#reference meme below the cut

[weshney]

Ghost Hunger AU

Only Danny is horrified to find out that blob ghosts have different fillings.

#free range mochi balls

[saturdaysky]

jester chaos lavorre 💚

another color palette meme drawing! it's a delight working with such a limited palette, tbh. other versions below the cut

can you guess where my cat contributed to this drawing

greyscale!

the sketch. I used another face reference from pexels for this. If you haven't used that site, I recommend it. Super handy

[red-hot-kick]

i am not immune to meme redraws (but i will put my own spin on them!)

(reference image below the cut)

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

YASASHII NO DE

HE CAME IN 20 PULLS……………….. ……… ….. …. . … …. .. .. . . … . .. . .. . . . TRULY YASaSHii OF YOu, GOOD SiR 😭

***Crowley Groovy, chibi sprite, lesson lines, and vignette spoilers below the cut!***

Unfortunately, we do not get any more details on his profile. It’s the same as the profile he had before the update. Age and birthplace unknown, 185 cm tall, favorite food is wild game, and his hobby is vacationing.

SDFHEGYOGYFQEN;jkhaCWIDODB A LOT OF CROWLEY'S LINES ARE VERY CHILDISH OR GOOFY... Like he has one where he complains about Grim eating his snacks, tells on students who are sleeping in class, and gets distracted by shiny objects (which, I guess, is par for the course for a crow).

Crowley cannot attend Alchemy class and does not have Chats. His Buddies are Deuce, Vil, and Grim (with Grim being his Duo Magic partner). Deuce and Vil are interesting choices, I wonder why those two in particular... (Some friends and I were memeing earlier about how "all those characters have single parents so Crowley must be a single parent" and, "Vil is the Evil Queen and Meleanor is a princess of evil", etc.) Crowley can, however, attend the other lessons and it’s every bit as awkward as you think it is. (He has a pre-lesson line where he expresses surprise taht he has to do homework 🤡)

THE CROWLEY DOPPLEGANGER ALLEGATIONS ARE TRUE 💀 He can just straight up run into a clone of himself during lessons… THE DEVS KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING, they even goofily have Crowley say, “Oh! Hello, me!” while the other Crowley is in class for the special lesson… THEY KNEW HOW DUMB THIS WOULD BE 😭 (The dialogue states the Crowley that barges into class is a magical projection…?)

Here are some of his chibi sprites, as well as his Groovy candy. Crowley is not only very yasashii, but also very cute!!

He does, in fact, have vignettes but they are unvoiced. The first part is him running an assembly with the dorm leaders present. Crowley discusses the health of an adolescent apple tree in the school's courtyard, and no one seems to be interested in his speech. Malleus barges in late and, in a fit of anger at having not been invited, starts unleashing lightning. Wow, just like how Meleanor shoots lightning at Lilia... Like husband, like wife/j Everyone retires to their dorms, leaving Crowley to deal with an upset Malleus. The second part features Crowley having lunch with the other staff members (Sam included!). Each staff member is eating something different (Vargas is of course having eggs), and Crowley is revealed to have a great appetite in spite of his age. Crewel and Trein wonder how many decades old Crowley is, since he was apparently still headmaster when Crewel was a student and when Trein started teaching at NRC. Finally, Crowley is walking down main street and spots Yuu, Grim, and some mob students skipping class… so he uses his Lash of Love to discipline them! He binds everyone together and proceeds to drag them back to class. (It was surprising, we haven’t seen the Lash of Love since like… what, the prologue? I almost forgot about it.) Crowley alludes to the fact that even though the students joke about him, he is actually a very powerful mage that shouldn't be taken lightly, you know?? The vignettes end with Crowley referring to his students as "apple trees" that he is nourishing and watching over as they grow, which rounds us nicely back to the apple tree he mentioned in his first vignette.

BUT ANYWay HEREmS thE GROOviY in JUICy DETAIL INkjoW YOU WERE ALL WAiTING FOR

It’s so pretty AaAAaaaaaaaAAAAAAAaaAaaAHHHHH 🥺 His grotesquely detailed hand reaching out to the viewer, who appears to be awaking from within a coffin… and do I have to mention the parallel between Crowley here and the mysterious hand that is offered to us in the mirror at the very beginning of the game????? Which could imply that Crowley is beckoning/summoning us into another world... The dim room, light spilling onto the Mirror of Darkness… So atmospheric!! If Crowley knows how to do one thing well and consistently, it’s drama~ The Groovy totally reminds me a lot of the prologue when Crowley tells Yuu to go before the mirror to get sorted. Omg guys... He's posted like Masquerade Malleus/j

One detail I super appreciate in this illustration is that you can see the dorm leaders in the background! If you squint, you’ll realize that there are 5 of them posing exactly like how they are in the following promotional artwork:

The one without a matching pose is Idia, who is present via his tablet. Though… I feel like we’re forgetting something 🤔 … Eh, I’m sure it’s nothing, nothing at allllllllll~

[carriesthewind]

Good evening everyone! As I said in an answer to a previous ask, there wasn't a public call-in line to listen to the Show Cause Hearing in Mata v Avianca (the ChatGBT lawyer case) today.

