#mann. whatever. GAME SO GOOD

[marsbotz]

DAMN its insanee even after so long… undertales story is still fucking crazyyyy

[oblique-lane]

Spy tf2 and his identity

Character analysis (or at least my vision on him, if you believe my reasoning)

What do we know about Spy? He's a disguise mastermind. He can pretend to be anyone in order to infiltrate into the scene to do his job - quite literally, stab people on the back. But when he's not in the battle, what is he to his teammates? A suave Frenchman, a gentleman with taste, somewhat a leader.

At least, that's the persona he prefers to show. But is he really..?

What if I tell you that this person never drops his disguise?

For a man who always wears a mask and who's identity being secret is a sacred part of his role in this job, isn't this persona too much to show if it is real? Frenchman, rich, ladykiller... Wouldn't it be too easy to decipher his identity with so much clues provided? Wouldn't it be dangerous?

While Miss Pauling and the Administrator definitely know Spy's real identity, hiding it is a major thing for whatever reason. One could assume it might be because of Scout (obvious guess) but I doubt he's a sole reason. Spy very much enjoys being the Spy all by himself. Do what's the deal?

Let's start from the beginning.

Why did Spy join Mann Co. in the first place?

Let's take this assumption as a fact: people come here out of desperation. They are professionals in their field, yet in their past/casual life there is a pattern of them having difficulties that push them into joining this service. I don't see why Spy would be an exception.

The reason for joining is usually money. Some people question why Spy, a wealthy man from higher society, would join Mann Co. if he has it all already.

Well, probably because he really does not.

Have you ever met an aristocrat? Wealthy people don't get so protective about their expensive suits, they can afford cleaning or a new one. Regardless, rich people don't usually get stingy about material goods, especially if they're mass produced.

At least, not those who were born into wealth.

Spy's defensiveness about his "wealthy stuff", his pomp-ness, disgust and arrogance towards "plebs" gives off a man who knows what it means to live in poverty and who doesn't want to be associated with it ever again.

(Not even talking about his own filthy habits such as not washing his mask and pissing on walls? Jesus Christ)

Dare I even guess that he might be not French at all? His French is so broken. (Although, so is Medic's German, but at least he uses his language much more frequently and in more complex sentences, while Spy only uses French to say some basic expressions, occasionally confusing them with other languages). Definitely not a native.

If anything, he's not giving "rich man" at all, he's giving con man. And that fits my picture perfectly.

So, poor upbringing. How old is Spy? If he's Scout's father (and he was young when he was conceived), I'd say he's no less than 20 years older than him. I'd give him a few more years actually. So, approximately Spy is around 50 at the events of the game (1968-1972). Let's assume he was born somewhere in the 1910s.

Even if he's not French, I still agree that he's probably European. Hmm, what was happening in Europe at the time Spy was a kid?

Oh yeah. The Great Depression.

See my picture: imagine, a child from a lower class family during the Great Depression, his parents were most likely to not take good care about him (both because of the economical situation AND as an echo to Spy's struggles with his own fatherhood). He has to run away from home early and start to make money. Any way possible.

Unavoidably, it leads to crime.

Petty theft, blackmail, scams. Changing identities. Selling low quality products and services. Changing identities again. When older, seducing rich women to stay at their homes overnight, be fed and supported. Running away from the police. Walking into a trap of the mafia, and then joining them as their goon.

In this nightmare of a life he just had to keep pretending to be someone else, someone better and stronger, in order to his ego to not completely shutter. He had to imagine he was an invincible mastermind trickster of some sort, not just a poor boo-hoo victim of poverty who has never knew normal life and care.

And if you pretend for long enough, you become your role eventually... Right?

His true self was long lost forgotten under many layers of new identities. Worse, his true self was never known. And he didn't want it to be known in its ugly and disgusting vulnerability. Narcissism became his lifeline.

It's so much better to be Spy. To be rich and elegant and respected. His ego rebuilt.

[jevilowo]

How the mercs would play tf2

Scout is a Heavy main bc he likes the POWER. He tried playing as himself but kept dying bc of low health and got pissed. Constantly yelling for Medic. The 124hp disease is eternal.

Soldier only plays as himself because it's American. Keeps ragequitting. Can't figure out how to rocket jump in game. Has broken 79284654 keyboards in rage.

Pyro plays as themself mostly, but I can see them messing around as other classes on occasion. I think they'd get a kick out of playing Medic sometimes. Still, they're mostly themself and one of those players you think are friendlies bc they do mannrobics over and over but then they unleash fiery death upon you.

Demo would try to play himself but accidentally clicks on a different class and ends up being really good at that too despite being absolutely fucking hammered. Can't aim meelees for shit (just like me fr) but is alright with regular guns. Especially enjoys the wonders of w + m1ing people as Pyro.

Heavy plays himself obviously. Don't think he'd be into playing anyone else, except maybe as medic to pocket his sisters if they played (Zhanna is also a Heavy main btw). He'd be really bad at first but get good really fast. Always remembers to throw sandviches to the medics like (gigachad)

Engie would only play himself, but I think he'd get distracted thinking of ways to improve the game. Only plays in five minute bursts and spends the rest of his time building mods to improve The Experience. Pyro guards his buildings vigilantly between these bursts and they rarely crumble under their watchful gaze and neon sign of sapper destruction.

Medic plays himself mostly, but usually as a battle medic. Ze healing is not as rewarding and all that. I think he'd also be into the POWER (like Scout) of playing massive damage dealing classes (like Pyro, Heavy and Soldier) because again. Hurting.

Sniper would only play himself no exceptions. Slowly evolves into one of those 3000hr 4channer sniper mains and gets ridiculously competitive about the whole thing. Gets so caught up in headshotting he forgets he has a secondary weapon and meelee and dies easily to spies.

Spy abhors the game as a whole, especially playing himself, as it doesn't "accurately portray the intricacies of being a spy" or whatever. Plays occasionally to troll under an alt account but tell no one or he'll fuck your mother.

Miss Pauling would enjoy playing Demo I think, going off vibes alone, but she'd get a kick out of Scout on 2fort matches specifically because it's Efficient for Objective Completion.

Admin is, like Spy, beyond such frivolities. If she ever bothered I think she'd enjoy Sniper or Spy as she too spends a lot of time Staring.

Saxton Hale only plays on his own mode, and as Heavy when not as himself. Hes really fucking annoying about it.

Like I said, Zhanna's defo a Heavy main, but plays Soldier sometimes to bond with her husband. She's way better than him, obviously.

Merasmus hates Soldier and will ragequit any match with Soldiers in them which means he doesnt play often. When he does, however, he likes to be a Demoknight.

Scout's Ma plays Pyro. Like Ms Pauling, this is vibes alone, but she'd also play Spy and Scout sometimes as they are her boyfriend/son.

Grey Mann wouldn't play he'd just infest the game with more bots because he sucks like that.

[thewadapan]

Insane that the last Team Fortress 2 comic came out, and perhaps more insane is how effectively it resolves the themes of the story, considering the whole thing spun out of some silly gag comics for a first person shooter, which had a bunch of lore back-ported onto it, with this particular issue having spent nearly eight years in development hell...

I love video games, and I love trying to rationalise the insane logic of how they work using fiction. Or not even to rationalise, just to kind of like... take it at face value? There's a great bit in one of the Team Fortress 2 comics where the mercenaries are going to be fighting an army of robots (in the game's PVE mode) and, at that point in the story, Mann Co. is bankrupt, so they're not getting paid—but they're mercenaries, so why are they fighting? And Ms. Pauling just comes right out and says, "For reasons I can't comprehend or explain, the robots run on piles of money. Destroy them and whatever falls out is yours." Risk of Rain has a similar conceit, where the aliens explode into currency, something that's diegetically acknowledged in the in-game logs.

