are playing.  Gabriel is balancing a very difficult situation where he must keep Moira on his side because she is quite literally the only person who will keep McCree and Genji alive during this mess, whereas Moira doesn’t realize her cover has actually been blown and is still willing to go along with Gabriel and the team because she thinks she can still slip back into Overwatch without a hitch.

McCree, however, is sort of stuck in the unfortunate spot of being our “main protagonist” so he gets all the narrative clues without really figuring out what’s going on.  In a classic spy thriller trope (or perhaps better as an ironic Holmes and Watson moment), McCree is the Watson or Lestrade to Reyes’ Holmes in this event (particularly funny given that McCree got a Sherlock Holmes skin for the Anniversary event immediately after).

What this does show, however, isn’t that McCree somehow isn’t smart or isn’t clever - “Reunion” very clearly shows he can be and is both.  Instead, “Retribution” shows that McCree just isn’t very suited for the “real work” of going deep undercover and stringing smart, intelligent, ambitious, and uncompromising characters like Moira, Akande, Maximilien, and Sanjay along.

McCree “plays the fool” well in Retribution because he doesn’t fully get it in the moment.

Sombra, on the other hand, is much better suited for this role: she “plays the fool” well enough to distract other Talon members and draw their attention while letting Reaper “reap the rewards” and make the organization rely on him more and more.  They need him to keep an eye on her, they need him to be an unkillable commander, and they need him to help shore up the slacking and ineffective Talon leadership.

And it works.

Reaper gets a spot in the council.

Sombra gets more critical intel about Talon’s structure and its connections to other organizations - such as Sanjay and Vishkar, which she can use to potentially turn characters like Symmetra away from Vishkar’s control.

Again, we don’t know exactly when this cooperation between Reaper and Sombra began, but it’s plausible it started just before the fall of Overwatch or shortly after.

Reyes needs someone to cover his back because as he goes deeper and deeper into Talon’s clutches -

His “partner” Jack Morrison cannot follow him.

(Not that Reyes wants to jeopardize Morrison, to be honest.  Protecting Jack is Gabriel’s whole motivation to begin with.)

And one of his most trusted agents is absolutely terrible at going undercover:

Moira: McCree...we need to talk about your...Italian accent.

McCree: Well, I watched a bunch of old Spaghetti Westerns.  I thought it was pretty good!  Bone-a serr-a, signora.  Can I-a get chu-a somethin’ ta drink?

Moira: Please, never do that again.

---

Reyes: This mess was all worth it to see McCree try and pass himself off as a waiter!

McCree: I thought I did just fine.

Reyes: ...You got fired from your cover job, Jesse.

McCree: The lady was being rude!  She had it coming.

---

Instead, between “Retribution” and “Uprising”, Reyes starts putting McCree back on the types of covert ops missions he’s good at: sneaking into militarized hot zones, conducting basic reconnaissance, and setting up heists and thefts.

By “Uprising”, this appears to suit both the commander and the agent just fine.

But in the timespan between “Uprising” and the fall of Overwatch (approximately 1 year), things take a dramatic turn for the worse.

Reinhardt his forced to retire, a decision Torbjörn is furious with.  We don’t know if Jack was forced by his own superiors to make the decision, or if he made the choice to potentially protect Reinhardt (either from double-agents or from harming himself in battle, tbh).  However, this begins to isolate Gabriel and Jack from a support network that kept them secure from Talon.

And then at some point:

Ana loses a critical sniper battle against Widowmaker -

And Gabriel and Jack’s greatest ally is suddenly “dead” to the world.

Either shortly before or shortly after this, McCree leaves Overwatch.

It’s likely that McCree left for his own protection, otherwise he could’ve easily ended up “like Ana”. 

...Or worse.

(It is strongly implied that Jack Morrison survived the Swiss Base explosion because he is genetically “enhanced”, something which McCree doesn’t have.)

Again, it isn’t surprising that McCree’s story effectively parallels both The Shrike’s (sharpshooter disappears and returns later as a bounty hunter) and Soldier: 76′s (commander and soldier loyal to BW/OW disappears and reappears later as a vigilante pursuing his own idea of justice).  The three characters are unified by this trope and have connections to Sombra.

It also isn’t surprising that Sombra is essentially "a shadow” of the roles that Morrison and McCree had for Reyes prior to the fall: she is a reminder of all that Reyes stands to protect (Jack, the partner who called him “Gabe”) and the agent he considered “effective” and saw great potential in (Jesse, the agent he recruited).  But in many ways, Sombra is far, far better suited to operate as Reaper’s partner-in-crime - the shadow to his smoke and mirrors - as he goes deeper and deeper in infiltrating Talon than either Soldier: 76 or McCree is.

Both Soldier: 76 and McCree are much better at blunter approaches to intel collecting and reconnaissance, and both are better at recruiting allies than Reaper’s “masquerading” persona.  They appear to be operating on the fringes of both Talon and Recalled OW, searching for other methods that can work in tandem with Reaper and Sombra while not compromising either character’s cover.

And just to really hone it in:

[Such a short statement belies its astonishing truth: We have not seen the last of Overwatch. Being dismantled by the UN only drove them into the shadows.]

We really should have expected this from the moment Overwatch launched.

I mean -

The developers told us to pay attention to the shadows.

[quartztwst]

Moira redesign

Old design:

Yes he is the fairy godmother

[moiraephemeral]

✮⋆˙ Helloo! (˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶)/

My name is Moira!!!! I am currently a student at NRC!!! I am also in the Octavinelle dormitory!! I will be blogging my daily life at NRC bc it seems fun!!!