However, while we are waiting for a transcript of the hearing (because there was a court reporter! yay!) and a written decision by the judge, we did get this absolutely anxiety-inducing live tweet of the hearing:

(Caveat: this thread was not an official transcript of the hearing and should not be taken as such. It is possible the actual events and statements made in the hearing differ significantly from this report - i.e., take this with a grain of salt and reserve final judgement for the actual transcript.)

I'll put the full thread with some (light) commentary below the cut.* But the overall impression I am left with is that the judge seems to feel this pair of attorneys are treating their duty of candor toward the tribunal with the same seriousness with which they are treating their duty of competence to their clients. (And in this case, that's a very bad thing.)

*The full thread except for a soon-to-follow part 2 because I ran out of space for images again.

(All of the following screenshots are from the above tweet thread by Inner City Press @ innercitypress on twitter, made on June 8, 2023.)

Normally I would overlook that "you, personally," but in this case, you really get the feeling that the judge is concerned that LoDuca might just start talking about what Schwartz did again.

Establishing LoDuca's base of knowledge - he should know how to look up cases and check if they are real; he should know what a real case looks like.

The March 1 submission was the plaintiff's opposition to the motion to dismiss, where they first cited the fake cases.

How bad this answer is depends, I think, on LoDuca's wording here. Best case scenario, his statement about Schwartz was a specific statement about what inquiry was reasonable for him to do under the circumstances (which - for that first filing - I think is actually a reasonable argument. You don't expect your colleague to just make up cases). Worst case, this reads like him trying to wiggle out of his obligations. I will withhold judgement until I see the official transcript.

Rule 11, by the way, refers to Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Rule 11(b) states:

(If you remember the Order to Show Cause, we are dealing with a Rule 11(b)(2) issue here. Rule 11(c) allows the court to impose sanctions for violations of Rule 11(b))

Oh no, bad answer. (If anyone reading this is good at photoshop, I cannot express how badly I want a version of the "this sign can't stop me because I can't read" meme with the sign being the quote from defendant's reply where they say, "The undersigned has not been able to locate this case by caption or citation, nor any case bearing any resemblance to it.")

Oh that is not a good way of characterizing those orders. (Those were the orders, remember, where the Court said, "By April 18, 2022, Peter LoDuca, counsel of record for plaintiff, shall file an affidavit annexing copies of the following cases cited in his submission to this Court: as set forth herein. Failure to comply will result in dismissal of the action pursuant to Rule 41 (b), Fed. R. Civ. P.")

I would simply perish on the spot.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention in my original attempted summary of "Varghese" - the first paragraph states that it is a wrongful death suit by the widow of the passenger. Then the second paragraph states that the passenger was denied boarding on a flight due to overbooking and thus missed his connecting flight and therefore incurred additional expenses. The case was such nonsense that I legitimately forgot about that inconsistency by the time I got to the end.

Your honor I plead "2 stupid 2 sanction."

(I believe the "different fonts" is in reference to the April 25 affidavit, in which the case names - and some of the surrounding text - are in a different font from most of the text in the affidavit. It seems like this is because they may have been copied straight from ChatGPT. See e.g., #3 below. It's hard to tell just based on this twitter thread, though.)

A short and simple answer! You did it!

"I have all the answers I need" is not a good sentence in this context.

Very genuinely: shorter is better here. At least I don't think he hurt himself with that statement.

Judge Castel: How do you conduct legal research?

Schwartz: I research cases.

Judge Castel: Do you read them?

Schwartz: Well, I may have once upon a time, but after hearing you ask that question in this context, I have decided to retire from the practice of law forever and also possibly sink into the ground and die. Also, by answering "yes," here, I just realized that I'm either admitting that I read the cases I submitted and therefore must have known they were fake, or else I just possibly committed perjury. Oh shit oh fuck.

Oh god I'm cringing myself into a pretzel just reading this.

Hey, by the way? You can actually use google (esp. google scholar) to do legal research. (It's not a good tool and you will miss things, but it will do in a pinch.) But. Um. If you know that...why didn't you double check your cases at very least on google when you were told they seemed to be made up?

So, once again, I am going to withhold judgement until I see the actual transcript. That said, if Schwartz did say this, I would like to compare it briefly to a part of the chat transcript he provided to the court. Here is the first question asked about the Montreal Convention in the provided transcript:

"analysis"

Oh god. I can't even provide commentary on this one. I hope this is worse than the actual transcript will prove to be. I'm reading through my fingers like I'm watching a horror movie.

"Misperception" (or "misconception") doesn't work once you have evidence that should cause you to doubt - like not being able to find a case that was supposedly published in the Federal fucking Reporter.

This is overshooting "2 stupid 2 sanction" into "too stupid to function."* You either looked for "Varghese" or you didn't. If you looked for "Varghese," it is not credible that you continued to have a good faith assumption that ChatGPT couldn't lie. If you didn't look up "Varghese," you just lied to the Court under oath.

*Just to be clear: for an ordinary person, this would be a very understandable lack of knowledge issue. A lawyer has no excuse not to know this.

Judge Castel: Mr. Schwartz, I think you have the fucking audacity to try to lie to me to my face in my fucking courtroom.