The comics also deserve serious credit for genuinely pushing the limits of the comic medium, by explicitly using the fact that this is something people are reading on their computers. You see Webtoons currently are doing something similar, optimised for phones with their infinite scrolling. Well, here everything's landscape, and you advance through the comic using the arrow keys or whatever, and there's all these little gags that rely on hiding a speech bubble at first, or tweaking a panel, or doing a jump-cut, which are borderline impossible to replicate in print (the closest thing traditional comics have as a tool is the page-turn, which some writers do use to great effect).

It might just be that Team Fortress 2 was one of the things that heavily informed my sense of humour at a formative age, but I still come back to it and think it's the funniest thing in the world. And a big part of what makes the humour work, for me, is that it is just barely grounded in the real world. When someone gets their hand cut off and it's played for laughs, they've still just had their hand cut off. All the blood and guts is right there to see. Characters like Spy and Ms. Pauling frequently ground the story in these bureaucratic material concerns—like, someone is having to go around burying all the bodies.

Which means that when the story takes something which genuinely started as nothing more than a joke, and uses it for pathos, those beats can actually hit home. The big example is the joke about Spy having sex with Scout's mom, which in the comics morphs into this running thread about Spy probably being Scout's father, which in turn plays into these themes of regret and cycles of violence... and that was obviously never planned from the start, even the early examples in the comics are very much within the realm of plausible deniability, but over time they're clearly like—well, what if that was the case? What then? It's such good yes-anding.

Certain characters—the Pyro and the Engineer—do get pretty short-changed, which I think is mostly because the other characters just lend themselves much better to the extremely dialogue-dense style of comedy. The Engineer spends most of the numbered issues completely sidelined, looking after the Administrator; I mostly played Engineer when I played the game, so I do find that a bit disappointing. I don't think the Sentry Gun even gets a look-in! But still, nine playable characters plus the supporting cast is a lot to keep track of, and I think they chose the right ones to focus on (Scout, Soldier, Spy, Heavy).

Part of what made Team Fortress 2 always appeal to me above and beyond any other first-person shooter was its obvious awareness that the fighting is not, in fact, good, or just, or meaningful, or anything other than a pointlessly cynical greed-fuelled slaughter over nothing. It's just these drab industrial sites and bodies being thrown at one another, on repeat, forever. I think if you want to take a multiplayer game like this and build up a narrative on top of it, it's kind of the only honest approach you can take. Seeing similar stories in this and in RoosterTeeth's Red vs. Blue around the same time left a big impression on me as a teenager.

Contrast Overwatch (of course), which always billed itself as a superhero story, which had clearly-defined good-versus-evil flavour, which purported to depict a global conflict of world-shattering stakes, where every single piece of fucking tie-in media was a saccharine sentimental little snoozefest where characters will say things like "Oh no!" unironically. In Overwatch, the playable characters come from all over the world, they're these collar-tuggingly direct stereotypes, and it's like... wow, the military-industrial complex is so inclusive, you guys! Meanwhile, Team Fortress 2 has stereotypes of its own, but the intent is so completely different. Sniper, Heavy, Demoman, Medic, Spy have these clearly-defined national backgrounds, but they've shed all nationalistic ties, civilized human society would shun them, and now all they can do is kill for money they will never have cause to spend.

And the supporting characters invented for the comic all support this theme of bitter, cynical hate, of pointless bickering and petty feuds. Brothers Redmond and Blutarch turn themselves into monsters trying to outlive each other solely out of spite, not even just to enjoy their lives for as long as possible! When Gray Mann offs them, his characterisation sees their mindless, stupid schemes replaced with cold rationalism, to match the Administrator's own ruthless efficiency, but the substance of their conflict is no different. Wait, is the moral of the Team Fortress 2 comics just... old people bad? Look at the Team Fortress Classic guys...

I don't know. Overwatch was heavily billed on the quality of its worldbuilding and writing and characters (I was always like, what worldbuilding? What writing? What characters?), and like the many, many MCU films which nobody thinks about or talks about or cares about any more, I don't think I've ever seen someone actually talk about that media as art, except to point out its shortcomings. Nobody will remember any of it. Oh god, I just remembered about all the Overwatch porn. Okay, people will remember it, just not for the right reasons.

Meanwhile, I've known people over the last eight years who routinely joked about the final Team Fortress 2 comics never coming out. For something so ancillary, so inessential, to have made such a big impression on people, is something that in this case speaks to its success on a creative level. If anything, I wish it was less of a transmedia narrative, that this was just a single book I could pick up off the shelf and give to someone like "read this!" and that's all they'd need to know. Maybe I should try to compile some sort of reading list, hmm.

[goblin-enjoyer]

Normalize the tf2 mercs as being absolute genetic freaks of nature under the hood. Medic is crazy and we know he gets paid good so he’s probably got lots of bits in his bin if you know what I mean.

Pyro is straight up nonhuman. Pyro is a fire elemental that the Mann brothers have bound to a hazmat suit and medic made a real boy by giving them meat. Not making her a human body mind you, but rather every time he gets damaged, instead of bursting into flames meat forms around the wound and it bleeds instead of letting the inner crea tur out.how? Wizard. Moving on.

Soldier has massive lungs that make him 20% more louder. If he was smarter he could probably echolocate his way around. That or sound attacks idk he eats wizard pills he could have hollow bones for all I know. Sure he has hallow bones now for rocket jumping. Im the one typing I get to make nonsense on the fly.

Medic put pigeon dna in scout and that’s how he makes his trademark milk-like substance. How this happens you may ask? Scout saw medics doves have sex while getting his second Uber heart surgery and said “man I wish I could pick up chicks that well” and medic said “good idea I will help you with this” and then looked at the camera and smirked. The administrator does not spectate medics lab/operation room/dove breeding center anymore. Also scouts immune to radiation due to all the bonk he ingests, though sometimes he does become radioactive sometimes. 

We already know that demoman’s body creates alcohol and that he has a ghost eye, but did you know that if you shoot him with some sort of piercing explosive round he will combust into flames. I… I couldn’t really think of anything for demoman I don’t play him as much.

Engineer always wishes he could have kids, but doesn’t want to have sex. That and he removed most of his reproductive/unnecessary/extra/mid organs with machine parts like 30 years ago. So after the events of the games and comics where everyone is happy and junk, he teams up with medic to make himself some half robot half human half whatever dell conagher is at that point at time children. He asks if medic ever want kids he can do the same for him but he declines as at this point in time he has perfected the art of male impregnation.(on various ape parts) dell is a great father and yes I added this part because the whole humanized sentry thing that went around a while ago touched my heart because despite the words of almost every engineer main everywhere I get so attached to the sentries I build that I die a little bit inside every time I die and my buildings get sapped and I have to just watch as my babies get destroyed. I get too attached to my buildings to play engineer

Heavy doesn’t stop growing, similar to that of a reptile. His skin is as thick as a rhinos. He hibernates for a month in summer because I said so. He has accidentally killed/crushed medic before and is now eternally cautious when in bed with him. Medic doesn’t mind, he knows what he’s gotten himself into. Heavy can also talk to birds like a Disney princess. Medic didn’t add any bird parts for this to happen he just was always like this.