Please take care of me on Tumblr!! ( ˶ˆᗜˆ˵ )

(OC based on the Fairy Godmother)

Info!

RULES DOWN BELOW (QUARTZ SPEAKING):

Please don't be rude. This includes racism, homophobia, etc

NO NSFW asks!!! I'm 16 but NSFW jokes are allowed lmaoo just don't go into weird territory

I'm a bit rusty when it comes to roleplaying and this is my first roleplay account with my twst oc I'm super sorry 😭😭

Flirting is okay but not towards me (QUARTZ that's me IM QUARTZBIM THE MOD hello teehee)

Answers sometimes will or will not have art with them.

MOIRA FULL BODY COMING SOON!!!

Have fun 💪💪💪💪

Main Account - @quartztwst

[upismediacenter]

FEATURE: 𝇍𝇍𝇍 Movies for Your Thoughts: an End of the Year Watchlist

for the viewing pleasure and contemplation of cinephiles before making merry

Sandwiched between the end of November and the middle of December is a unique stretch of time wherein one acutely feels the year’s impending close as they’ve yet to be wrapt up with various holiday obligations. They are prompted then, to ruminate on the year’s events and their actions—to address that contemplative congeries residing within their season-made-maudlin mind. With the aim of aiding such reflections, below are three films which tackle the simultaneously ephemeral, enduring, and bittersweet nature of living.

1. The Red Shoes (1948) directed by Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger (the Archer Brothers) Running Time: 2h 13m Country: United Kingdom Common Sense Media’s Age Rating: 10+ [1] Synopsis: In this classic drama, Vicky Page is an aspiring ballerina torn between her dedication to dance and her desire to love. While her imperious instructor, Boris Lermontov, urges her to forget anything but ballet, Vicky begins to fall for the charming young composer Julian Craster. Eventually Vicky, under great emotional stress, must choose to pursue either her art or her romance, a decision that carries serious consequences (Letterboxd, n.d.). [2]

The Red Shoes, Eagle-Lion Films, 1948

“And one doesn’t really care to see one’s religion practiced in an atmosphere such as this,” carries on Monsieur Lermontov; from the very beginning of the film, we’re made privy to how anything short of perfection is deemed a desecration. Such a sensation is more common than we think. Whether deliberately or inadvertently, all impose standards: they’re present in our anger when professed authorities make a false or pretentious claim; we behold them in comment sections that swarm with remarks on how a public figure has erred or misbehaved.

Some have yet to encounter a character at once so domineering and compelling as Anton Walbrook’s Boris Lermontov though, the film’s ballet impresario. He directs Moira Shearer’s prima ballerina Victoria to abandon all else and devote herself to her craft; he calls for a new score point blank from their pittance-paid composer, Marius Goring’s Craster, and upon learning that the two are going steady and so deplorably love each other, fires the latter and attempts to wrench them apart. “The dancer who relies upon the human comforts of human love… will never be a great dancer. Never.” From his perspective, he was merely doing all in his power to reify a vision—one he wouldn’t have suffered anything to impede.

Seeing someone possessed of such purpose and devotion as he is astonishing—especially for those of us who doubt whether we’re even capable of pinning down a hobby or employment truly qualified to be called “beloved.” All are well-aware of the value in having a passion or goal to pursue; they bequeath drive and vigor via a sense of purpose or notions of an exemplar to which we can aspire. The Red Shoes however, shows the dangers of so singularly channeling our time and efforts.

The Red Shoes, Eagle-Lion Films, 1948 “In fact, the red shoes are never tired. They dance her out into the streets. They dance her over the mountains and valleys… through the fields and forests, through night and day. Time rushes by. Love rushes by. But the red shoes dance on.” ‘What happens in the end?’ “Oh, in the end, she dies.”

In close relation to this, somewhat of a converse warrants our attention: in an age of discontent, it’s easy to adopt a devil-may-care attitude and to affix arbitrariness to those that should be viewed with greater importance. May it be Lermontov in his pursuit of magnificence, or Victoria and Craster with their careers and renown—each character was possessed of an ambition, but each met with tragedy after failing to properly consider those that should’ve been held dearer.

With barely more than a month left in the year, it’s fitting to ask ourselves, “Were there any opportunities we allowed to pass us by?” Ultimately, “having it all” is subjective; and though we’ll invariably be prone to bouts of frustration and regret—to hear the nagging voice of Lermontov telling us that we are wanting for more, it doesn’t mean life can’t be fulfilling. It’s a matter of knowing what is truly significant to us—and it’s never just resignation or settling for less when we’re well-assured we’re doing all we can for that.

2. I’m a Cyborg But That’s OK (2006) directed by Park Chan-wook Running Time: 1h 47m Country: South Korea Age Rating in South Korea: 12+ [3] Synopsis: Young-goon, mentally deranged and frequently electro-charging herself with a transistor radio, has been admitted into a mental institution. Firmly believing herself to be a cyborg, she refuses to consume like a human being. Il-soon is another patient, who catches the eye of Young-goon and soon becomes a close friend. Il-soon is now confronted with the biggest task—to cure Young-goon’s mental problem and have her eat real food (Letterboxd, n.d.). [4]

I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK, CJ Entertainment, 2006

A famous alliterative triple goes, “Live, Laugh, Love”—indeed, if only it were that simple. No one is guaranteed a smooth-sailing trek through the paths of existence; life is hoarily mottled by disappointment, streaked with strain, and potholed in pain. Everyone copes with this differently: some fancy themselves to be robots that are impervious to the pangs of loss and hunger like the protagonist Young-goon, or as metamorphic sponges capable of acquiring the traits of others thought better-equipped than themselves such as her fellow ward Il-soon.