Honestly at this point I'm surprised he could still talk. I think screaming, "I'm melting, I'm melting!" as he vanished into steam, leaving his crumpled suit behind, would be an appropriate response.

NO.

Oh no, oh honey.

Ok. Two options here (again, assuming he actually fucking said "They said they couldn't find them," in response to the Court asking, "When Avianca said you cited non existent cases?"):

Schwartz is once again trying to purposefully downplay what the defendant's reply brief actually said and dodge responsibility.

Schwartz honestly, truly believes that when the defendant filed a reply containing the line, "The undersigned has not been able to locate this case by caption or citation, nor any case bearing any resemblance to it," they were just asking for assistance with their legal research?!??!

I honestly don't know which is worse.

Oh no....

Oh man, I haven't gone over it here yet, but I think that "I looked up the judge" is a panicked attempt at bringing up a talking point the Professional Responsibility Lawyers raised in their memorandum of law. (Again, I'm giving this reading of his response with the caveat that it is based only on this thread, not the official transcript, which might read very differently and contain different/more info.) The Professional Responsibility attorneys noted in a footnote that two of the judges listed in the "opinion," including the "author," were actual 11th circuit judges, and the other is an actual 5th circuit judge. My read of this footnote was as an extra little detail tossed in by the Professional Responsibility attorneys to try to dress up their argument that the "opinions" had various "indicia of authenticity."

But here's the problem. If Schwartz is telling the truth - if he was reading carefully and critically enough that he bothered to look up the judge (why would you do that if you didn't think the case might be fake?!) there is no way he could have missed that the case was gibberish. Again, if this is really what he said at the hearing, he either lied in the hearing, or he must have know the "opinions" were bogus when he gave them to LoDuca to file.

"Did it cross your mind" - if the court actually said this, oh my god.

Hey, that's the point that I made in my original post(s)!

This whole thing about the "+h" to "th" with the notary date is from the recent affidavits filed on 6/6/23, you can read them about them if you want, I'll be honest, I don't really care as much about the notary stuff so I'm going to skip it for the moment.

....and I've run out of space for images again. Part II to follow shortly!

[preeningpisces]

JJK Men & Their Love Languages

I’m of the belief everyone feels/gives love with all 5, but I'm picking their top ones for giving & receiving.

Includes: Choso, Geto, Gojo, Nanami and Toji

Let me know your thoughts 🩷

Below the cut! Pure fluff

Choso

Giving: Acts of Service

♡ Choso is fiercly protective and doting, it only makes sense that his way of expressing affection is doing everything he can to make your life better. Being loved by Choso is becoming a bit of a princess LOL he will offer to do just about everything for you. Oh, you forgot your phone in the other room? Sit back down he'll get it. You need to carry in groceries? Don't worry about it, he'll bring them all in and put them away. He feels the need to take care of the people he loves

Receiving: Physical Touch

♡ His body is brand new! Like Gojo he's touch-starved, but because it's all new to him it amazes him that you choose to be with him. Not just in the sexual way, but simply the act of hugging him, or playing with his hair makes him feel loved and cherished. Grounds him in his body. He can’t separate physical from emotional, sees them as one in the same when it comes to love & intimacy

Geto

Giving: Quality Time

♡ Making an effort to seek you out and spend time with you is a sign he’s into you, because he really enjoys his alone time! Love from him is taking time/effort to plan dates/hang outs, prioritizing you & not making you feel like you’re just getting his leftover time. It shows his attentiveness, that he knows what you enjoy doing. He isn’t the type that invites you over & just plays video games the whole time—he always has something in mind that you’ll both enjoy, even if it’s as simple as watching a show together. Or just something you enjoy! As long as it makes you happy

Receiving: Gift Giving

♡ I think this one might come as a shock but hear me out. Gifts don't have to be bought, they can be as simple as seeing a cool rock and giving it to your partner. For Geto the reminder that you're thinking about him when he's not around, and that you know what he likes makes him feel loved. Honestly, non-material things are usually more his speed. Sending song recs, funny memes, sending updates about your day, facts you think he'll find cool, etc. He’s very considerate & observant of the ppl he loves, having it reciprocated means a lot to him

Gojo

Giving: Physical Touch

♡ Physical touch doesn’t equal sex. For Gojo, being in love means being vulnerable, and allowing himself to turn off limitless. Because he has so much space between him and the world, he’s pretty touch-starved, and is almost clingy with you. Always wants a hand or arm around you, cuddling, etc. Gojo is kind of emotionally constipated, so he's better at expressing affection physically than verbally. Childish in the way he likes to pester you affectionately, like poking or pinching you. Prepare for bear hugs where he squeezes the shit out of you

Receiving: Quality Tme

♡ Gojo is a living legend, it's almost like the name Satoru Gojo doesn't even refer to him as a person anymore--just the Strongest. Because of this, Gojo feels loved when you see him for him, and want to spend time with him because you like him for just being Satoru. Inviting him over to watch a movie, or hell, just play on your phones in each others presence makes him feel wanted. It’s his presence you want, not his name

Nanami

Giving: Gift giving

♡ You know he fucks w/ you if he’s spending his $$ on you. He shows his love quietly, and through his actions. Love from him is picking up your favorite pastry when he gets bread for himself, buying the shirt you pointed out in the window shop & surprising you with it; he doesn’t make a show of giving it to you, instead he’ll just leave it folded where you can find it. Secretly enjoys when you make a big deal about it tho. It shows he always has you on his mind, and pays attention to the things you like. He just likes to see you happy and smiling!