Sniper can dislocate every bone in his body and go through cracks that are at least the size of his head. He will use this to show up in the most unexpected places imaginable. Is legally classified as an tardigrade in some places due to his ability to be fine in almost any place (volcano,Arctic,sewer system, a walk in closet so large it took him 5 weeks to get out, space that one time). Can go up to a year without eating (the team found this out at the same time they figured out the space thing). Swallows things whole.

Spy can shift his flesh around to disguise as almost anything, keeps the mass and weight though. Breaths mostly through his skin so he doesn’t cough due to his decrepit lungs. Was hit by a car once. Doesn’t have anything to do with the subject matter of the tf2 mercs being freakish beings with human skin but I just wanted to include it here.

Medic. What isn’t medic? The only thing consistent with his biology is that he can regenerate somehow. He alters his body so much that it is roughly equivalent to 1 tyranid hive fleet and 2,million ork painboys.(the tf2 mercs would be more likely to work for the orks than to ever work for one of the human factions in 40k and I just needed to get that off my chest) This is how he manages to get away with all the things he’s done. Banned from this continent? Just become a new person who’s not banned from that continent and presto you’re good! The laws don’t account for the ship of Theseus!

[princesstarfire1234]

Scavengers playlist

Made this way back and have just been adding stuff as I listen to em but thought I'd share it here because why not, possibly maybe even get song recs from some of you guys ahaaa

Random thoughts and stuff about which songs are for who or why I put em there below the cut ⬇️⬇️⬇️

Alone Together by Fallout Boy - saw someone on tumblr say this song was "literally the Scavengers anthem" and they're so fucking real for that; "I don't know where you're going but do you got room for one more troubled soul" is literally them.... mann... Also that Fallout Boy album just bangs hard in general

Dare to Be Stupid by "Weird Al" Yankovic - they DO dare to be fuckin stuuuuupiiddd, i love these idiots

Dare by Stan Bush - This and Dare to be Stupid were both in the Transformers '86 movie so that's how I thought about em, aside that though I was listening to em once and just went "oh damn this is kinda them i think"

Bang Bang by K'NAAN - Shoot Shoot Bang Bang core, so much in fact that I've been wanting and still want to do a Scavs animation with this song

21 Guns by Green Day - its a lot more heavy in tone and serious compared to most of the stuff in the playlist, but I put it here cuz it sort of feels like an anthem for just the general rank and file of either faction?? like idk if that makes sense, it just kinda fit the post-war "what are we gonna do now if there's no more fighting" kinda vibe

NOT ENTIRELY ALONE by The Narcissist Cookbook - found this through someone else's Scavs playlist and while it's not a song I'd regularly listen to (it's more of a grand monologue really), I really like it and it's literally about a bunch of supposed outcasts finding each other and sticking together amidst it all

For some character centric ones I've got:

Me and The Boys by the Living Tombstone - Krok!! This one's from In Sound Mind, beautiful fuckin game, it's a lot about therapy and mental health and stuff so damn that's fitting; not only that though, but this specific soundtrack is for a character in that game that's a veteran who experienced a lot of trauma and lost all his friends in the time of the war... so yeahhh

Make A Move by Icon For Hire - love rock, it makes up most of my playlists but maybe you couldn't tell from this; anyways I just feel like it encapsulated Spinister well in vibe and it sort of being like Spin waiting for others to make a move and choosing to just blend in the background or take a back seat from what's usually happening idk how else to explain it really ahaha

need to go real quick since im typing this late so im gonna speedrun the rest lol

Cheer Up by Big Reel Fish - It's literally Crankcase, thats literally HIS song, just take a listen to it!

Bubbly by Good Kid - something about the chorus ("I never sleep, I never eat; I never leave my house alone; another evening in between what I believe and what I know") is just very Fulcrum to me, combined with the vibes

United States of Whatever & Talk Too Much - both very Misfire core to me, Talk Too Much is obvious from the title lol even if the song is about something else entirely aha and United States of Whatever is just... sillyy in a Misfire-y way yknow?

For the rest I didn't mention specifically, they're all just kinda there for vibes and I had no specific thoughts about em lolz

[kellanved-ammanas]

TF2 Drabbles: Pyro & Scout - Being a Mystery is Fun

Summary: There are already maps near some mercs' homelands/birthplaces (e.g. Rottenburg, and arguably Degroot Keep); are any of the other bases near anyone else's? (Not that Soldier would necessarily remember, although he might feel some déjá vú. And Pyro probably wouldn't let on if the team were stationed near somewhere they'd lived.)

[A/N] I've been toying with the idea that Pyro's from China for a little while now. Mostly because of the Neon Annihilator (if you don't know, it reads as 'bar' in Chinese). I found the idea of it being something they might've brought from his home town to be endearing. So upon getting to this request, prompting me to scroll through the map list and finding Kong King, I figured I'll go ahead and make that my official headcanon for Pyro. Plus, most of the rest of the team is from America or Europe so having one more member from a different part of the globe is nice. Also, I've started referring to Pyro as 'he' and 'they'. It began as an accident while writing this (probably because my current primary fandom has me writing all they/them's, making me want to keep using they/them for everyone) and decided to just roll with it because I like it. He's still a trans man to me but now he's a he/they trans man.

~

Kong King wasn’t home but it was far closer than Pyro had been since leaving for America. Close enough in fact that upon stealing a local atlas and sneaking it into their room, it didn’t take long to find his actual home town was close enough to theoretically drive to.

If they did, he’d be gone long enough to be missed – it wasn’t quite close enough for a quick in and out type of thing. He could maybe come up with a believable reason for going on such a journey though. Maybe he was just curious and wanted to explore. This was the team’s first stationing in this part of the world after and it was very different than America or Europe, their usual posting places. An exploration mission that ended in him being lost and thus in that particular town for a while shouldn’t seem to out of place. They could even endeavor to run out of gas there to explain why they hung around in that particular area for so long.

Did he want to though? He’d left for a reason after all. Several reasons actually, all of them good. That had been a long time ago though. He’d been living in America and burning stuff down for money there since well before Mann Co. recruited him. Anyone he’d known who might still be around wouldn’t recognize him, especially with the suit and mask making him perfectly anonymous.

They rocked back and forth as they idly flipped through his stolen map book. Maybe he shouldn’t have even brought it into the base. If someone found him with it would they suspect he was from around here? Did he care if they did? Soldier wouldn’t be happy about it but he put up with the rest of the non-Americans on the team, even if he hadn’t figured out most of them weren’t American. So it’d probably be easy to convince him to drop it. But still, Pyro’s country of origin was a mystery he’d caught the others speculating about more than once and had been directly asked about several times. He’d never answered such questions because being a mystery was fun. It wasn’t the reason they wore the suit all the time but it was a nice bonus. Giving up that game didn’t…

A knock sounded on his new room’s door a moment before it burst open – this base was unfortunately one without locks on the doors. Quickly Pyro tossed the atlas onto the floor so that is slide under the bed… only half way though, damn it. Hopefully that was still enough to hide it. He should’ve blocked the door with something.

“Hey Pyro,” Scout said a Pyro turned to face him. “The symbols or whatever the people here write with look a lot like the symbols on your sign thingy. Or at least I think they do. I gotta see it again.”

The Neon Annihilator – as Pyro had dubbed it for fun – was one of the few things he’d brought with him from home. It had been broken for a while but with the help of Engie’s tools he’d managed to fix it and even modify it for use as a weapon. Proud of it, he’d shown it off to anyone who’d cared to look at it which had included Scout. Apparently he’d taken note of its ‘symbols�� upon it, meaning he might be about to figure something out. Pyro could just decline to show him, say he’d lost and/or broken it but then he’d have to keep it hidden all the time and that would suck.