More than just a rom-com, “I’m a Cyborg, but that’s OK” is set in a sanatorium inhabited by patients with mythomania, schizophrenia, and diverse personality disorders. Endlessly comical and whimsical, but never reductive or caricaturing of mental health conditions—quite the opposite as it creates an environment which provides both the viewers and characters with an unconstrained avenue to explore and substantiate their various cares and woes. They’re each given a rich backstory and instead of making their apparent quirks mere conduits for mockful levity, they belie motivations that are noble and nuanced, and fears all-too sympathizable and human.

I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK, CJ Entertainment, 2006 “I did all kinds of things in jail because I felt like I was vanishing. I stole other people’s clothes to wear and I brushed my teeth diligently. Once your teeth start to go, there's no turning back. I had a psych evaluation and… they said I’m schizophrenic and anti-social. Like, stealing and fighting for no reason and not having any sense of guilt or sympathy, but I don’t know why they call me anti-social. I have my reasons for stealing; I’m afraid I’ll vanish—I’m anti-vanishing.”

Though there are scenes wherein the patients bicker amongst themselves and demonize one another, there is ultimately a sense of community occasioned by their shared hospitalization. They cheer Young-goon when she finally eats by merit of the “Rice Megatron” that Il-Soon fashions for her, and rarely do they undermine the idiosyncrasies which they witness every day; they’re treated real and true, not just “humored” or neglected as how the cold people outside their institution would. Whenever featured, such individuals were shown to exact a form of punishment or unfeeling act of cruelty after having turned a blind and contemptuously close-minded eye.

As it ends, we’re left to realize that fellow-feeling as well as actively endeavoring to understand and aid others in their sorrows or difficulties are what leads us to attain one of the foremost privileges in life: sharing in the joys of those whom we love. So before they’re muddied, buried, or unduly influenced by holiday-spawned chronic flocking with family, whose faces come to mind when thinking of the word “gratitude”?

3. Groundhog Day (1993) directed by Harold Ramis Running Time: 1h 41m Country: United States Common Sense Media Age Rating: 11+ [5] Synopsis: A narcissistic TV weatherman, along with his attractive-but-distant producer and mawkish cameraman, is sent to report on Groundhog Day in the small town of Punxsutawney, where he finds himself repeating the same day over and over (Letterboxd, n.d.) [6]

Groundhog Day, Columbia Pictures, 1993

Living comes with an inescapable humdrum monotony; it lies within attending school or the old nine-to-five during weekdays, in setting up the table and then having the same chatter during the evening—addressing ostensibly the same unceasing cares woven into routines that run every day, week, month, or year. It’s no wonder then that these repetitions beget a sense of futility; they beg the question, “Will it all ever amount to anything?” For Bill Murray’s Phil in Groundhog Day it did—and all he needed was a few thousand years of living through the same day.

The film opens with the lead character Phil as a heartless egotist: self-aggrandizing when referring to himself, rough and inattentive to a string of paramours, and infallibly taking it for granted that colleagues and strangers alike were wont to tolerate and indulge his impulses. After recovering from the initial shock of cycling through those interminably recurrent twenty-four hours, he falls into self-destructive luxury, “Phil gooses her, grabs a sweet roll, and heads for the door, starting to believe now that he can truly do anything he wants.” He continues then, to amuse himself by procuring diversion in playing god and manipulating others.

Groundhog Day, Columbia Pictures, 1993

It’s not very long thereafter that he’s seized by the desire to have and live through something genuine and worthwhile—convinced in the pointlessness of wishing for such (reinforced as the conception is everyday by circumstance) he resorts to killing himself only to wake up tomorrow without so much as a scratch. Only when he resolves upon finally shedding away his selfish skin does he gradually align with the trail to redemption; he betters himself, not just for his own sake to win over the female lead Rita, but in order to be of service to the people of Punxsutawney whether in preventing numerous disasters, learning to be a balloon-maker for children in the town hospital, or in assuming the role of local couples’ therapist and benefactor.

Contrary to the short summary above, his vindication was by no means linear—he was forever getting trounced, forever being discouraged, and though emerging a veritably upright person, likely still supported an inherently flawed character; that’s what makes it perfect. If there’s a lesson in this film, it’s that finding meaning and purpose in what we do powers us through—that each moment is always important or has the potential to be so whether to us personally or to those whom our lives affect.

For the unmoved nihilists in some, the article concludes with one of the last, albeit more platitudinous lines in the film’s screenplay, “And so began my final lifetime, and ended the longest winter on record, I would find myself no longer able to affect the chain of events in this town, but I did learn something about time. You can waste time, you can kill time, you can do time, but if you use it wisely, there’s never enough of it. So you’d better make the most of the time you got.” //by Allana Dela Cruz

[glitchinthesystemspiderbyte]

[33] Glitch in the System - Policy of Truth (Venganza pt. 4)

Sorry we’re a bit late. Hopefully it will be worth it!

In case you missed it, here is Part One, Part Two, and Part Three!

Reconciliation happens. _

“Amélie.”