Receiving: Acts Of Service

♡ Nanami is the type to bear others’ burdens. We hear him say things like ‘leave it to me,’ ‘I’ll take care of it,’ etc. Someone who wants to take care of him makes his heart leap. Someone who is concerned about his wellbeing, and checks up on him. Someone who will offload some of his stress simply because they care, and aren’t looking for something in return. Knowing what he needs and how to help him without needing to be asked

Toji:

Giving: Acts of Service

♡ I’ve touched on this before but Toji takes care of you when he’s in love. Very passively, similar to Nanami, but I think he gets more embarrassed if you make a big deal of it. He’s the type to go put gas in your car for you, or wake up early to scrape the ice off your windows & shovel the driveway so you aren’t late for work.

Receiving: Words of Affirmation

♡ Toji was raised to believe he’s trash & not good enough, I think hearing encouragement & being appreciated verbally means a lot to him. Telling him you need and want him makes him feel loved. Not necessarily sappy things, more of appreciative commentary/observations if that makes sense—things that are grounded in reality. Saying he’s the moon to your stars or something isn’t going to mean shit to him. But telling him you couldn’t have done X without him? That’s what makes him feel loved. Lowkey has low self-esteem, pls tell this man he's means the world to you :(

[s0fti3w1tch]

Tentative Devotee AU (TBC Soon)

Leonardo is a Foot trainee, raised and trained by Lieutenant and Brute since he was 9. Life before then is fuzzy at best. — In the past several months, he's been going on his first proper missions, quickly aware of a persistent threat against the Foot Clan: 3 mutant turtles and a human who've foiled them time and time again.

What he wasn't aware of was that they were 4 siblings who never gave up on finding their missing brother.

CONTENT WARNING! This AU will explore: Mourning of family / Mourning of a child (who isn't actually dead, but believed to be). Violence is canon-typical up to the standards of the movie— That is also a reference point for the tone of this AU. There will be cult themes and dips into the topic of cult trauma, alongside family issues.

Main Comic:

Enemies || [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ tbc... ]

Baby Blue || [coming soon]

[TBA]

Minisodes/Mini-Comic:

Donnie's Apology Gift

First Mission Mishaps!

PSAs: Triggering Content, Why Leo will not have a "Dark Side," Cult Parents

More content below the cut! ♥︎

Scrapped/Changed Ideas or Scenes:

"Maybe this is the lowest point of my life" / Severing Ties

Usagi's first design + role

Mona Lisa first design

Reference Sheets:

Leonardo's Room

UPDATED LEO FULL REF

Leo's Outfit Change + Sorta-Timeline

Hand Marking

Scarf

Leo's Guitar

Eyes (outdated)

Nail Polish

Butterfly Charm

Future!TD!Leo

Usagi WIP

Doodles:

More Lore/Story Heavy = ♥︎ / Just More Fun = ☀︎ / 💬 = answer to an ask

Leo Solo!

"Keep it together, Leo"

"What I know about family?"

He/They/Xe of the day! / Speed-Color ☀︎

Scooter Boy! ☀︎

He's Writing Fanfic ☀︎

Guac Baby ☀︎

"Yeah, of course! But also..." ☀︎

Animation Test

No Sleep

[ i was listening to sonic music while drawing this ] ☀︎

disillusionment

Cook :P ☀︎

3 Swords?! ☀︎ 💬

Peepaw'd :) 💬

Head Empty + Leo kinda mad ♥︎ 💬

Blep! 💬

Feelings Down ♥︎💬

Multi POV

TD Spoilers Over Memes [1]

Trust in the Foot ♥︎ 💬

"Keep your brother safe" ♥︎ 💬

Big Sisters ♥︎

Turtle Sister to Turtle Sister 💬

Foot Clan Family

Motorcycle Theft! 💬

Shell Cracks + A Small Moment ♥︎ 💬

Trans Sibs!!! ☀︎ 💬

Hamato Clan

Not Growing With Us ♥︎💬

Recognition? 💬 ♥︎

"Donnie, stay out of this"

Unknown Tension

Protective Older Twin 💬

"Can we be brothers?" 💬

Donnie's hope (colored ver: here)

"Donnie, whatcha got there?" ☀︎

Drawing for Donnie 1

Yōkai Connections

Hueso's First Encounter With Leo 💬

+ All my AU Crossover Content linked here~!

Separated Leo Crossover : Bathtub Arc ☀︎

Preview Comic (Test)

TMNT AU Competition Basketball Saga ☀︎

DOUBLE-HANDED BACKHAND SWING

Nail Bat Recieved

Leo Hype Squad!

No PomPoms

I didn't intend for this AU to be that big, but I realized I did want to give this a go and make at least something. It's my goal to finish this project eventually.

The AU will be told in segments, comics of various points of the story.

Bonus! Miscellaneous info that doesn't play big into this AU but matters enough to me:

Leonardo is transmasculine, uses he/they/xe pronouns and is referred to with primarily masculine terms.

