I have always loved this ship and I was thrilled that wizard was making events that supported it, like the valentine’s event, their matching Icons, and the voice lines they shared.
I play Mercy and my boyfriend plays Genji since the game’s released, but the voice lines were removed, we kinda miss them, and the discouraging statement the editors wrote saying that they stopped talking just because Mercy draw something in their letters and Genji didn’t know what to respond.
I know the developers are using a lot of resources to make happy the LGTBI communities and they are pushing more for the Pharmercy ship, but I think theres gotta be something for all of us, and there is not an straight couple between the playable characters.
It is only me who feels this way. Is there other players out there upset about this?
I don’t remember the Pharah Mercy ship in game though. Plus Mercy is I think older than genji (and pharah) and basically saved his life, acting like a mother figure (and mercy litteraly thought in the crisis with Ana, her mother).
I think there is a strong mutual respect but that’d be off to ship them together.
I think pharah and mercy used to have like 10 year age difference, she and genji had less than 5.
No idea with all the story retconning and re-telling though. with the amount of writers hired and fired since, i don’t know if any existing information is trustworthy at all. (With being around when the original ow story was given to us though, i feel weird shipping pharmercy.
An example of story retconning and plotholes below.
I think kiriko’s profile states she’s 18, but in her hero introduction (not the short film) we can clearly see her practicing sword forms with the shimada brothers. In the images hanzo seems at most 10 years older than her.
Since hanzo is (according to his profile) 40 years old, we have a really bad plot hole here.
If kiriko is now 18, and during ow time hanzo was 38. Hanzo was around 28 when the whole genji debacle happened. Kiriko would have been 6. Which makes no sense with all the voiceline interactions with her and the shimadas, where they seem very close friends (i can’t see a 24 year old befriending a 4 year old on that level).
I have a somewhat particular opinion of the “pharmercy”: I think that in reality they wanted to highlight a greater similarity between Phara and Mercy as “half-sisters”, with a possible crush on the part of Pharah for Mercy. The fact that with ow2 was not the only new relationship that was consolidated in the roster makes me think so. Take for example Sombra who in OW2 was described as being very close to Sigma, she worries about his safety. Or Brigitte with Hanzo and Lucio about her passion for poetry, which is somehow a new common interest in the lore.
the misunderstanding, however, is quite understandable: they gave too much to these two characters (references to the codex, voicelines, etc.) and too little with Genji (zero in the codex and in-game interaction voicelines) despite many times in the past they have spammed a possible relationship between the two characters even on Valentine’s Day. But I also think it’s not a real “clue” that phamercy has multiple voicelines: the game has countless voicelines of Mercy commenting on Moira in the gameplay, yet I don’t see a possible romantic hook in it at all.
On Mercy I think Pharah is like her younger sister, as (lore speaking) mercy was orphaned very early, selling a sort of new family in OW (including torbjorn and ana af step-parents). on the contrary, it wouldn’t surprise me to see in Pharah a crush / admiration for this “big sister”, and not just for the sexual orientation that was written above.
I think / hope that over time they will clarify that ship has mercy in the end… but I don’t think it will be phamercy but rather having handled the plot of “genji and mercy have a more complex relationship than people think” too badly. and it was Jeff Kaplan who said it once at blizzcon. oops, goodbye kaplan , goodbye michael chu , and even the most recent story writer is gone :development hasn’t moved forward because there’s no one who can actually continue that dialogue of mercy that says to genji "what’s wrong, genji? " - “I go to visit my master” in the Invasion pve.
oh… absolutely wrong these ages!
it’s a common mistake, resulting from a total lack of research of sources by looking at the photo of Ana origins. A quick look around the wiki is enough to explain some details, but I wrote something more “direct” some time ago to clear up this misunderstanding byu Ana origins photo:
the age difference between genji (37 years), pharah (34 years) and mercy (39 years) is a few years, it is also written in the biographies pages since ow1 how old they were. the misunderstanding due exclusively to new (uninformed) players who, seeing that photo, started fantasizing about obviously impossible things . but if I have to be equally honest… it is also the “fault” of the developers that the information is often left in the sea of the web ready to be lost without recoverable sources, most of the time.
in reality michael chu had already been making plot holes for some time, over the years. the only advantage that Overwatch currently has is the “declassified” book which restores a lot of information released over the years. and not too long ago they fix the Sojourn’s biographical lore from her novel.
Kiriko is currently… the only character who actually creates an unacceptable temporal inconsistency, and who still continues to persevere in making her younger than she should. this ir a real problem between the origin story and the biography: https://preview.redd.it/we-finally-know-kirikos-age-v0-s9y3skts3xmb1.png?auto=webp&s=f3b1041b0c4052d5158df679b2b4c15614165030 16 years of difference with Genji are really TOO MANY to justify that scene. they should have at least raised Kiriko’s age threshold by 6 years, but they seem to refuse to do so. What problems are there if at 27 she still lives with her VERY protective mother?
She didn’t even live with her mum in her animatic. She had her own flat, the building didn’t look super new so it wouldn’t even have been super expensive.
And the fact that kiriko is using her grandmother’s name instead of her parents’ to hide her relation with the said mum, for her own safety. It would make more sense for her to be older than 18.
And the mother’s protectiveness is in part explained by hints of her husband being held by the hashimoto clan to keep her in check.
Kiriko is her baby, and the only family she has.
But the details of the lore there are certainly a minefield of inconsistensies.
I’ve been around since 2016, and all i remember being talked about that picture is that some characters looked younger than they should. I’m not sure which ones.
I didn’t state the ages as concrete facts as i’ve never really been that interested in pharah’s lore, but i did remember mercy’s and genji’s ages.
I’ve always seen pharah and mercy more as siblings as well, which is why it feels so very weird to me if at any point they’re made canon.
The difference in genji,mercy and mercy, moira voicelines is the clear playfulness between the medic and the cyborgninja.
Especially during the Storm rising mission during the archives event, which at the time was a very visible and very trusted source of canon information.
I can see why people ship gency based on those, but the same playfulness can easily be heard in the pharmercy lines.
Gency still personally feels less problematic for me, especially if it was kindled after the fall of blackwatch. As at the time genji would have been recovered enough physically to not cause too many ethical problems.
Especially since during blackwatch it doesn’t feel like he would have been capable of forming bonds like that “blinded by anger” as he was. Not to mention that he was in “pain and agony” most of the time due to the prostethics as well.
Jeff Kaplan who said it once at blizzcon. oops, goodbye kaplan 
, goodbye michael chu 
. but if I have to be equally honest… it is also the “fault” of the developers that the information is often left in the sea of the web ready to be lost without recoverable sources, most of the time.