Through the unfathomable depths of sleep, a voice called a dust shrouded name. It echoed across vast, empty space, its origin leagues above and away until it reached her: a whisper, drifting past on a slow-moving current. Though the tone and timbre were familiar to her, they were only so with the transient familiarity of childhood memories: there, then gone, then presumed forever passed both in time and relevancy.

“Amélie.”

She struggled to place with any certainty the provenance of this one-word demand for rejoinder. It was not warm. It was not ragged. It was not firm. Of the voices most familiar to her, this was not among them; yet, she felt it like a lash all the same, dragging her from the sprawling black into a light she didn’t notice until it was suddenly, blindingly there.

“There you are.”

Widowmaker, thrust violently back into consciousness, blinked hard against the light. At first, that’s all there was: searing, artificial fluorescence that felt to her torpor-addled eye on par with the sun itself. With the passage of seconds, shadows, then shapes crept into existence, their edges ephemeral though their subjects were inarguably real.

Then, no more than a minute later, there was pain.

Universal, consuming pain snarled white-hot fire with every breath and beat of her heart, so furious at its own existence she thought, for a moment, she could discern with horrifying acuity the presence and location of every nerve she possessed. The initial onslaught gave way to awareness of a few exceptionally tender areas: waist, side, and shoulder, where honed agony coursed mercilessly across nerves frayed by, assumedly, hours of much the same. Through the fog of dawning consciousness, she recalled - albeit vaguely - a dry elaboration on that prolonged sort of suffering:

“Colloquially, we refer to this as ‘quantitative pain’: frequent and durative exposure to deleterious physical stimuli lasting minutes, hours, days, and so on.”

It was such a casual definition, delivered with practiced, clipped eloquence so far removed from the topic question it may as well have been a poetic recitation of Shakespeare.

And then it - recognition - hit her, hard and mercilessly with the first wave of nausea. Which, specifically, left her retching into the stainless steel kidney dish held before her remained poignantly ambiguous.

“Are you very well done?” that same voice asked, suffused with indifference, if not inconvenience. Fighting against the pall of sleep threatening just beyond the edge of her vision, Widowmaker dug into what little reserve of will she possessed to take in her surroundings: empty cots; many-armed surgical assistance bots; glass front cabinets and shelves well-stocked with a remarkable gamut of implements; Moira.

There was the nausea again.

Moira O’Deorain loomed at her side, a brutalistic composition of angles and shadow supporting the tray in one gloved hand. Widowmaker forced herself to meet the geneticist’s mismatched eyes and found, predictably, the sort of expectant impatience more frequently reserved for misbehaving or unruly children.

“Well?” Moira asked, single eyebrow raised as if to underscore how terribly bothersome she found the situation.

“Oui,” the sniper managed, voice barely touching a whisper. For a word that required so little, Widowmaker found the effort to produce it nigh gargantuan. Even the smallest movement of her jaw provoked a fresh jolt of pain that started somewhere along the right side of her skull and radiated outward. That, in turn, resulted in a reactive wince that only started the entire cycle of discomfort anew. Closing her eyes, the sniper took a leveling breath - also excruciating - and focused her attention on simply staying awake. This was, essentially, an intake evaluation, and nearly a decade in Talon’s employ taught her that cooperation now meant Moira could do her job, ensure a speedy recovery, and depart. The faster the sniper shouldered through this grisly reawakening, the faster she’d be on her feet — and the sooner Moira would be gone.

“Delightful,” the other woman murmured as she dropped the half-full dish into a nearby wastebin, its brief but useful life concluded with a weighted thud. Moira removed herself from the sniper’s bedside, repairing to the broad island at the center of the room. In addition to the consoles which allowed one to manually control the assorted bots positioned about the room as needed, its surface was covered by a neatly arranged grid of printouts, x-ray negatives, and charts. “Now, then,” she continued, plucking one of the documents from the table and slipping it beneath the clasp of a clipboard, “on a scale of one to ten, how is your pain?”

Widowmaker stared, torn between compliance and the ache caused by the mere thought of response.

“Amélie,” the doctor intoned expectantly.

“Huit,” she hissed, forcing the syllable between her teeth with as little extraneous movement as possible.

“English, please.”

Again, she gawked at the other woman’s effortless detachment; this time, Moira glanced over the edge of the clipboard and met her gaze.

“Eight,” she grimaced.

Plucking a pen from the breast pocket of her lab coat, Moira popped the cap off with her thumb and took a few, quick notes. “Speech causes discomfort,” she noted, less a question than a statement of observable fact. “Unsurprising.”

As the other woman continued with her notation, Widowmaker peered downward and noticed, for the first time, the sling secured about her right arm and the intravenous port lodged expertly in the back of her opposite hand.

“Dislocation,” Moira said, her voice pulling the sniper’s attention back to herself. “Shall I go on? Just blink if yes.”

Widowmaker complied.

“Dislocation of the right shoulder,” the geneticist reiterated, stepping away from the island toward one of the cabinets lining the med bay’s far wall. As she continued, she set about procuring a handful of objects which she set gently on a rolling instrument stand. “Ribs three through five broken on right side. Perforation of the abdomen, right side. Nifty little fact—,” she paused, scooting the tray over to the sniper’s cot, “once a knife passes the abdominal wall, it rarely moves fast enough to penetrate the bowels. Lucky you.”

Lucky, Widowmaker thought with a note of bitter amusement, was about the last thing she felt.