A version of Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo comics exists and it's Leo's second favorite comic series in this AU.

'Tentative Devotee' is the name of the fanfic I was originally going to write. It was just gonna be a 2-shot fic and a way to navigate some feelings as someone who was born and raised in, and eventually left, a cult.

The initial tone/direction of this AU was much different, Leo ending up in the Foot Clan under different circumstance (i.e. direct kidnapping from Lieutenant and Brute). I found this didn't quite work for me.

[when-wax-wings-melt]

Y'all wanted the presentation? Here's the presentation. Image descriptions are below the cut!

(technically this wasnt part of the assignment, which was "write an essay and read at least one full page to the class" so the reason why there's those huge blocks of text is because that is taken directly from the essay. i can condense things if I WANT to condense them)

[ID: 15 screenshots of a powerpoint presentation. The text is either white or gray, and the theme is various shades of purple, typically with bubbles of dark/light purple and images.

Slide one: Title reading "Keeper of the Lost Cities: A Love-Hate-Love Relationship, And What It Can Do To Your Psyche" with three images on the side. The first image is a meme of two stick figures, the first saying "kotlc lore is second nature to us rabid fans so it's easy to forget that the average person only knows the average special ability count and one or two vackers", the second figure saying "and valin, of course," and the first saying "of course." with text at the bottom reading "Even when they're trying to compensate for it, experts in anything wildly overcompensate the average person's familiarity with their field." The other two images are of Shannon Messenger, a white woman with blonde hair. The images are captioned "The dastardly mastermind behind it all" and "meet Shannon Messenger".

Slide Two: Title reading "Background" with a block of text and two images. The text reads "In total, the Keeper of The Lost Cities (KOTLC) series has over 7000 pages, split between nine and a half books (Book 8.5 was, uselessly, a novella) with a planned tenth coming in late 2024, and a graphic novel dropping in November. It’s the kind of series that hooks you the same way a fisherman hooks a fish: with a promise of a treat that goes very, very unfulfilled." The top image is the cover of the first keeper of the lost cities book, captioned with "book one of what will soon consume my entire brain for years and years and years" and the bottom image is a fish staring at the top image as if it is a tasty treat, captioned "Poor, innocent little 6th grade me".

Slide Three: A block of text reading "This is to say: KOTLC is a good series, at least at first. It’s certainly been my core obsession for a good (or bad) five years. It’s a hook because you can’t escape once you’ve begun. It’s my own personal brand of heroine, as Edward Cullen might say if Bella were a too-long book series that doesn’t resolve any plotlines or character arcs and instead piles more information on top of worldbuilding until contradictions are more plentiful than the packed main cast." An image of Edward Cullen from twilight is captioned "Me, apparently".

Slide Four: A small caption at the top reads "If the series ever ends you can call me Brant when Jolie asked him to leave the Neverseen the way I will burn down my house and kill everyone I love (haha just a joke to get us going)​" with an image of a huge explosion below it. Text reads, "Basically, KOTLC is a good series, but the idea of recommending it feels like I’d be violating several articles of the Geneva Conventions. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. The thought of it ending is an impossibility on the scale of the apocalypse and I hope (I'd rather) the world ends before this series does."

Slide Five: Titled "Queer-Coding in the Lost Cities" with the image of Sophie Foster and Fitz Vacker on the side. Text reads, "The queer-coding doesn't just stem from Sophie’s dedicated denial of both her worth as a human being and her desire to kiss her pretty girl friends. A connection called a “Cognate Bond” is often referred to in the text as the closest two elves can become, emotionally and mentally. Cognates exist when two Telepaths (such as Sophie) have such a deep and unbreakable trust bond that they become more skilled together than they were apart. In creating and maintaining this bond, they have to complete trust exercises and not hold back secrets keeping them from total confidentiality. Sophie’s cognate is her friend (and love interest, and, debatably, ex-boyfriend) Fitz, whose romantic relationship was in a large part focused on their cognate one. Their trust exercises involve staring into each other’s eyes, holding hands, having matching rings, and Fitz telling Sophie that she’s the only person he can truly trust. Fitz also asks his father at one point if cognates are allowed to date each other— his father affirms the statement."

Slide Six: Titled "Queer-Coding: Qualden, Tiertice, and such other 🤨🏳️‍🌈 moments​" with the text, "Notably, Alden has the authority to do so since he himself was a cognate, only undergoing a nasty breakup— sorry, only losing the bond after his cognate, Quinlin, kept too many secrets. It’s implied that two other characters were once almost Cognates, only to grow too far apart when one of them, Prentice, has his sanity forcibly shattered and is locked in prison, leaving his (gay lover) best friend, Tiergan (code name Granite), to raise his son. The choice to parallel Fitz/Sophie, Alden/Quinlin, and Tiergan/Prentice was possibly not a conscious one, since Messenger has never attempted to hint at the existence of homosexuality before, but it still resonates with hundreds of queer teen readers who look at the portrayal of utter devotion and trust between two men and think, wow. this is what i see in myself.​" The image is a quote from Neverseen, reading "'What did you give him?' Granite asked, cradling Prentice like a baby. Prentice's head lolled to the side, his body limp and pale." / "Granite held Prentice tighter, whispering, 'It's going to be okay.'"

