Overwatch’s new hero Shion disses a girlboss icon of American literature

Shion, Overwatch‘s new hero, does a lot of things. She plans elaborate acts of revenge against her enemies in John Wick-slash-Kill Bill style. She wears flashy clothes. She buys high-end motorcycles and then throws them at people for fun. Apparently, she also reads Emily Dickinson in her spare time — and she’s not a particular fan.

After the arc of “I suck playing Shion” rounded the curve and became “I’m regularly getting Play of the Game as Shion,” I started looking into her customization options. No point spending good coin on lines and stances for a character I’d never use, after all. I clicked through the list and selected one whose preview text reads “won’t stop for death.” The actual line is “I would not stop for death,” and it stood out from all the others. Not for its quality. Overwatch‘s voice line quality is always high, an impressive feat given how random and often disconnected from the game’s lore they are.

No, what stood out was the venom in the inflections. Shion’s actor Mariko Baika says the line the way you’d respond to someone who disgusts you. E.g. the person you hate says “I like crackers,” and then you say “Yeah, well I think crackers are stupid food for stupid people” — that kind of energy.

The emphasis also instantly made me think of Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for death.” The poem’s first lines read: “Because I could not stop for death/He kindly stopped for me,” and the idea is that Death caught up with Dickinson’s speaker in the end, even though they refused to make time or room for him in life. They couldn’t stop for Death. Shion, the line seemed to suggest, just wouldn’t, no matter how many times Death drove up and said “get in, loser.” Skill issue.

Shion survived years of torture at the hands of the Hashimoto, so yeah, no wonder she feels that way.I asked Blizzard’s narrative team if the similarities were coincidental, and they said nope: The connection wasn’t just in my head. Shion’s writer had that poem in mind while coming up with Shion’s non-story voice lines, and the diss is very much intentional. So in addition to Overwatch heroes being anime fans, they also occasionally indulge in reading the classics. Aaron Keller wasn’t kidding when he told us the team wanted Overwatch‘s cast to seem like normal people.

I already liked Shion. She’s a fabulous twist on the “tortured, vengeful soul” archetype, and season 3’s story is doing interesting things with her and Mizuki’s relationship. But the concept of Shion going home after a long day of exploding bikes, picking up a book of poems, and being that annoyed by it is such a brilliant bit of characterization that she might just end up being my new favorite.