#probably the only normal takes are the ones for 76 and Tracer lol

[overwatch-does-stuff]

"How pissed would I be if they got a heterosexual love interest in OW2?" - a tier list

Explanations below cut:

"GOD PLEASE NO" category:

Bastion: Not that I don't think that Bastion shouldn't have enough agency to flirt, it's only that Blizz would force Bastion to be male and their love interest to be female and THAT would make me furious. Plus there's so much more interesting things you could do with their character. If hetero romance is the only spot where my bot gets screen time there's going to be violence.

Soldier 76 and Tracer: should be pretty fucking obvious lmao

Reinhardt: If I attempted to explain my reasoning on why Rein is aro/ace this post would be incomprehensible. TL;DR I want this old and still single character to not lament about how he's somehow incomplete just because he didn't find a romantic relationship. If I ever hear the words "I regret that I didn't settle down" come out of Reinhardt's mouth I'm assassinating Blizzard's lead writers.

"Mad" category:

Ashe: they'd just write her as a tsundere. Plus have you seen this woman she's so gay. I'm claiming her for the lesbians.

Moira: I just think she'd much rather use the men close to her in her life as lab experiments instead, you know?

Orisa: To be fair, do you really think she'd be interested in any romance at all at this point in her life? Romance isn't going to protect Numbani.

Symmetra: Not that I don't think she shouldn't be in a romantic relationship, it's just that I think she deserves a girlfriend, you know? I can feel it in my bones. Plus I think blizz would try and make Lucio or perhaps a Vishkar employee the hetero love interest and THAT would piss me off so badly.

Sigma: this man needs therapy first, jesus christ

Ana: This woman's already sacrificed her family once in the line of duty. She just flat out wouldn't seek out another vulnerable connection like that, I think.

"annoyed" category:

Junkrat: this dude getting any screentime would annoy me, actually, so I guess I'm not biased against him being straight??

Mercy: She's already so cookie-cutter already!! Being straight would somehow make her even more statistically average as a character!!

Pharah: I would prefer that the writers focus on her mommy issues first.

Sombra: I could see her fucking around to manipulate men for information but I think she's got too much of a complex to actually let herself be emotionally vulnerable in that sort of way a love interest demands.

Hanzo: this man is sad and pathetic. no woman would be attracted to him. (WAIT ACTUALLY ALTERNATE JOKE- he had a wife and now he's post-divorce with zero fix-it tension. I think that'd be funny, actually. I would accept that.)

"Neutral but still not wild about it" category:

Reaper: whatever Blizzard is planning with his old family is probably going to come to fruition, and I can honestly say I'm indifferent as I never was a R76 shipper.

Cole: He's charming enough. Seeing him flirt with women wouldn't be like pulling teeth.

Widowmaker: "redemption through love interest" sort of thing?? I'd probably be madder if I actually cared about her as a character. She's also here because of Gerard shenanigans. Angsty murder-regret-pining for him would be tolerable.

Baptiste: see Cole's notes, but also add in the interaction that confirms he canonically loves MILFs

Echo: "learning how to be human through love with a man" falls just close enough to the manic pixie dreamgirl trope to set off my alarm bells but not enough for me to place her any higher on the list.

Doomfist: I could see him having an evil wife that's doing the evil shenanigans with him. Actually, I would like to see whatever design Doomfist's wife might have. I think that would be badass as hell. But on the flipside there's an equal chance that Blizz could think that pairing him with a non-evil innocent little lady could redeem him or add angst or something and that keeps him thoroughly out "okay" territory.

"Okay, I could be on board" category:

(there's a surprising amount of people here!)

Lucio, D.va, and Mei: These three all fall under the same category for me, and that category is "I think they'd be cute with their crushes". Of all the Overwatch caste, these three give me the strongest hetero vibes. I can't explain it. I apologize

Roadhog: I could be on board with him finding a gal that softens him up. Only caveat is that the gal shouldn't be conventionally attractive either or I will eat Blizzard alive.

Winston: Have you seen this guy? I think it'd be cute as hell to have him try to flirt with girls. "but he's a gorilla-" shut the fuck up. Let him have his moment!

Zarya: okay here I have to explain. You were probably expecting her to be up in the "GOD PLEASE NO" category because you thought I might claim her for the lesbians. And that assumption. . . kind of pisses me off? Because every frat gamer boy back in 2016 looked at her nontraditional femininity and the only way their puny minds could rationalize seeing a woman that wasn't tailor-made for their boners was to just slap the lesbian label onto her. She got labeled a dyke as a very hostile thing against her character, so I think it would actually be more forward-thinking for her to be open to male love interests. Bi or straight women shouldn't have to fear "looking too masculine" in their search for men. TL;DR I think she'd appreciate a femboy

Zenyatta: He's just so sweet! He can be in love with anybody he wants to lol, man or woman or neither.