Slide Seven: Titled "Honorary Errol "I have five identities and they're all the true me" Forkle Mention​". Smaller text below reads "Strut it Magnate "I inspired Loki but don’t even ask about the horse thing" Leto!​" A picture of Mr. Forkle is next to a tumble post by me about Forkle being trans based on the Loki thing. The slide is decorated with several trans flags.

Slide Eight: Titled "Beauty Standards" with text reading "Speaking of things Shannon Messenger did subconsciously, it’s so painfully clear that this series was written by a white American woman that it makes me break out in hives. Messenger establishes very early on in the series that all elves, no matter who they are, are gorgeous in comparison to humans. For some reason that I’m sure has no correlation to Sophie and therefore Messenger’s personal biases (aka Western hetero/cisnormativity and gender roles), every single elven character is slim with clear skin and no glasses. For some reason, beards seem to be impossible for elves to grow naturally, since the only time facial hair ever appears on anyone’s face is when they take an elixir to change their appearance." An image of Sophie with her human family is captioned "Sophie with her ugly nasty disgusting human family apparently​".

Slide Nine: Text reading "Valin is a member of “the drooly boys” who, had they been “human, would’ve been skinny, with acne and braces. Since they were elves, they were fairly good-looking—or they could’ve been if they hadn’t slicked their hair into greasy ponytails” (Messenger KOTLC 170). It seems elves have evolved past the need for brown eyes, acne, crooked teeth, facial hair beyond eyebrows, and variations in body fat—not to mention most other features that make people unique. ​There is indeed a single elf who is fat and even has wrinkles (elves also don’t physically age past 30, fun fact). He alters his appearance with berries that swell his skin, making him the only unique body type besides Sophie’s human family, who are consistently thrown in terrible comparison to her new, movie-star-looking adoptive parents. The berries also make him smell, interestingly enough.​" Images of Councillors Zarina, Terik, and Clarette line the right side of the slide.

Slide Ten: Text reading: "By portraying the elves as the standard for beauty and then removing any pimple, stretch mark, fat roll, body hair, crooked tooth, big nose, or any of the thousands of features that add depth to faces and bodies, Messenger tells us that perfection lies in eliminating all “flaws.” She tells her young readers that they are desirable if they look like Sophie, or Biana, or Keefe—not Stina with her curly hair, or Dex’s too-skinny arms, or Forkle’s large stomach, or my human body.​" The family portrait of the Vackers is also there.

Slide Eleven: Text reading: "Mostly, what defines KOTLC is how it’s interpreted rather than the content itself. I look at Sophie Foster and see parts of myself, but that does not make her me. These characters always feel so painfully real, desperately relatable, as if Messenger cobbled together a main cast from bits of my life, but they are not. In the end, they are just characters. ​In the end, it’s just a series made for middle schoolers, in the same way the sun is just the sun, and the stars are just there to twinkle merrily and not to be explored.​" Sophie on the cover of Exile is also there.

Slide Twelve: Text reading "Literally the day after I finished this presentation a new Marella short story came out in the paperback version of Stellarlune (book 9). This is a quote in the short story:​" with a picture of the short story of Marella being gay about Linh. Also on the slide is "🚨🚨🚨Alert Alert!🚨🚨🚨​" "🤨🤨🤨🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️​" and "Everyone is excited about Marellinh canon but I think she will simply never acknowledge it again.​"

Slide Thirteen: Just the text "Oh, By The Way, This Series Is Off The Walls Insane​"

Slide Fourteen: Text reading "Things that happen in this series: Alicorns have sex and then there is a graphic birth scene (but the Forkle as Loki thing is going too far 🤨)​, Love Interest confesses his feelings by telling Sophie he wants her to be assigned to marry him by the government​, An ogre bodyguard plays matchmaker with her charge and his crush (successfully)​, There's a guy who can sense "potential" except is definitely lying about this​, Villains die so disappointingly. So far we have "hit on head with rock" "smushed by door opened too quickly" "exploded" "fell into evil birthing sauce" (this last one was cool though)​, and A school principal becomes president​" Three tumblr screenshots and memes detailing other things that happen in the book are also there.

Slide Fifteen: THE END. A screenshot captioned with "Credits for the fake book 7 cover go to @/aphelea on tumblr​" shows a canva/booktok style fake cover for Flashback, with a dancing couple, a horse, and the words "he was a boy. she was a horse. could I make it any more obvious?"

/end id]

[senualothbrok]

I write fics about Baldur's Gate 3

I mainly write about Gale. I write angst, hurt/comfort, romance and smut (Gale x Tav/OC/reader). I often write about heavier issues like trauma, mental illness, and grief.

You can find a list of my work and other misc stuff below the cut. You can also find me on AO3.

I really hope you enjoy my work and blog. I'd love to hear from you with any comments, feedback, random thoughts, or fic requests, so don't be a stranger!

--------------------

Enough (Non-18+. Astarion x female Tav. Angst. Trauma and recovery.) AO3 link

You agreed to help Astarion with the Rite of Profane Ascension, but you can't watch him go through with it. You interrupt the ritual, and Astarion turns on you. Now, you must deal with the aftermath of your actions.