So instead they turned to the closet and pulled it out. They didn’t hand it Scout but instead held it where he could see, positioned so that the sign part of it would be sideways. As if that would even make a difference to someone who was ignorant enough to refer to it as ‘symbols’.

Scout stared at it in silence for several seconds before a wide grin spread across his face. “That’s it, I think. It looks the same anyway. That means your sign’s from here, right? You’ve been here before?”

Pyro shrugged. Not a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ and therefore he was putting off his decision on whether or not he wanted anyone to know such things about him.

“Or, I guess maybe you got it off someone who was from here. Either way it’s cool. Do you know what it says? It’s uh… gotta be Chinese, right? ‘Cause we’re in China.”

Pyro shrugged again as they shook their head. Apparently no, they wanted to remain a mystery for a little while longer at least. Keeping their understanding of the local language a secret wasn’t likely to be hard as they rarely interacted with anyone outside the team already anyway. The suit and mask tended to deter anyone else from trying to talk to them.

“Damn. You think Spy might know?”

Another shrug. An honest one this time. Spy spoke many languages. All the ones Pyro knew of were European but it was entirely possible he knew more.

“We should ask him later. But also, you wanna walk around explore with me and Snipes?”

“Sure.” He gave a thumbs up to reinforce his words as before turning to put the sign back in the closest before following Scout out. Going home wasn’t on the table but exploring around here should be just as good, if not better.

[scenefulw0rkz]

#fixtf2 #savetf2

I want you! To help us share this movement! : https://save.tf/

"I wonder why people are so keen on cheating and ruining something everyone likes, the fact that the company couldn't give a fuck about it is crazy." The devastation and anger I felt when I see my favorite game of 10 years getting ruined by a bunch of bots and cheaters along with Valve not doing anything is insane. I've had my fair share of dealing with cheaters and bots and they were not fun, it's like dealing with an alien who can kill you by looking into your eyes within a millisecond. It sucks because I've played this game for 10 years so I'm refusing to let it get taken over. All that's come out good by these bots is the way both teams collaborated and worked together to defeat them in missions. If we mere players can do it, why can't you? We're not backing up this time, many players, the voice actors themselves and even non-players are reaching out to you to fix this, I see the numbers adding up myself. We don't need big updates or new whatever, we just need these parasites gone. Don't act like you can't do anything, Valve. Help us make Mann. Co and TF2 great again.

[dykexenomorph]

Tell me your Jaheira thoughts for that meme. :D

THANK U, i love that old woman!!!!!

FIRST IMPRESSION: ive replayed the game so many times now (or at least replayed acts 1 and 2) that its hard for me to fully remember my first impressions of a lot of the charas?? im PRETTY sure that i discovered jaheria through tiktok edits before id seen her in game (i didnt know much about the og games before playing bg3) and loved her from the start? i remember being super excited to finally find her in game, she became an IMMEDIATE staple for my party LOL

IMPRESSION NOW: i STILL love her, for a very long time she was my favorite companion in bg3 AND in the og games (though now that ive played more of 1 and 2 my favorite is probably dynaheir or neera). her scenes w durge are some of my favorites in the whole game :3

FAVORITE MOMENT: maybe an odd pick, but i really enjoy the scene in bg3 where she fights with you (and the emperor) over whether or not minsc should be saved and welcomed into the party. her extreme loyalty to him is really endearing, and i feel like this scene does a really good job of showing it. (im also really enjoying her dialogue in bg2 so far. seeing how her character changes after khalid's death has been super interesting)

IDEA FOR A STORY: IM SORRY BUT IM THE LAMEST PERSON ON EARTH AND HAVE NONE. i feel im better at coming up w specific things to draw as opposed to stories to tell </3

UNPOP OPINION: [loud enough to render several citys into naught but ash] SHE IS NOT!!!!!!!!!!!! A DEADBEAT MOTHER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FAVORITE RELATIONSHIP: mann obviously i have to say her and minsc... (also her and imoen in bg2? i havent gotten to see a TON of their interactions on account of me taking my sweet ass time rescuing imoen from the mages or whatever, but the stuff ive seen so far has been interesting)

FAVORITE HEADCANON: i like to imagine that her and minthara share a weird sort of bond over being two of the oldest camp members. they hold INCREDIBLY different ideals, but i feel like they table that for the time being to hang out and have old women shit-talking sessions whenever everyone settles down at camp

CHARACTER ASK GAME

[theomenroom]

It's halfway through the year! Got any favorite albums/books/tv shows/whatever to recommend?

Ooo yes!

Whatevers first, I've been hyperfixated on the video game I Was a Teenage Exocolonist for the past month or so. It's very good; I found the core gameplay loop deeply engaging (maybe even hypnotic); on multiple occasions I've spent several hours longer than I intended playing it late into the dawn. The characters are very blorboable, as evidenced by the amount of meta I've been putting out. I also enjoy it as a smart commentary on game design; I think I've got a meta piece to that effect somewhere on here.

Music-wise, I don't listen to whole albums straight through that often (much more "single track on manual repeat" for me. automatic repeat wears it out but letting it wait a minute or two for me to press it again keeps me going), but when I do, my comfort album remains Within Temptation's The Unforgiving. For something that's new to me this year, Oceans of Slumber's album Starlight and Ash came out in 2022 but I didn't listen to it all the way through until February of this year; I was missing out.

I also love pretty much Sirenia's entire discography; I'm listening to Riddles, Ruins, and Revelations right now and it's a solid no-skips album (and the third track has found its way to my on-repeat plays more than I'd like to admit).

For individual tracks that have made it into my manual-repeat loop a bunch lately, Aimee Mann - Avalanche (something about her vocals and the specific lyrics give this song a strong haunting energy I can't quite place but very much enjoy) and The Gaslight Anthem - The '59 Sound have both wound up there, as have a bunch of Scarlet Dorn tracks (Queen of Broken Dreams, Heavy Beauty, and Until the Waters Run Dry just off the top of my head). also Like Matches, by Mercury Circle with the singer from Oceans of Slumber.

Books-wise, I'm super excited to read my pre-release copy of Alyson Greaves's When You Fell From Heaven, a lesbian teen romance between a cheerleader and a gymnast with gender hijinks. I didn't expect to be into it but I'll read whatever she puts out and not just because she's my friend. She's splitting it out into multiple books and has given the first book a revision pass and expansions to make it gayer after posting it chapter by chapter (which I've already read) before officially getting it up somewhere. I unfortunately haven't been as much of a long-form reader as I used to be, or else I'd have more books to rec.

I'm not a big TV-watcher, but I was recced dungeon meshi enough times to get me to watch it and it's very good.

Anyway. yeah. That's what I've been into, arts and entertainment-wise.

Thanks for asking me!

[northwest-cryptid]

oh mann. squeaking of music. you got any artists with slow relaxy type music you like? and what's your favorite instrument? and what are your top 3 video game ost's? ...three questions at once, the terrible tripler... but as a beast who loves music, i am always ravenous for music opinions...

Not gonna lie this is kind of a hard ask not only because it's a lot to answer about a topic I tend not to talk about much but because I don't really know artists so much as I know songs, and to top it all off I don't really do "top" stuff, or "favorite" stuff; it's hard for me to pick or rank a lot of the things I like, I use the term "one of my favorite" or "among the best of" when I talk about things I really like because more often than not I'd say that about ANYTHING I really like, I don't really have a favorite artist or a top OST or anything.