Plucking a pre-measured vial and syringe from the stand, Moira pressed the needlepoint past the vial’s opening and recounted the sniper’s injuries as if they were items on an otherwise mundane shopping list: “Extensive fracturing of the skull, right side. Significant blood loss - remarkable, really, given modified heart rate and blood pressure. Grade three concussion. Which reminds me—,”

Widowmaker braced herself for the inevitable.

“—where do you live?”

Inhaling slowly, the assassin steeled herself against the portentous burn of muscle and bone preceding her reply.

“Presently: Venice.”

“What is your name?”

“Widowmaker.”

Moira’s silence succeeding her reply was cold enough even for her to feel.

“What is your name?” Moira repeated, emphasizing each word independently. Widowmaker met and held the withering, imperious glance offered her for a long minute as nausea welled in the pit of her stomach, bleeding into a pain all its own. At last, she relented, averting her eyes.

“Amélie Lacroix,” she said, spitting the name like bile.

“Perfect,” the doctor nodded. Tapping the side of the syringe to ensure the absence of any stray bubbles, she leaned over the injured sniper and slid the needle into her temporary IV port, depressing the plunger with measured force. “We’ve most of the extensive work out of the way already. An intensive regimen of nanomachines, rest, and physical therapy and you’ll be operational in a few weeks. Now, count backwards from one hundred and we’ll get started.”

Somehow more exhausted then before, Widowmaker merely closed her eyes and obeyed.

Consciousness treated her somewhat more gently the second time around, creeping across anesthetic-fulled synapses with the heavy silence of a winter storm. The pain, too, was noticeably subdued - by all meant present, but denied a pivotal ounce of acerbity by whatever monumental cocktail of palliative medicine Moira supplied her. What fire still burned - and there was still quite a lot of it - did so beneath a thick swathe of ash, smoldering persistently while it awaited the inevitable come-down.

Though this was better, it was by no means “good”. Widowmaker understood the fragility of the human form well enough to accept there was no simply walking away from the extensive damage she had incurred. Even with all the nanotechnology and sedatives at Talon’s disposal - even with Moira - bones needed time to mend, muscles needed time to knit, and bodies, to her chagrin, held onto trauma with impressive vehemence.

It was going to be a long few weeks.

The med bay was empty now, though evidence of Moira’s sudden and unwelcome apparition remained: a few cardboard boxes tucked against the side of the room’s center island; her coat flung haphazardly over an otherwise unoccupied cot; a collection of folios and scholarly periodicals stacked atop an unmarked industrial steel crate. Most conspicuously, Widowmaker noted with with quiet alarm the absence of the handful of medical personnel Talon kept on retainer. The implications of their absence were disquieting at best.

“—not going in there, Sombra. That’s an order.”

“I just want to see her.”

“You’re the reason she’s in there. ‘Fist says you’re not going anywhere near her until you’ve debriefed.”

Conversation from the hallway beyond the bay filtered through the double doors. Widowmaker canted her head in its direction, constraining the movement to little more than a slight tilt to subvert the threatening ache along the back of her head and neck.

“Please, Gabe,” Sombra begged. Beyond the doors, she and Gabriel argued, voices ineffectually and erratically hushed as their independent attempts at assertion caused them to raise, then lower their voices in turn.

“Listen to me,” Reaper said, a hint of focused compassion softening his tone just so. “You don’t want to see her; not right now. It’ll only make whatever you feel worse. I promise.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do. Believe me, I do.”

Frowning, Widowmaker averted her gaze as a ghost of a memory came clawing back from the depths of her mind. Though time ensured the loss of detail, she recalled another act of incidental eavesdropping nearly a decade old, conducted similarly from the surface of a med bay cot. Then, she listened in a mix of confusion and curiosity as Moira proclaimed gleefully the success of the first phase of her “experiment” while Akande listened, peppering her with questions in trademark stolidity. That encounter predated the self-awareness that would ultimately allow her to draw the correlation between states of physical agitation and the specter of emotion - in that case, anger; this time, she understood the elevated thrum of her own pulse as irritation. She was right there and so palpably, existentially tired; moreover, Sombra and Gabriel’s conversation not only reignited the initial suspicion she’d harbored regarding their mission, but lent that suspicion a substantial amount of agonizing, undeniable credence.

It felt like a punch in the gut and, frankly, her gut had seen more than enough. As that irritation coalesced into the burdensome, leaden weight she attributed to sadness, Widowmaker simply settled back against the unyielding cot beneath her, swallowed the whine borne of the meeting of rigid surface and tender injury, and let her gaze drift aimlessly across the unremarkable surface of the ceiling above. Either this unwelcome moment would end or sleep would claim her anew; either was infinitely preferable to the present.

“You’re really going to stop me? You want to fucking try?”

Somewhere down the hall, the grating croak of metal on metal proclaimed the opening of a door.

“This is all very riveting,” Moira interjected, the tail end of her words trailing off into a yawn. “But you’ve been here twenty minutes and I do enjoy sleep on occasion. Could you please take your nattering anywhere else?”

A long, loud silence followed, stretching on for what felt like a year.

“Just… tomorrow. Okay?” Gabriel said at last, his tone somewhere between exasperated and plaintive. “Talk to Akande and you can see her tomorrow.”

“Fine,” Sombra grunted.

As the sound of light footsteps carried the hacker away, Widowmaker cast a sideways glance to the door, equally relieved and surprised Sombra didn’t further push her luck. While Moira provided Gabriel a brief update as to the implementation of regenerative nannites to expedite healing, Widowmaker felt that same shadow of déjà vu come worming back and, with it, the desperate wish she could be anywhere else.