Love and Beauty (Non-18+. Non-ascended Astarion x female Tav. References to bereavement.) AO3 link

A few days after Astarion has taken you to his grave, you are lying in bed together. You decide it's time to make a confession.

Rest (Non-18+. Gale x female Tav. Hurt/comfort.) AO3 link

You have defeated the Netherbrain and survived. But when Gale asks you to marry him, you find that you cannot accept his offer.

Content (Non-18+. Gale x Tav. Mild hurt/comfort. Fluff.) AO3 link

After the reunion party, Gale wonders whether you regret choosing him over Astarion.

Prayer (Non-18+. God!Gale. Gale x Tav. Heavy angst. Grief/mourning.) AO3 link

The God of Ambition has returned to Elysium, and you did not follow him. You grieve for Gale, and you struggle to move on with your life.

A Show of Love (18+. NSFW. Gale x female reader/Tav. Smut.) AO3 link

Sometimes, Gale doesn't seem sure how much you love him. So you decide to show him.

Words (18+. NSFW. Gale x female reader/Tav. Smut.) AO3 link

At your home in Waterdeep, you and Gale recall the early stages of your relationship.

Progress (Non-18+. Professor Gale x female OC. Angst. Mental illness and recovery.) AO3 link

When you start your studies at Blackstaff Academy, you expect a battle with your demons. But the last thing you expect is to fall in love.

Promise (Non 18+. Professor Gale x female OC. Angst with a happy ending. Mental illness and recovery.) AO3 link

Gale learns what it means to love and be loved. Sequel to Progress.

A Brush With Danger (Non 18+. Gale x female Tav.)

Anon prompt: Gale's thoughts and feelings before his infamous declaration in the Shadow-Cursed Lands.

Unexpected (18+. NSFW. Professor Gale x female reader/Tav. Smut.) AO3 link

You pay Gale an unexpected visit after one of his classes.

Absolution (Non-18+. God!Gale. Gale x Tav. Angst.) AO3 link

The God of Ambition considers the last of his attachments. Sequel to Prayer.

The Difference (Non-18+. AU (isekai). Gale x female Tav/OC. Angst. Hurt/comfort. Mental health issues.) Multichapter. AO3 link

When a portal appears in your living room and Gale Dekarios tumbles out of it, you think you are going insane. But truth is stranger than fiction, and things are rarely what they seem.

Mortal pleasures (18+. NSFW. Smut. Gale x female Tav/reader.) AO3 link

Gale has shown you how gods bond in the astral. Now, you show him how good mortal pleasures can be.

---------------

More about me

Senua - 35/F - she/her

This post is a pretty good description of who I am!

I also love animals (esp dogs/cats/horses), tattoos, the Viking age, and existentialism.

Memes

I occasionally make Gale-related memes because I think I'm funny 💀

The inside of my brain

When your soul mate is a pixel man

Smooching Gale - the struggle

Gale porn is therapeutic

Fic vs therapy

Other things

* My dear friend @dolceaspidenera made some wonderful gifsets of Gale x Aurora from Progress and Promise. They are so beautiful, I still haven't recovered from them.

* Lovely @mahiiimahiiii made a beautiful piece of art inspired by The Difference, which overwhelms me with so many feels.

* My beloved bestie @practicallydeadinside-blog gifted me a cameo from national treasure Tim Downie explaining why Gale is so shredded and it changed my life.

She has also blessed me with:

- a comic strip of Words which has destroyed my ovaries and impaired my cognitive functions.

- a phenomenal drawing of Mia from The Difference.

* I commissioned one of my favourite artists @demiesop to draw Gale and Mia from The Difference, and she truly delivered.

* Tim Downie kindly did a beautiful reading of Gale and Mia's wedding vows from The Difference, which I treasure so much.

[missing-sock-misto]

“‘Doesn’t care for a cuddle’, my ass, you’re a freaking octopus.”

Based on a meme, see original below cut!

Ironically, just happened to be the same pose as my CATS-as-cats Fireplace drawing, so happy coincidence 😂

Also, here’s a detail I didn’t want to go unnoticed:

Bless the reference guy for having a build similar to Tugger’s, his muscles always give me a hard time XD

[frost-can-bite]

hey tumblr, sorry for the low quality post, been a little wishy washy lately!! thinking about stuff yk

SO ANYWAY

haha lesbians amirite fellas ahaha

(I used that meme where the tall woman holds the smaller woman against a wall as a reference but I got lazy and didn't make a background or anything that's why pomni looks a wee bit smooshed)

(to those who care abt the direction of my lil account feel free to read below cut its just me askign questions and rambling like a loser)

so like I've been really iffy about what I wanna post because I don't know how tumblr works or how wishy washy the fan bases are for accounts n such, and I don't know how many people are into multifandom accounts,,,,,, so why not just bite the bullet

would any of you guys mind if I posted like, helluva boss and hazbin hotel content along WITH my tadc content??? or would it be better to just make a new blog to put that content in?? I'm still learning tumblr and would really appreciate anything sent to my askbox or even in the comments!!! I'm learning guys im just a little guy!!! okay that's all, thanks tumblr-ers

[cheesecake801]

Here are my pieces from last magma event !! I drew Barry in the 2nd one, Dawn was drawn by @0mbry ! I love them haha !