Most of my music consumption is random, I'll listen to playlists on youtube or soundcloud or bandcamp and such. A lot of the time an artist is less of a concern to me because majority of my experience has been that they have one song I really like, followed by about 12 more in the album that are kinda just okay but lack the style that I enjoyed so much.

That being said I'll do my best to answer since I do enjoy getting asks and you actually took the time to send me this so I will respect that by taking the time to answer it :D

Let's start with the chill relaxing stuff!

As far as Artists go if you don't mind some more kinda weird tones in your relaxing music I think Monster Rally is a great artist.

A few core examples of their vibe can be heard in Lovely You:

as well as one I really enjoy, Color Sky:

They have a very unique sound in my opinion and I have a lot of interest in this kind of music since it hits a weird spot for me somewhere between acoustic jam session and weird vaporwave-y daydream music.

Almost all their music is between 1 and 2 minutes and contains these short loops and layered instrumentals with occasional lyrical influences. It's pretty fun and keeps my ADHD at bay with no song being too long.

For something a little more pop-ish I also enjoy TV Girl though I don't know if their music counts entirely as "Relaxed" since it can be a little faster. I've listened to them for years, a lot of their music reminds me a lot of my time in an indie band. They play a lot of the "soft punk sad boy" type music I'd see a lot in the indie scene. I often find myself singing or humming along to these whenever I'm cleaning the house or cooking dinner.

A few tracks I like a lot are Birds Don't Sing:

Lovers Rock:

and The Blonde:

Though to be honest I like a good bit of TV Girl's music so I'm trying to not list entire albums here lol. I try not to get hipster about it because for whatever reason it became oddly popular as of the last couple of years and I heard someone refer to it as "weirdcore" once and nearly died on the spot. I don't even dislike Weirdcore I just have a lot of thoughts on the idea of what the hell a genre is at this point.

Important note I am also 100% the sort of person who chills out and relaxes to Happy Hardcore and Eurobeat. So please consider the fact that my idea of relaxed varies wildly from like lounge jazz to club hardcore depending on the day. (There's literally a song that came out 7 years ago called Chillcore and it summarizes my thoughts on the subject perfectly I'd have been 21 when that song came out and I still occasionally hear it and go "yea" to this day.)

As far as favorite instrument goes I'm very partial to drums, drums of any kind. I think they're overlooked so much but then I'm bias because I'm a drummer so like of course I love drums. Any song that makes good use of drums is okay in my book. I will never forget how hard I cringed when the Bassist in my band once said "Bass is more important than Drums any day of the week, I mean literally who has ever heard of a drum solo?" I just sat there like "dude why are we even in the same band if you don't value my contribution" though she was something else in terms of like... superiority complexes. Regardless!

I may not have a top 3 Video Game OSTs since there's so many good ones out there and so many good options depending on your mood, but I will list a ton of good ones depending on the kind of mood you're in.

To keep with the theme of chill tunes let's start with a banger and one of my favorite game OSTs as to also kind of answer top 3.

VA-11 Hall-A has an amazing OST and I'm going to do the really basic bitch thing of saying you gotta listen to Every Day Is Night:

I used to listen to this a lot whenever I worked my night shift, it gave the title a very literal meaning to me. The synth jazz was the perfect companion for long nights on the job when I needed to chill out and vibe for a bit.

Keeping in line with the relaxed but perhaps a bit more anxiety inducing; I've spoken about it a lot, you know it; you love it, it's Lobotomy Corporation's very own No Warning:

Lob Corps whole OST has some absolutely beautiful tracks, everything from techy synths and chimes to entirely orchestral sweeping performances. I have a soft spot for this game and it's OST, as well as the OST of Library of Ruina, it's sequel, for which I'd like to highlight Malkuth's Battle Theme:

Specifically the third tier emotion level of this song, never before have I heard "battle jazz" done so well, not only is it classy; but it KICKS ASS. There's so much I could say about this game and it's OST in terms of themes and such but I digress, for now we'll move on because I got a lot to go through.

Next up we're looking at a more fantastical setting with Mabinogi's OST, which has a ton of genuinely amazing music, but one I want to highlight is the major main theme of the game which will always give me chills and make me cry a bit from nostalgia. More specifically the version performed by the FILMharmonic Orchestra:

This song means more to me than I can properly explain, there's so much emotion behind it for me as someone who has played this game for half my life, who met my partner through this game; and who's life has no joke been absolutely changed by this game. The OST has always been a part of my life, we even play music from this game while decorating the house for various seasons. The entire OST is so varied and expansive and there's almost always something to fit my mood.

However when I'm looking for something more upbeat, and I need to get my blood pumping I turn to a bit more action oriented music, which is where games like ULTRAKILL absolutely fit the bill. I cannot warn you enough this song is the musical equivalent of shoving shrapnel in your ears, and I mean that in the most admirable way possible.

Heavy techno and metal vibes, you got electric guitar that's basically fighting the synth lead for the spotlight despite the two working in perfect harmony to encapsulate this absolutely disgusting rhythm.

However sometimes I want to be upbeat without the sensory overload which is when I turn to Xenoblade (takes place on Earth) to fill the niche. I've been really vibing to the jazzy upbeat nature of XC3's OST lately, and the game has been pretty fun too :D

Now see this is why I dislike answering all this in one ask, I can only post 10 videos per post. So now I just gotta link things like this:

Xenoblade 3 OST - Brilliant Wings AKA This Jazz Band Is Fighting For Their Life

I'll cut this short since Tumblr is an ass and won't let me keep posting videos, but I cannot stress enough that when it comes to music with me there are no "top 3" OSTs, or favorites. Music is a mood setter, it's a tone; it's a vibe. I gotta listen to the right music at the right time, if I'm not feeling up for it then I won't like it.

To me there's so much out there I love, and to limit myself to a top 3 is hard because it depends entirely on the day. If I'm going through a chill phase then I'm going to favor tracks with more relaxed and chilled out influences, if I've been mowing down hoards of demons in ULTRAKILL for the last 5 days straight you better believe I'm not listening to anything other than like DOOM OST and extremely thrashy techno.

I hope this answer is satisfactory regardless!

[furutetalks]

not tagging this with ships so it wont clutter the tags but omg that one espilver post under the vecpio tag that was posted a few weeks back in response to my rant proves my exact point so well

also i wasnt really planning to give any sort of response to this so take it as a grain of salt

some people are against vecpio because of how vector looks, espilver is easier to ship because silver is "cuter" and easier to draw

ill probably make a longer post specifically on espilver at some point i gotta decide if its worth it

(its really not)

moving on, calling or even just headcanoning espio as a kid is wild if youre sticking with his actual background

like its possible, im not saying its impossible or whatever and i definitely do think he atleast used to be a teenager in the mid-late 90s, but i personally like aging the characters throughout the games, and especially like, if you see sonic as older in frontiers like a lotta people do then you have got to admit that aging the rest of the characters up is necessary

theres a good percentage of people who are in the sonic fandom that havent seen the games which is understandable, being a fandom lurker is fun but mann its crazy when people stand so strongly for characters while not even knowing them well

and also people assuming that relationships = romance and sex aaagh

but as much i will pound espilver into the ground, if you ship it it really doesnt matter, do what makes you happy i just have my own little justified world with sonic stuff

and also obviously no hate to the op if they end up seeing this, i was just using them as an example, and considering how 20 people liked that post theres definitely others with that same perspective, half the notes on my original rant are just from a popular vecpio account reblogging it so its not like my pov is a well known one either

thats all ill say about this, and this probably wont get traction since theres no ship tags but i just want this to go on record

[raviosprovidence]

I posted this rant in discord already so if you have seen it, you have. But recently, I got a ps5. And I got ff16, which is my first final fantasy game ever. The only things I know about it are from two of my very close friends who do play final fantasy. And while I haven't beaten the game, I noticed something about the story that sort of rubbed me the wrong way.

