raptorific:

gogoakechi:

undercitytwerkteam: mccree was a founding member of the deadlock gang when they started in 1976, 47 years before he was born, and then was recruited by blackwatch at the age of 17 does blizzard even read their own writing

additionally, blackwatch was formed only 8 years before the story’s present time, meaning he would be 25 at MOST, but nah who gives a damn hes 37 i guess. and overwatch itself takes place in the mid 2070s, so mccree is, canonically, three different ages ranging from 25 to 100+ depending on narrative. i hate this game

Okay so I don’t want to be this guy, or engage with the Overwatch fandom, ever, but I really need for people to stop assuming that just because you’ve never even bothered to google old west gangs, the creators of a media that draws heavily on specific historical imagery must never have looked into it.

If you had googled it, you’d know that old west outlaw gangs were almost never the huge criminal organizations the media sensationalized them to be. They were almost always a number of gangs using the same name (taken from the location they used as their hideout) who would do their own jobs for their own gangs, and they’d only even see each other when they happened to be using the hideout at the same time.

For example, the "hole-in-the-wall” gang was actually several gangs with sovereign chains of command that had nothing to do with one another except that they agreed that they’d all get to use the hideout (hole-in-the-wall pass) as long as they agreed to never steal from each other or rat each other out to the authorities, as well as rules for how to deal with inter-gang conflicts, should they arise. These gangs pretty much spanned however long the hideouts stayed viable, which often lasted decades.

Does that sound familiar? It should, if you’re trying to make definitive statements on the lore, because if it doesn’t, you haven’t read the lore, which means you aren’t qualified to talk about how it doesn’t make sense! This is exactly what’s been stated about the “Deadlock Gang” in Ashe’s bio. Like, almost to the word, the structure of the criminal alliance in the American Southwest.

So, if you know literally the first thing about American Western outlaws, the reason why McCree can have a Deadlock Rebels Est. 1976 tattoo even though the Deadlock Gang was formed within his lifetime should be obvious to you. They’re two organizations that both operated out of Deadlock Gorge, something I’m sure the outlaw-obsessed history buff knew about when he started his gang. The writers must’ve thought you all had basic enough media literacy to figure that out, but clearly that’s an issue here, because people are wondering why there seems to be two different groups in Deadlock gorge called Deadlock founded at different times.

Now, you can dismiss everything I’ve just said. If you choose to believe that the writers based something on history (and part of history that’s incredibly common knowledge thanks to pop culture) without knowing anything about it, and then made a whole bunch of unrelated mistakes that happen to make their story ridiculously historically accurate by accident, be my guest. I’m not your mom, I can’t force you to stop being wrong on the internet, and you’re free to call me an idiot and say I’m reaching and pretend that poor media literacy on your part is actually poor writing on the franchise’s part. But, if we’re going by occam’s razor on this one, doesn’t it seem like “this gang is similar to the old west gangs it’s based on because the writers did that on purpose” is more likely than “the writers suck so hard that they got everything about old west gangs wrong and then made a bunch of other mistakes that cancelled it out and made them right by accident?”

Also, Blackwatch wasn’t founded 8 years ago. It says that nowhere. Blackwatch was already active at least 20 years “before present.” A blackwatch base was set up eight years ago, but “retribution” was not ever stated to be Blackwatch’s first mission; it was actually stated to be one of Blackwatch’s last missions. Plus, McCree is directly stated to be exactly 37, having been caught in a sting operation and recruited into Overwatch as a teenager. So, I guess the question isn’t “does blizzard even read their own writing,” it’s more, do you even read their writing, or do you just make up your own nonsense and then pat yourself on the back for calling it nonsense?