Brigitte: Okay, okay, this one's on me, but Brigitte reminds me way too much of my sister, who is happily married to her loving husband and I can't get that out of my brain. I apologize.

Genji: He's almost exclusively here for the joke that he's been happily married to a loving wife for three years now, and nobody knows about it because he keeps his private and work life extremely separate, and he just never thought to bring it up until Torbjorn mentioned anniversaries. Just to really, really stick it to post-divorce Hanzo and whatever Soldier 76 has going on with Vincent. (I'm not sure why this bit is funnier when it's a wife instead of a husband, but it is. Trust me.)

Hammond: I want him to have a human girlfriend back in Junkertown. No explanation. She even knows he's a hamster. She doesn't care.

"(Canonically married to the opposite sex)" category:

Torbjorn: Torb my beloved you're doing amazing sweetie, you go spoil that wife of yours!! You treat her nice and well!!!

--- tag section

@ow-anteater I apologize but I need you to see this. You should make your own tierlist lol I'm interested in your thoughts on the matter.

[skivvysupreme]

“Heroes Never Die” - Kurt & New Directions, Kurt/Blaine

continuing my new favorite thing of throwing Kurt and Blaine into videogames... the world could always use more heroes. :)

AKA the New Directions play Overwatch, and Kurt makes a new friend AKA I, Skivvy, would very much like to be at home playing Overwatch, but I’m not off work yet

@whatstheproblembaby​ thanks for looking this over as a non-player, lol. hope it makes sense! I don’t know how many of you fellow klainers/gleeks play, but here are some references for anyone who doesn’t *know* the game and wants a little more clarification! you’ve probably seen some of these around tumblr?

the battle map: King’s Row Kurt’s team: Mercy | Pharah | Genji | Widowmaker | Tracer | D.Va enemy team: Lucio | Reinhardt | Symmetra | Torbjorn | McCree | Soldier76

part 1 of whatever? 

2000 words | read on AO3

“Kurt, I need heals!” 

“Then you shouldn’t have run in alone and then gotten stuck in an enclosed space where I can’t heal you, Sam,” Kurt sing-songs into his headset, keeping his wing-suited Mercy attached to Artie’s jet-packed Pharah as they fly around the point area they’re trying to keep control of in King’s Row. Besides the chance to get a good look at the beautiful, futuristic London panorama around them, sticking with Pharah allows Kurt a bird’s-eye view of who needs help. As Mercy, he can see Genji’s low health through the walls, Sam hiding from their enemies in a little room behind the point with a bright red and white plus symbol over him.

“This wouldn’t have happened if you’d switched characters like I asked. Don’t pick Genji if you don’t know what you’re doing,” Artie says, firing off a rocket in Sam’s general direction for no other reason than to express his bitterness.

Kurt shakes his head. Artie is obsessed with Genji, and skillfully plays Genji as his main character, but Sam had snagged him as soon as the game started and stubbornly refused to switch. 

“Like you never get hurt as Genji? I never get to practice him in matches because you always take him!” 

“I ALWAYS TAKE HIM BECAUSE HE’S MY MAIN! And you just jumped in there like an idiot--”

“I was going to knock out their Reinhardt from behind, I didn’t realize they'd gotten their Symmetra on the point, too!” Sam whines, frantically spamming the healing request button. Genji calls out over the team chat, “I need healing!”

“If you’d picked your own main instead of stealing someone else’s, you could’ve healed yourself,” Artie snaps, referring to Soldier: 76′s biotic field, a handy little bubble of healing energy that he can use on himself and his teammates. 

Ignoring Artie and his salty attitude, Sam’s Genji keeps calling out, “I need healing! I need healing! I need healing!”

Kurt presses the acknowledgement button (”Understood,” Mercy responds in her soft Swiss-German accent) and ignores the healing request. “BOYS! If you don’t shut up and focus, I’m not healing either one of you. Come on, we can win this one!”

“Can someone do something about this fucking Lucio?!” Santana snarls in frustration over the voice chat. 