Spoilers for FF16 under the cut, and try not to spoil too much for me since I haven't beaten the game yet.

So this whole story is about freeing the world from magic, and the struggle of bearers being oppressed for using magic. So why the fuck aren't there any actual important bearer characters in the story? Most of them are just npc's who either die horribly to make the bad guys look more bad/make the good guys feel bad, or random questgivers who ask Clive to do shit and are miserable in the world

My friend pointed out that this is a story more about fate and whatever but then why include an entire plot about freeing an oppressed people from their shackles? It feels like the bearers aren't even important in their own quest to freedom. I know they're not supposed to be that powerful so most of the important players are Eikons, but we couldn't have one or two npc bearers we can fight alongside? There are even more important, normal humans along side clive and crew! It's good to show that there are humans who don't agree with people's treatment of bearers, but where are the bearers in their fight for freedom???? Sure, we get that once scene in the desert lands where they tell Clive off for making things worse for them, but they're portrayed as "poor, oppressed people who don't know what's good for them".

It makes it even more complicated when Clive was marked as a bearer when he isn't one. Sure, he's treated awfully in the first part of the game, but he's not really oppressed. Nope. He's super special and important. it's kind of difficult to nail down the name of this sort of trope so I can't say how popular it is, but it isn't the first time I've seen it. There are much smarter people out there who have probably spoken about how this sort of trope is problematic, but I digress.

This whole plot element makes it feel like we're supposed to hate those being bigoted towards Clive, but because they're actually wrong and he's a lord that is blessed by phoenix. He's not actually a bearer, so all the ire towards him is unjustified because of that. It's like those Dhar Mann skits where people are mean to poor people but surprise! those poor people are actually rich people in disguise. so the message for both is telling you "don't judge a book by its cover" rather than "oppressed/vulnerable people deserve respect too".

Not to mention this revolution is being led by eikons, people who are revered and to be loved, rather than...the oppressed people. That also feels very steven universe-y with the whole pink diamond thing of "pretending to be the oppressed class in order to leave a revolution." It's obvously not the same, since Clive's circumstances were much different, but at the base level, they are very similar.

So those are my thoughts! Feel free to reblog/comment because i definitely want to see people's different opinions on this

[aggressive-positivity-network]

Do you have any autistic Scout headcanons? :P

Hell yeah!

I’ve actually thought about this a lot. A lot of people might think that Scout has ADHD, but I think he either has both ADHD and autism or just autism.

This is both because labeling Scout as having just ADHD is kind of a low-hanging fruit, and I also want to explore his symptoms a little more. So, in a word, I do, and thank you for asking about them!

*****************

Scout’s Spectrum:

So, where exactly does Scout fall on the autism spectrum?

First of all, he probably has both ADHD and autism, but wasn’t diagnosed with the latter until much later. This means that some of his symptoms were taken into account, but not all.

The ones that were paid attention to ramped up out of control, and the ones he didn’t hear about were stuffed away.

His ADHD symptoms include impulsiveness, need for stimulation, hyperfixations, forgetfulness, and insomnia; his autism symptoms include trouble with social skills, stimming, near inability to remember names and faces, lack of eye contact, hyperfixations again, and sensory processing issues, especially with noise and touch.

He used to have a lot of meltdowns when he was younger, usually about wearing new clothes and the amount of noise his eight brothers generated.

However, he was teased and pushed into masking nearly all the time, and made his whole personality about his ADHD, since that was what everyone accepted.

As he got older, he usually wrote off any autistic tendencies as either his ADHD or just “little habits” of his.

During his middle school years, he used energy drinks to bounce back from being exhausted every day after school. This would work, except those energy drinks would upset his ADHD, and would make it much harder to focus on even basic conversation.

After a while, he got such bad grades and had such a hard time making friends that Scout just stopped going to school altogether.

Baseball helped his focus, and the quick movement and thinking made a lot of sense to him. He never had to wait very long for the next development, and the instant gratification and community it provided supplemented what he never got at school.

With sports on his side, he rarely ever drank any energy drinks (the coach would never let them on the field), and he drank bucketfuls of water during every meet and game. Those teenage years were probably the healthiest he ever was.

However, with the amount of rumbles he got into with his brothers, and the turf wars that constantly raged in those neighborhoods, it was only a matter of time before his crime caught up with him.

After his first incarceration, he was booted from the team, which led to a downward spiral of unhealthy coping mechanisms - which included fighting someone tooth and nail whenever he could.

Even if he lost the fight, it not only catered to his impulsive nature and impatience, but also gave him roughly the same sense of friendship and camaraderie that baseball had.

One thing led to another, and by the time Mann Co. found him, Scout was a monster in hand to hand (and bat to bat) and had racked up quite the criminal record.

A perfect mercenary, ripe for the picking.

On The Team:

Scout very quickly adopted the “stupid, scrappy Boston boy” persona.

It was the only thing that made sense, and it kept him from having to try too hard in both the battlefield and socially.

Besides, that meant that he could be as silly, forgetful, and fidgety as he wanted, and no one would bat an eye.

And if he ever needed to take a break from the team, he figured everyone would appreciate the quiet.

The only thing that ever gave him away was him occasionally dissociating right when battle began, especially if the day had been stressful.

It was usually how he calmed down after a fight when he was young, but now he sometimes slid into that state when he was overwhelmed.

However, a yell from one of his teammates would usually snap him out of it.

Medic noticed this pretty early on, and wanted to look more into it, but Scout would keep making excuses not to get a mental examination.

He would blame it on zoning out, being tired, drinking too many Bonks - whatever it took for people to stop asking.

And, eventually, they did.

Even Medic stopped asking after a while - he couldn’t get a thing out of Scout.

This “try so little that when you do try it’s above average” charade worked for a long time. In fact, it went on for so long that Scout forgot how much he was actually capable of.

He began to internalize the stupidity, the exacerbation, the many comments on how dumb he was, everything.

The only time he ever gave his all was on the battlefield - moving fast, memorizing strategies, doing complicated footwork, knowing exactly how much force it took to crush someone’s skull with his bat.

That was one of the only things that he felt good doing, the only thing he could really work on without him being “found out.”

That and drawing, though he never showed the actual pieces to anyone. It was all stick figures and crooked lines with everyone else.

Sometimes, though, Scout wouldn’t be paying attention and he’d let something slip.

One time, Engineer was looking for his screwdriver, and couldn’t seem to find it anywhere.

Scout, not looking up from his comic, said, “Under the couch cushion, hard hat.”

Engineer bent down and reached into the couch, and his hand came back with his red and yellow striped screwdriver.

“Well I’ll be damned…”

At first Engineer thought Scout had just hid it, but Scout explained, still not paying attention:

“Last time we went out on th’ field, you had it on your belt, like always. But I was walkin’ by your workshop, you were usin’ a quarter to tighten a screw or somethin’. Your screwdriver had to be somewhere between the battlefield and your workshop. Engie, you’re like freakin’ clockwork. Every day, after a fight, you go to the kitchen, get a water, go to that couch, between the second and third cushion from the left, and sit there. Then ya go back to the fridge to get lunch and a beer, and ya go to your workshop until somebody needs you for somethin’. Your back loop in your tool belt is looser than all the others, ‘cause the screwdriver pulls against it when you sit down. The shank was probably in between the two cushions, and when you got up, it fell in. Demo, Pyro, and Heavy all sit on the second or third cushion at some point, so it got shimmied down. And since that’s the only time you sat down, ‘cause you woulda heard it if it dropped on the floor, and I…uh…”

“I’ll be damned,” Engie repeated, and felt the back tool belt loop. It was indeed loose.