“I might be so bold as to suggest now would be an optimal time for any necessary or supplemental recalibration,” the geneticist added. Widowmaker, unthinking, snapped to attention and ran headlong into a wall of wrenching discomfort so instantaneous and harsh she couldn’t even conceive of stifling the yelp that flew past her lips. With its dissolution, so, too, did the conversation in the hallway beyond peter to still nothingness.

“You know, maybe that isn’t one of your finer ideas,” Gabriel replied, heaping snide emphasis on “finer” in a way that made the convalescing assassin grateful for his beautifully unflinching capability to inform others of what he perceived as idiocy.

Moira’s retaliatory quiet spoke volumes to her displeasure. “Later, then,” she sniffed. As the shutting of her door echoed along the corridor, only Gabriel’s palpable disdain remained.

Though she couldn’t see him, Widowmaker could picture perfectly his expression: feigned indifference betrayed by the faintest upward curl of his lip, eyes narrowed on the doctor’s door as she disengaged with all the consideration regularly afforded an ant. She recalled that look so well, remembered the first time she saw it and recognized in Gabriel the same, seething dislike of Moira she harbored. She and Gabriel were things to her: “investments” and “experiments” that, while valuable on paper or display, were always precariously at risk of obsolescence.

Gabriel sighed, loud and heavy and sounding as tired as she felt. Despite the pang of dejection it caused her, Widowmaker wished, briefly, that Sombra were there lobbing witty rejoinders at Moira’s back. Shelving that desire for some future slight she knew would inevitably come, she returned her attention to the ceiling, idly tracing its contours until sleep graced her with its blissfully uneventful presence.

Tomorrow, as fate would have it, did not include a visit from Sombra; nor did the next day.

Widowmaker thought little of it: if it wasn’t Gabriel disallowing her visitation, it was Akande. If it wasn’t Akande, the sniper hardly found it unfair to assume of Moira some insistence her investment be left alone.

Truthfully, she didn’t mind. Those first few days confined to the med bay were far from her best. Though she was by no means a stranger to the heavy toll Talon’s line of work exacted on a body, Widowmaker was frankly astounded at the extent of her injuries and the resultant pain they caused her. Her frustration was compounded by the innate restlessness which governed her existence, now amplified by the frequent bouts of inactivity required of recovery. The result was a compound mixture of persistent discomfort and irritation that only fed the perpetual motion device of her anxiety. Everything hurt, and every day that passed amounted to another week of training to reattain the standard of conditioning she maintained for herself. Every second, every minute constituted the erosion of some degree of skill or finesse; that belief, like everything else, left her hopelessly cagey and acutely aware of the slowness with which her body seemed to respond to and incorporate the nanites implemented to facilitate rapid healing.

By all means, they were working. They just weren’t working fast enough.

On the fourth day, Moira begrudgingly cleared her for release from both the med bay and direct supervision, with the caveat she remain in bed the rest of the week.

“Small breaks here and there,” she explained, shouldering the bulk of the assassin’s weight as she guided her to her room with a tangible air of inconvenience. “Stretches, short walks; nothing more. If I so much as see you thinking about thinking of more, I will personally break your legs to ensure the rest of you mends.”

“That is very reassuring,” Widowmaker replied sarcastically, wincing at the dull ache bookending the statement.

Between the return to her own space, the assumption of increased autonomy, and the not insubstantial regimen of pain suppressants, she found herself capable of focusing on subjects beyond her own body for the first time in days. Unfortunately, that meant she inevitably returned to the mission itself and, consequentially, Sombra.

While restricted to the med bay and Moira’s constant attention, Widowmaker had neither the time, space, or bandwidth for any substantive consideration of what had happened; between the pain, the barrage of exams, and the imperative for rest, her thoughts were, while not exactly occupied, precluded. Now, with her wits at least somewhat about her and a sudden excess of free time, she met head-on a snowballing jumble of guilt, frustration, confusion, and hurt with which she was entirely unfamiliar: something deep, profound, and aching. With that came the questions: what, exactly happened? What went wrong? Why?

Combing through her memories for the first time in days, she pieced their mission back together bit by bit until there was only negative space left to fill - the skeleton of an event, devoid of the meat and flesh that gave it shape. What she could remember, she did with vivid detail: Sombra, leading them in an unremarkable infiltration; Sombra, leaving them behind; Sombra, surrounded by armed men; Sombra, suddenly there but so excruciatingly late. Every attempt at filling the gaps begat the same questions in the same sequence, the absence of any answers only serving as fuel for her frustration. Exhausted by the cyclicality of her own thoughts, Widowmaker sought distraction and found it in the small stack of books resting on her bedside table, topped with a hand-written note from Akande that simply read, “Take it easy. That’s an order.”

With the shadow of a smile, she tucked into the topmost paperback - an ancient-looking copy of Flaubert’s Salammbô - shouldering through her disquiet with pointed intentionality.

Hours passed, mostly uninterrupted save for the sporadic catnap, until the tinny grinding latches and plates made apparent the slow turn of the doorknob.

Glancing over the top of her book, Widowmaker met Sombra’s eye with catlike disinterest.

“Hey,” the hacker greeted her, gaze faltering. “How’re you doing?”

Closing Flaubert over one finger, Widowmaker scooted back against the headboard with deliberate gentility, righting herself against the headboard. The carefully-stitched incision along the line of her stomach screeched its dissatisfaction in a rolling wave of pain, gone as quickly as it appeared. “I am not dead,” she replied shakily, resisting the urge to shrug still-sore shoulders. “It is a plus.”