Kurt turns briefly in the air to watch the enemy healer. Lucio has been a problem this entire game, deftly dodging their team’s fire and keeping his own team protected and mobile with well-timed speed and healing boosts. At the moment, he’s circling around on the point as though it’s a very small roller rink, attempting to capture it for his team, though the capture rate is slow because he’s on his own and keeps wall-riding off the point to dodge Santana’s Widowmaker. Kurt sees her sniper shots missing over and over, uncharacteristic for Santana and her main; her bullet streams come close to Lucio’s head but can’t land, and body shots are quickly made irrelevant by Lucio’s self-healing ability. Whoever’s playing him is good.

Santana swears when Widowmaker takes a couple hits from the enemy Torbjorn’s rapid-fire turret and backs off a little, Kurt quickly flying over to her for a quick healing boost before he links back up with Artie. “We’re running out of time and I can’t get him off the point, he’s too fast!”

“Where the hell is--? Oh, there she is,” Kurt mutters, hearing Tracer’s gleeful “Whee!” as Brittany speeds her towards the enemy Lucio. She blinks behind him, in front of him, behind him again, shooting all the time and maneuvering faster than Lucio can catch her. When he finally gets frustrated enough to try and push her back with a sound wave, Tracer rewinds, flipping behind him and taking him out before he can turn around. 

“Wooo!” Brittany yells, laughing before she blinks away again. “Got him, babe!”

“That’s my girl,” Santana sighs, resuming her careful attacks on the enemy Torbjorn’s and Symmetra’s arrangement of turrets.

Genji calls, “I need healing!”

The enemy Reinhardt, who Artie and Kurt have successfully kept distracted with rockets up until this point, finally turns and unleashes his special, ultimate ability. “HAMMER DOWN!!!” he shouts, throwing down said hammer and sending a burst of fiery energy rumbling through the ground to catch Tina’s D.Va and knock her off her feet as she tries to sneak up behind him.

“He solo-ulted me!” Tina wails, D.Va’s mech legs wiggling uselessly in the air like an overturned beetle as the Reinhardt marches ominously towards her. From overhead, Kurt can see D.Va’s tiny human figure flailing inside the mech suit, powerless to escape; it would be a comical sight if she weren’t about to take a Reinhardt hammer to the face. 

Genji calls, “I need healing!”

Artie and Kurt react in tandem, Artie shooting a concussive rocket to push the Reinhardt off his path and Kurt swooping down to Tina to give her a power boost in case the Reinhardt moves more aggressively than anticipated.

“Thanks!” D.Va chirps, a little thumbs-up icon appearing above her. Tina and Artie team up to take out the Reinhardt, pummeling him with shots from behind and breaking down his shield from the front until he’s finally eliminated. Tina’s D.Va turns her attention to the enemy McCree and Soldier: 76, and Artie and Kurt get back in the air to assist from above. 

Thirty seconds remain. 

“Enemy turret destroyed,” they hear Widowmaker announce in her smooth French accent, the sound merging nicely with Santana’s satisfied snickering in the background. 

“Symmetra and her turrets are out, too!” Brittany adds, activating a voice line so that Tracer calls out her cheerful, high-pitched signature: “Cheers, love! The cavalry’s here!”

Then, just as Kurt notices that the enemy Lucio, Symmetra, Torbjorn, and Reinhardt are storming back to the point way faster than they should be after dying so soon, Genji announces, “The enemy has a teleporter.” 

At Sam’s prompting, Genji also calls, “I need healing!”

“Crap - everybody go, we have to clear it out! Destroy the teleporter if you find it!” Kurt calls. The entire team moves as quickly as they can, including Sam’s Genji, who darts out of his hiding spot so that Kurt’s Mercy can finally heal him.

Then, several things happen all at once, beginning with Kurt’s least favorite words in the entire game. 

“IT’S HIGH NOON...” 

Kurt barely has time to react before the enemy McCree groans in agony, his deadly ult interrupted by a swift headshot that prevents him from taking anyone else out. 

“No the fuck it’s not,” Santana hisses as the rest of the team laughs and cheers over the voice chat. Kurt sees her Widowmaker jump down from her perch to join the team on the ground and start shooting at the enemies, who have all gathered on the point. 

Tina pops her ult, D.Va yelling, “NERF THIS!” and ejecting from her mech as it speeds towards the enemies and begins to self-destruct. 

That infuriating enemy Lucio pops his ult at the same time, jumping in the air and slamming his speaker-gun on the ground. His call of “LET’S BREAK IT DOWN!” accompanies an impenetrable shield around his entire team, protecting them so that D.Va’s exploding mech, normally a debilitating and unforgiving ult, merely pushes the enemy team away from her a little. 