Scout finally looked up, and realized what had happened.

“Uh, uh - l-lucky guess, huh Engie?”

Engineer squinted behind his goggles. “Yeah…real lucky…”

What ensued was Engie trying to get Scout to turn into a B.L.U Spy by chasing him around with his wrench. After a few good hits, though, Engineer saw that it was the teammate he knew and loved.

“But…how didja…?”

Scout threw his hand up, the other rubbing the back of his head where he’d been hit.

“I toldja Engie! Lucky guess! Jesus!”

Ever since then, Scout chose his words more carefully.

The Breakdown:

But, unfortunately, Scout could not pretend forever.

There was one week where Scout’s assignment count was so high that, if he wasn’t in a fight, he was on a mission.

Usually, Pauling wouldn’t trust him with so much, but no one else was available - or willing - to do the jobs.

Even when she was getting concerned about the amount of hours Scout was putting in, he blew it off.

“It’s no sweat, Miss Pauling! Their practically givin’ me the pay day. Those yahoos don’t know who they’re messin’ with.”

Over time, though, Scout had a harder and harder time staying focused and alert.

He’d sleep through alarms, stare off into space, zone out completely during briefing (not that he didn’t already do that), have a hard time hearing people in battle - even through his headset - ignore Spy’s taunts, and even forget to bring his bat onto the field.

Nothing seemed to help - Bonk!, warming up, stretching, cold showers, setting reminders, nothing.

And the team was starting to notice.

At first it was with the regular frustration - maybe Scout was just being lazy.

But as time went on, and his condition grew worse, their scorn turned into worry. They implored Medic to do something, but he had no way of getting through to Scout.

The doctor wasn’t above simply sedating him and dragging him into his lab for a check-up. However, he had a feeling that this was more than a physical issue.

The worst came when Scout was doing a routine battle with the B.L.U team on the field.

Everything had started out okay - he even remembered to bring his bad this time - but suddenly, everything was ear-splittingly loud.

He couldn’t focus on more than one sound at once, much less communicate the best course of action to his teammates.

He ended up hiding in a dilapidated shed, in a dusty, dark corner, somewhere between zoning out and panicking.

Scout’s head was in his knees, he was shaking, close to crying, when a sudden splitting of wood roused him.

A B.L.U Soldier had kicked his way into the shed, either having heard Scout or to hide from the other team.

Scout was stunned at first, but something of a blind terror filled him. He picked up his bat, screamed, and started pummeling the surprised Soldier.

At some point, he threw aside his bat and began to swing punch after punch, just like he did in his gang days when he had felt overwhelmed. Still screaming. Still crying.

By the time Scout had dissolved into a rocking, sobbing mess, the Soldier was long dead, with a gigantic pool of blood staining Scout’s shoes.

No one even knew where Scout was until a few hours later, when Spy heard a faint note of “Sexbomb” coming from Scout’s Walkman.

Scout had crawled into the shed’s framework, between the outer and inner wall, and was playing a specific verse over and over and over again, looking like he was on another plane of existence.

Spy immediately called for Medic, who had to lift Scout out by the underarms through a jagged hole in the side of the building. By then, the fight was over, so they could take him directly to the lab.

Medic’s Evaluation:

“I’m guessing zhis is your first mental breakdown?”

“Mental…doc, I ain’t crazy. Wait, you’re not goin’ to put me in a straight jacket, are ya?”

“If you’re not doing anyzhing later.”

Medic started to laugh, but quickly realized this might not be the time.

“No, Scout, everyvun has a mental breakdown at least vunce in their lives. It’s a…how do you say…a vake-up call of sorts. Vhen your body has no other options left.”

“Whaddya mean?”

“For zhe past few months, you health, both physical and mental, has been deteriorating. You eat less. You talk less. Your attacks are lackluster. You have bags under your eyes. You flinch vhen somevun yells for you. You stare off into space. Your routine, vhich usually has at least some changes, has become stringent, as if you can’t possibly expend any more energy into extra activities. You have avoided Demoman on zhe battlefield, even though you usually use him for cover.”

Medic flipped through his notes.

“I have pages and pages of your decline. However, as a scientist, I believe it is caused by zhe same source. And, though I usually respect my patient’s right to privacy vhen it comes to these sorts of matters, I believe you’ve been keeping something from me. Something that I should know as your general practitioner…your doctor.”

Scout shrugged, already shutting out the conversation.

Medic sighed.

“Maybe I tried to talk to you about zhis too soon. After all, you’ve just had a very sudden and exhausting episode. But…perhaps…”

Medic took a sheet of printer paper from his clipboard and a spare pen from his pocket.

“…zhere is an alternative.”

Scout was still unresponsive, but Medic continued.

“Zhere is a patient in my vaiting room vis a metal pole through the chest. It vill take me at least an hour to properly remove it, and a few minutes more to heal zhe area. Vhile I do zhat, vhy don’t you draw how you feel?”

Medic smiled.

“I know how much it grounds you.”

It wasn’t until Medic left that Scout actually picked up the pen, but he began drawing immediately.

For the first time in a while, he wasn’t trying to hide his strokes or scratch up the cleaner lines. No more stick figures. No more pretending.

Five minutes later, he was fully engrossed.

Medic started to walk in at one point, but, seeing how relaxed Scout was, decided to give him a few more minutes.

He deserved it.

[goremet-chef]

HI i just got back from a like. 7 hour gaming session of the forest and SHITT MANN (RAMBLE)

we had a few goals, one was to put up spike walls for our upper base, n then another was to finish just small furniture things

the main one was to go to the caves and get the schematics cuz i wanted a glider. we GOT IT and it was all good and we made em but MANNN

my throat started to be like? TIGHT? feeling horribly paranoid and on edge for 7 hours straight will do that to you i guess

we went to the village for cloth and then fucking megan was there and i was like HM theres a PROBLEM leave now so we ran and listen

I WAS UNDER THE IMPRESSION that if you SLEPT they just despawned. my impression was incorrect ofc, when you sleep they just move a bit farther away

so.... we went back assuming she was gone and man! she was not gone! i pretty much made direct eye contact with her and my friend is so. SHE. the way like.. WHAT IF I DIDNT KNOWWWW

anytime i see somethin im like PROBLEM theres a problem theres an armsy, cowman, WHATEVER but no she has a sort of. freeze and then flee rresponse, so she saw megan and then saw it start to chase me and ran, said nothing which. GOOD THING I WAS PAYING ATTENTION.

i made some really interesting noises cuz i thought she was RIGHT on my tail like i kept hearing a weird whipping noise and i just thought it was over for me man. literally my friend was shocked cuz like.. IVE MADE SOME WEIRD NOISES WHEN IM SCARED ALRIGHT

being chased in horror games is one of my favorite like... TO ME thats the scariest thing i hate chases they mentally overwhelm me to the point where when im watching someone play a game and their getting chased, i have to pause the video every 3 seconds because i physically cant handle how stressed it makes me SKFJS

so... imagine that but its me and there is no pausing!!!!! horrible awful

we antagonized her a bit and lured her around cuz. for SCIENCE i needed to get close to this creature and hear how she sounded, so i know what to listen for

she despawned eventually which sucks cuz it was right when i was gonna call upon my monster hunter skills and kick her ass but no she vanished (scared obviously)