She watched Sombra, normally so self-assured, lingering behind the just-cracked door with all the cowed hesitancy of a child fully aware of their own misbehavior. That hesitant aversion - to her and to the uncomfortable situation before them - was so deeply contrary to the Sombra she knew that she almost invited her in out of pity alone. Pity, however, did not inform her invitation or the wave of the unbound hand signaled it; instead, it was that same, unfamiliar sorrow she struggled to identify and the want to see it addressed.

Closing the door behind her, Sombra crossed the room in a few, timid steps, scooting the sniper’s desk chair ahead of herself and positioning it adjacent the bed. Sitting heavily, she leaned forward, elbows on her knees, and immediately blurted out the most graceless, albeit perceptibly sincere “I’m sorry” Widowmaker had ever heard her supply.

Taking a leveling breath, she dogeared her page and set the book on the mattress beside her, smoothing thin fingertips over the surface of her duvet as she considered her response. Widowmaker studied the woman before her, still in bedclothes despite their being well into the afternoon. Clothing aside, Sombra looked as if she hadn’t slept in days - and if she had, it certainly wasn’t restorative. One look was all that was required to see that Sombra had done her share of suffering, and even Widowmaker wasn’t cruel enough to add to it.

“I accept your apology,” she said at last. “Whatever you did, I do not think this was the outcome you intended.”

“It isn’t,” Sombra replied.

“What was your intent?”

Hanging her head, the hacker sighed, inhaled slowly, then sat back in her chair. “I arranged a meeting with Matin. I’d been fucking with them since the first mission we blew, and offered to stop in exchange for the virus they dropped on me. They finally said yes, but I didn’t trust them not to fuck me over. There’s only one of me; I needed backup. So I sold it to everyone like a takedown and left out the rest. I wanted that virus, spider. Bad.”

The truth felt like a slap in the face, raw and sharp.

“You lied,” Widowmaker said matter-of-factly. There was that peculiar mess of unnameable affectivity, buoyed by the sudden understanding of what went wrong. Finally, she could attach a name to it: betrayal.

“I lied.”

Pinching the bridge of her nose, the sniper closed her eyes as the sting of Sombra’s admission washed over her. “We would have helped you. I would have helped you.”

Sombra looked askance of her, violet eyes settling anywhere but on her.

Widowmaker frowned. “I understand. You lie. I expect there will always be secrets. But on assignment, Sombra? Do you not trust me? Have I misinterpreted… this?” She accompanied the question with a wave of her free hand between them.

“I trust you,” the spy muttered.

“Do you?”

As she pulled her knees into her chest, Sombra offered a single, plaintive nod. “I do. I just— I’m used to working alone, playing everything close to the chest. I have to do it that way; I can’t not do it that way. It’s how you stay alive, doing what I do; it’s how I stay alive.”

“I do not care if you lie to me every single day for the rest of my life as long as it causes no unnecessary danger,” the sniper explained. “This was incredibly unnecessary.”

Again, Sombra nodded her affirmation, this time lifting her gaze to meet the other woman’s. “I’m sorry I’m such a shit.”

Widowmaker pursed her lips, her expression softening incrementally. “You did a shitty thing. It is not what you are.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see.”

“Look,” the sniper said, extending her hand to Sombra. She accepted it with some hesitation, eyeing the gesture with due suspicion before lacing her fingers through her own. “No amount of making you feel bad fixes this. You fix it by not doing it again.”

Though the hurt lingered - and Widowmaker suspected it would for some time - the clear sincerity of Sombra’s apology and the emotion informing it allowed the sniper a modicum of quiet, internal reconciliation. She couldn’t say she felt better, or that the situation was improved by any observable metric, but this was a start: a place from which to move forward and a foundation upon which she could allow Sombra to rebuild her trust. Nothing was ideal, but, then again, few things ever were for spies and assassins.

“I’ll do my best,” Sombra agreed.

“That is good enough.”

*Read from the beginning or check out our intro post! All stories tagged under #glitchfic. Table of contents located here.

[spannycattheogony]

A Reconstruction of The Orphic Rhapsodic Theogony

A Reconstruction of The Orphic Rhapsodic Theogony (c. Late 5th Century BC):

THE FIRST KING

What was at the very beginning cannot be explained or understood; it can only be spoken of indirectly because there is no way to comprehend something in which its points of differentiation have yet to be expressed. It is called the Beginning Which Cannot Be Spoken. It is not created; it did not come to be; it has always been. It is there before anything else; it is there at the beginning; it is now and will always be. Orpheus, the founder of Mysteries, tells us that within this undifferentiated mixture are Earth and Water and it is from the dance of these two that everything which is comes to be. For Ageless Time was moved by Necessity and gave birth to Aither and a limitless chasm which extended in every direction, and everything was in tumult. In the Aither, Time formed a silvery egg. And the egg began to move in an enormous and wondrous circle and from the egg Phanes emerged, and as he was born, the Aither and the Chasm were torn apart.

Behold the son of Aither! The First-Born (Protogonos)! The Shining One (Phaethon)! Who by his nature illumines everything and was the first to appear in the Aither! Witness his four eyes looking everywhere and marvel at his four horns! Behold his golden wings which flutter all about! He bellows like a massive bull and roars like a lion! He is Erikæpaios, both male and female, who harbors in his heart blind and swift Eros! He is Metis, the progenitor of the Gods, who call him the Revealer and First-born! He is the one with the mighty voice; he is all-seeing Zeus! He can be seen only by his daughter Nyx, but his effulgent light shining in the Aither draws wonder for those who behold it, illuminating the world with great brilliance.