“Nooo, that was perfect! That would’ve been Play of the Game!” Tina screams, D.Va immediately jumping back into her replacement mech to keep fighting. Tina’s so loud in her fury that it seems no one but Kurt notices the next horrifying announcement:

“I’VE GOT YOU IN MY SIGHTS...” 

“Shit, shit, shit!” Kurt releases his link from Artie’s Pharah, gliding out of the enemy Soldier’s eye line and away from the inevitable carnage. Soldier: 76 pops his ult, his shots landing with deadly power and accuracy on whoever he can see.

Kurt’s the only one who dodges the attack. A bright yellow, triangular icon pops up on his display, noting four teammates dead from Soldier’s ult. Then all five of his teammates are down as the enemy Reinhardt fulfills his inexplicable vendetta against Tina’s D.Va and pins her mech against a nearby wall, his teammates helping him finish her off. Kurt can see little skull icons hovering in the air where each of them fell. 

He hears his team’s rage and disappointment over the voice chat but quickly yells over them, “This is our last shot, get ready!” With three seconds remaining, his Mercy locks on to one of the death icons littering the point and swoops in, emerging from her hiding spot and shouting, “HEROES NEVER DIE!”

In a burst of yellow beams, all five teammates reappear on the point, rising from the dead to send the game into overtime. Artie’s Pharah leaps into the air and shouts, “JUSTICE RAINS FROM ABOVE!” as a barrage of rockets comes down on the enemy team, taking out three of them as the rest of the team cleans up the survivors. 

The enemy team doesn’t have enough time to get back to the point before overtime runs out. Kurt’s team recaptures the defense point, “VICTORY” appearing on the screen in huge glowing letters. The match is over. 

“Oh my GOD,” Artie yells, the whole team whooping and chattering about how close that was. Kurt breathes and presses a palm to his face. He loves being Mercy, but god, is it stressful sometimes.

The Play of the Game animation begins, and Kurt is delighted to see Mercy on screen, spreading her wings and raising her arm in her signature Resurrection move. As expected, the replay shows his game-saving, 5-person rez in the eleventh hour. 

“Kurt, that was so good!” Brittany exclaims, all of their teammates voting for Kurt as MVP in the end-game recap that shows the match’s strongest players. He even gets one of the enemy team’s players’ votes, though all the other votes go to their team’s healer, Lucio. 

Sam whistles. “Seriously saved our asses, wow...”

“Wouldn’t have been so close if we had a useful Genji...” Artie mutters. 

“Seriously, bro?”

“Get good or get over it, Sam,” cackles Tina.

Kurt says nothing. He’s with Artie on this one.

“For fuck’s sake... I’m over this for the night, see you losers tomorrow,” Santana says, she and Brittany quickly exiting the group. The others follow soon after, until Kurt is alone and pressing his fingers to his temples with his headphones resting around his neck. 

A bell rings as a little pop-up appears in the upper left corner of the TV, noting that Kurt has a friend request from Nightbird1995. His eyebrow quirks with interest. It’s the enemy Lucio. 

The accompanying message reads, GG! By that, I mean ‘great game’ instead of ‘good game.’ Or ‘glorious game!’ What an AMAZING Mercy!!! :) healer buddy?

Kurt grins. What a sweetheart, this Lucio. He accepts the request and sends back, You’re pretty good yourself! I’ll be honest, you were irritating. The mark of a great player :P

If the enemy isn’t frustrated you’re not playing hard enough lol

Agreed. Though I doubt you had as much screaming in your voice chat as I did. My friends are... a lot

Lol. Wanna team up for a few quick rounds? My friends left :(((

Kurt answers by sending an Overwatch invitation to Nightbird1995 and putting his headset back on.

“Hi, Mercy! Or shall I call you ‘Blackbird?’” Nightbird1995 asks, a buoyant tenor voice playing in Kurt’s headphones. The player’s icon is a jar of peanut butter. 

Kurt snorts at the picture, but doesn’t comment on it. “You can call me Kurt... Nightbird?” 

“Ah, no, that’s my superhero alter-ego. I’m Blaine.” 

Blaine... Hmm. “Superhero by day, skilled healer by night?”

“That’s me,” Blaine laughs. The sound is wonderful. “Actually, I can play a lot of characters, if you want to stick with healer. Or I can. I’m versatile.”

What a refreshing change from his usual play group. Kurt likes it. Kurt likes him.

“We’ll see what kind of group we get. Ready?”

“Let’s save the world!” Blaine exclaims, pulling a chuckle from Kurt as he puts them in the queue for a game. 

This ought to be interesting. 

TBC