THAT WASNT THE END THO, no of course not.. so we built our house in the same exact spot markiplier and his friends built theres. it looks pretty similar too (rock walls, 3 doors, you get it) and last time we played, we branched upwards to the area above us. so we built proper walls and weve got 3 cabins up there for each of us and its cute its our little base with our other watch towers

i hate it up there!!! actually despise it, cuz of how the trees are and the hill its hard to see incoming threats, and we tend to log up there for convenience so. ITS EVEN WORSE when im trying to track several things with my ears at once. gotta listen for deer so i dont get scared, gotta tune out my friends chainsaw (i never log with the chainsaw for this reason, i need my ears so bad when im playing horror/survival games KSJFS), gotta listen for THREATS and look too im reallllll paranoid. IT SUCKS

last time we played, we got wormed, i didnt even see it because i was just hanging out up top finishing our walls and this bitch said "WORM." and she had ALREADY ziplined down to our main house since the cabins werent done yet. i was HORRIFIED because i didnt hear a damn thing!!!! i know worm is quieter but.. when SHE notices something before i do, something has gone wrong KSFJSF so.. it spawned behind, i forgot we had a zipline and threw myself (successfully) down the mountain by habit and i saw little worm bits fall down behind me before i quit the game

THIS TIME, it spawned behind her, and right in front of me while we were going to place the tower for the gliders

literally just glooped up from the ground i didnt even realize what i was looking at at first?? and i was like ah! WORM and we left the game so fast (we dont want that smoke hush)

but we got paranoid because. last time it spawned, she saved and THEN left, so it despawned and that was our worm spawn of the month right

but this time we both just LEFT so i was worried maybe it didnt save the spawn and it would spawn again, yknow? so bottom image is us both hiding up in the towers cuz i was. GENUINELY AFRAID TO TOUCH THE FLOOR

i thought it would just. POP UP BEHIND ME. i think we got really unlucky. cuz i dont think its meant to spawn AT US yknow? like i dont think its programmed to spawn where we are on purpose, its jsut really unlucky that BOTH TIMES it was RIGHT UP HERE SKFJSFS

thats why i hate it up here, its worm hell!!!!! fuck all that

its fine tho we did it, we made our gliders and flew around a bit it was fun

it sucked cuz like... we needed cloth and her cloth things were kinda bugged? cuz they werent respawning for her so.. IT WAS ALL ON ME and i HATE going anywhere in the forest. limited visibility, too far from the water, its all bad man

and the last few times!!! once was a cowman, 2nd was megan twice!!!!!!! so i was so fucking reluctant to go grab them but the last time we went, we put on our paint, we were careful (also i told this mfer i said bestie i need you to be my eyes while im trying to look for cloth and she said okay o7 and i turned around and shes like all the way down the hill not looking for me 💀💀)

we went in and got everything and no one even showed up!!! man i was nervous tho kSKFJS so we go it, finished our gliders and flew

overall, horrible day! everytime i got scared like when i was being chased my heart wouldnt even just drop, it would SEIZE UP it legitimately HURT

only good part is i realized i wanted to recreate my cabin in sons of the forest cuz i could put on overhang over my patio like i wanted to (mine is the house with the red icon)

anyways im fucking exhausted and i need to destress so im gonna keep writing my story lmao

[kritzkrieg-kiss]

Mercs at a summer resort! Part 2:

Mercs at the beach!

Part 1 here

The mercenaries decided to spend the last day of mandatory vacation at the beach!

Scout: Any excuse for Scout to walk around shirtless in front of young ladies was good enough for him. He was having a grand ol' time splashing around and showing off until he swallowed too much saltwater and ended up sick behind a bunch of driftwood. Medic tried to get him to take some medicine and lie down but he was having none of it. The girls had started a game of volleyball down the shore and he was determined to play too. Despite severe stomach cramps, he won the game for them.

Soldier: Brought his rocket launcher because why would he ever not? The gents were having fun competing to see who could throw rocks the furthest into the ocean when Soldier had a bright idea. He picked up a rock, grabbed his gun, and launched himself half a mile from shore. However, it was at this point that he remembered he couldn't swim and had to be rescued from drowning. Sniper shot an arrow with a rope attached and the whole team pulled him to safety. He still technically won.

Pyro: Sand? SAND?! Pyro LOVES sand! More specifically, he likes burying the nozzle of his flamethrower in the sand and blasting flames through it at full force. Once it cools down, he digs up the glass and evens out the base. It makes priceless sculptures that go for thousands of dollars. Whatever he doesn't auction off for charity gets used as inventory for Mann Co.'s multi-level-marketing fine glass business.

Demo: Got so drunk he thought he could dig all the way to China. When the little plastic shovel and bucket proved useless, he threw his hands up and buried every last one of his grenades twelve feet down in the sand. The detonation shattered windows. It measured on the richtor scale. It caused a minor tsunami. He didn't quite make it to China but he did terraform a whole new bay off the shore, aptly named DeGroot's Bend.

Heavy: Poor Heavy accidentally fell asleep in the sun and got a wicked burn. Rather than wake him up and move him to a spot in the shade, the others thought it would be funny to bury him in the sand and seaweed. Heavy angrily woke up to a mermaid tail and long flowing green locks, as well as the words 'Kiss me, I'm Russian' written across his chest in sunscreen. He tried to get up but he was so burnt he couldn't move. Medic had to walk all the way back to the truck and haul the medigun out. The other eight were forcibly buried up to their necks together as soon as he was well enough to move again.

Engie: Engie decided to utilize the plastic bucket and shovel that Demo had so bitterly cast aside. It started with him taking several trips to the water, filling up the bucket to bring back to a little sand pit he made. He looked like a little child playing in the mud for the first 20 minutes of his endeavor. But it wasn't long until his little sand pit stopped being so little. As time passed, it grew from a small pit to a barracade, and then eventually a small mansion complete with second and third stories and interior decor. He surrounded it with sentries. Pyro and Scout were not allowed to come within 20 ft of it.

Medic: Designated lifeguard. He's the strongest swimmer and the only one who knows CPR, which came in handy several times throughout the day. Whenever one of the boys would go down, he would haul them back to shore and start chest compressions while barking at the others to get the medibeam on them. There were 4 accidental ubers deployed that day. Soldier almost died. Meanwhile, when he's not bringing his team back from the brink of death, he's yelling at everyone to use sunscreen. He spiked the sunscreen.

Sniper: The poor guy got stuck in a rip current. It didn't faze him at all, he figured he'd make his way back in eventually and assumed the others wouldn't notice he was gone. They did. And they were terrified. A beachwide search was instigated. The roads were shut. The coast guard was summoned. After 2 hours of searching, he was located drifting on his back a mile from shore, soaking in the summer sun. They screamed when they saw him and smothered him in a group hug like a family who had just found a lost child. Medic cried. He was forbidden from swimming alone after that.

Spy: Hates the beach. He stayed under the umbrella as long as he could until Scout and Pyro started flicking sand at him. He tried to cloak and sneak away but was soon found by the footprints he left in the sand. The others picked up his invisible body and threw him at Pyro, who then airblasted him into the ocean. It was at that moment Spy realized he would spend the day filthy and wet and simply accepted his fate. Heck, he even started to enjoy himself when he realized he could cloak in the water and plant a knife or two in Pyro's back.

Happy summer and soak up the sun. Hope you enjoyed it 💛