A Note on Terminology Etiquette
Jan. 29th, 2026 09:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
configuration_birdwatcherIn the Overwatch universe, describing omnics with certain terms can be quite contentious, including some that are unremarkable in our world or in other canons! Bastion themself avoided contact with society as much as they possibly could, so they don't have a lot of personal baggage around being referred to in a rude way, but it's still jarring and awkward enough that they'll bring it up if someone from another universe does it by accident. This is not necessarily OW2 lore compliant, because I stopped keeping up with the OW2 story developments a while ago.
Omnic itself is a genericised trademark, originally referring to a product of the Omnica Corporation built in one of their huge autonomous factories (aka omniums), but it came to refer to any sapient robot with a body smaller than a building even if they weren't constructed in an omnium. An AI is self-aware software that doesn't have a mobile, humanish-scale body; the term isn't considered to apply to omnics who can get up and walk around, mostly referring to superhumanly intelligent entities housed in server banks. A drone is the most common term for a non-sapient robot, some of which do have animal-level free will and emotions, like Mei's companion robot that she uses in her ultimate; calling an omnic that would probably come off as rude but also as factually inaccurate.
Robot: Somewhat rude when referring to a self-aware being, specifically because it's broad enough that it could apply to anything from a sapient mechanical person to a Roomba. Can be polite or at least neutral if you're making a point about something that applies to all autonomous machines, and of course someone who just showed up from another world wouldn't know the OWverse's term of art for sapient machines... but if someone knows the polite term and still just says 'robot' for an individual omnic, it comes across like they don't care about the differences between someone like Bastion and a roomba with a gun.
Bot: The short form of robot concentrates the rudeness. Not a slur, exactly (though those also exist), but very impolite and disrespectful.
Machine: The same problem as 'robot' but with an even broader term, since now it also applies to tools and devices that don't act on their own at all; like referring to a human as an 'animal', referring to an omnic as a machine can be on-topic and not actively rude if the subject is something like very basic physical needs, but mostly it just sounds like it's denying their personhood and it still low-key has that connotation even if it is relevant.
Omnic itself is a genericised trademark, originally referring to a product of the Omnica Corporation built in one of their huge autonomous factories (aka omniums), but it came to refer to any sapient robot with a body smaller than a building even if they weren't constructed in an omnium. An AI is self-aware software that doesn't have a mobile, humanish-scale body; the term isn't considered to apply to omnics who can get up and walk around, mostly referring to superhumanly intelligent entities housed in server banks. A drone is the most common term for a non-sapient robot, some of which do have animal-level free will and emotions, like Mei's companion robot that she uses in her ultimate; calling an omnic that would probably come off as rude but also as factually inaccurate.
Robot: Somewhat rude when referring to a self-aware being, specifically because it's broad enough that it could apply to anything from a sapient mechanical person to a Roomba. Can be polite or at least neutral if you're making a point about something that applies to all autonomous machines, and of course someone who just showed up from another world wouldn't know the OWverse's term of art for sapient machines... but if someone knows the polite term and still just says 'robot' for an individual omnic, it comes across like they don't care about the differences between someone like Bastion and a roomba with a gun.
Bot: The short form of robot concentrates the rudeness. Not a slur, exactly (though those also exist), but very impolite and disrespectful.
Machine: The same problem as 'robot' but with an even broader term, since now it also applies to tools and devices that don't act on their own at all; like referring to a human as an 'animal', referring to an omnic as a machine can be on-topic and not actively rude if the subject is something like very basic physical needs, but mostly it just sounds like it's denying their personhood and it still low-key has that connotation even if it is relevant.