Now Phanes caused many things to occur. He built an everlasting dwelling for the Immortal Gods. He brought forth the Moon, which Gods call Selene and mortals call Mene, with mountains, cities, and mansions. And for the ephemeral beings he made a world separate from the Immortals, with natural laws and a sun as their lord, neither too cold nor too hot, but appropriate for their needs. These things he, Erikæpaios the first king, made from his seat in the misty darkness of the Cave of his daughter Nyx. Oh glorious Phanes! You are the father of Justice, Prudence, and Truth, the three nights! And thus did he divide the world between Gods and mortals.

THE SECOND KING

Phanes then united with his daughter Nyx, the Mother of Dreams, and gave her the rulership. He placed in her hands his mighty staff, the scepter of Erikæpaios, and bestowed upon her the gift of prophecy.

THE THIRD KING

Nyx, the nurse of the Gods, made obvious those who were previously concealed: she gave birth to Gaia, whose name means “earth,” and to Ouranos, the limits of the mind, whose name means “sky,” and she gave the scepter of Phanes to Ouranos and thereby gave him the kingship. Ouranos and Gaia united and this is the first marriage.

Now the royal couple produced children. Gaia first gave birth to the Moirae: Klotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. Then Gaia gave birth to the three Cyclopes and the three giant Hundred-Handers, but these were an unruly bunch and Ouranos cast them into the bowels of the earth, for he had received an oracle that his own children would overthrow him.

But when Ouranos imprisoned her sons, Gaia was greatly distressed, so she then gave birth to six lovely daughters and six kingly sons, indeed, the great Titanes who are the powers of the natural world, they who drag or stretch.

The six Titanic daughters are law-giving Themis and gentle Tethys, Mnemosyne the mother of the fair-haired Mousai, and happy Theia the mother of light. And Gaia bore radiant Phoibi who held the seat at Delphí, and glorious Rheia the mother of the aigis-bearing Olympian king of all.

The seven Titanic sons are querying Koios the father of Leto and Astæria, Kreios the lord of the vast constellations, light-giving Hyperion the father of the Sun and the Moon, genial Iapetos the father of the race of men, Okæanos who encircles and envelops the earth with his many streams, and greatest of all, kingly Kronos, he who strikes (awakens) the mind, father of glorious children. Of all these mighty sons and daughters of Earth and Sky it was Kronos who Nyx cherished and cultivated.

Gaia pleaded with the Titanes to overthrow their father for having cast her progeny into Tartaros. All the siblings rallied to her supplication with the exception of Okæanos who brooded darkly in the halls of his palace trying to decide what to do. The plot angered the mighty God against his mother and even more so against his siblings, so he declined to join them.

Gaia gave Kronos an adamantine sickle and when Ouranos came to lie with her, Kronos cut off his genitals. The members of Ouranos flew through the air into the wine-dark sea and swirled about in the restless blue waters forming a wondrous foam out of which emerged beautiful Heavenly Aphrodite, the mother of Harmony, and as she was born, Zilos (Rivalry) and Apate (Deceit) took her into their care. Kypris, daughter of Tethys, or Thalassa.

THE FOURTH KING

These things having been accomplished, Kronos assumed the kingship; he deserved this by his very nature and for having borne the greatest weight of the deed done to his father. He married his sister Rheia, and the other siblings married one another, Tethys and Okæanos, Phoibi and Koios, Theia and Hyperion, Themis and Iapætos, and the others.

THE FIFTH KING

And then Zeus went to the Sacred Cave and asked, “Mother, supreme of all the Gods, immortal Nyx, how am I to proceed? How can I inaugurate my rule with the immortal Gods? How can I keep all things as one, yet separate?” And blessed Nyx, gleaming with the blue of dawn, answered him saying, “Surround everything in the Aither …the heavens, the earth, the sea, and the stars… and bind them all with a golden aitherial chain.”

Thus mighty Zeus engulfed and swallowed Erikæpaios, employing all of his power, and drew everything that existed into the hollow of his belly. And now all things in Zeus were created anew: the sky, the sea, the earth, and all the blessed and immortal Gods and Goddesses, all that was then, and all that will be, all mingled in the belly of Zeus.

Mighty cloud-gathering Zeus, with deep fore-knowledge, understood that he must marry his mother Demeter, she who designed the works of the droning bees, but Demeter resisted his advances and transformed herself into a serpent. Zeus responded by becoming a serpent himself and the two intertwined in a Knot of Heracles producing the Daughter Persephone.

When adequate time had passed and life-giving Persephone was at the bloom of her youth, Zeus again became a serpent, united with her, and produced the child Zagreos (Dionysos), the sweet child of his father. Meanwhile, Demeter gives the throne to Persephone to rule in Dionysos’ place until he comes of age. She tells her daughter to go into the bed of Apollo and that they will produce the Eumenides.

Under Phanes there had been a Golden Age of men. And under Kronos there was a Silver Age where men had very long lives. But there would now be a new age, the Titanic Age, with humans and sundry kinds of animals, some who fly, some walking, and others swimming, all of whom have souls from the soot, but in due time their bodies grow old and fade away or are destroyed by disease or violence. {Reconstruction from https://www.hellenicgods.org/orphic-rhapsodies------24 and other selected Orphic fragments}.