Check out what the other drew, this session is really hilarious and full of memes !

Have the meme references below cut

Ngl I'm happy with what I drew, drawings memes has to be one of the things thay makes me go "This is it. This is what I'm an artist for"

[intotheelliwoods]

2 Arms Left Masterpost (Part 3)

(Part 1) - Main comic masterpost

(Part 2) - Mini comic masterpost

(Part 3) - Bonus little drawings

(Part 4) - Crossovers, and misc sagas

Below the cut is just fun little bonus drawings!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Bonus drawings #1 - Leo reference + a smoothie

Bonus drawings #2 - Leo reference, part 2!

Bonus drawings #3 - Self destruct

Bonus drawings #4 - Stump aches,, part 2!!

Bonus drawings #5 - Post-Surgery pains

Bonus drawings #6 - Why are they hugging?

Bonus drawings #7 - Jungle gym brother

Bonus drawings #8 - They are homies!!

Bonus drawings #9 - If youre happy and you know it clap your hands!

Bonus drawings #10 - At least neither Leo is alone in the one arm situation

Bonus drawings #11 - He found the flamethrower...

Bonus drawings #12 - Robot arm wrestling match!?

Bonus drawings #13 - Uno, the game that destroys families..

Bonus drawings #14 - Strike a pose!

Bonus drawings #15 - They are huggy?? Splinters reaction?

Bonus drawings #16 - The Traumatic Event color palette

Bonus drawings #17 - The Calm Mindscape palette

Bonus drawings #18 - Thoughts on anyone touching little Leo's stump?

Bonus drawings #19- Gaming together!

Bonus drawings #20 - I am normal about his bean brows.

Bonus drawings #21 - He is a tea person!

Bonus drawings #22 - Did you know I draw this all in aggie.io??

Bonus drawings #23 - Little Leo likes to be held :)

Bonus drawings #24 - Little Leo is a little pea sprout

Bonus drawings #25 - Some comfort in these trying times

Bonus drawings #26 - Pistachio.

Bonus drawings #27 - Hmmm.

Bonus drawings #28 - Mindscape shenanigans~

Bonus drawings #29 - squeak squeak squeak squeak squ-

Bonus drawings #30 - An assortment of doodles

Bonus drawings #31 - What would a grown up Little Leo look like?

Bonus drawings #32 - Shrink the beans

Bonus drawings #33 - Little Leo fidgets

Bonus drawings #34 - What does Future Donnie think about Leos natural brows?

Bonus drawings #35 - GROW the beans

Bonus drawings #36 - Casey and Future Leo travels!

Bonus drawings #37 - Little Leo becomes Medium Leo!

Bonus drawings #38 - Baby carrier

Bonus drawings #39 - Medium Leo beans! And stims!?

Bonus drawings #40 - Mindscape nonsense

Bonus drawings #41 - Free hugs!!!!

Bonus drawings #42 - Flashbacks?

Bonus drawings #43 - New Leos!

Bonus drawings #44 - The new Leo is also huggy~

Bonus drawings #45 - Little aggie doodles

Bonus drawings #46 - Shell Shenanigans

Bonus drawings #47 - Beach day!?

Bonus drawings #48 - "Why is F!Leo fat?" - anon

Bonus drawings #49 - Have I always been this annoying? (GIF)

Bonus drawings #50 - Wiggly (GIF)

Bonus drawings #51 - Sleepy

Bonus drawings #52 - Wings....

Bonus drawings #53 - Sketches

Bonus drawings #54 - Poptart.

Bonus drawings #55 - Hard to tie a mask with one hand..

Bonus drawings #56 - Get dangled.

Bonus drawings #57 - Where did the name Sprout come from?

Bonus drawings #58 - Funny outfits

Bonus drawings #59 - Pondering them

Bonus drawings #60 - Immobilize.

Bonus drawings #61 - National throw short people day.

Bonus drawings #62 - How tall is Sprout?

Bonus drawings #63 - Ducklings...

Bonus drawings #64 - Poptart arm concepts (SCRAPPED)

Bonus drawings #65 - Big Leo..

Bonus drawings #66 - Squish squish squish (GIF)

Bonus drawings #67 - Poptart nickname privileges

Bonus drawings #68 - Color Swap!

Bonus drawings #69 - That Beach Dad meme (nice)

Bonus drawings #70 - Prosthetic thoughts

Bonus drawings #71 - Uppies (GIF)

Bonus drawings #72 - Guess who bought CSP (GIF)

Bonus drawings #73 - Dance dance dance (GIF)

Bonus drawings #74 - He fell........ (GIF)

Bonus drawings #75 - Poptart outfit concepts

Bonus drawings #76 - Tall Sprout

Bonus drawings #77 - Colors for everyone!

Bonus drawings #78 - My Arm! (Video)

Bonus drawings #79 - Sprout.. Sprouting....

Bonus drawings #80 - Poptart shell!

Bonus drawings #81 - Toast him in a toaster (GIF)

Bonus drawings #82 - Average 2AL update in a nutshell

Bonus drawings #83 - Futrue Poptart!

Bonus drawings #84 - Hand practice... nail painting!

Bonus drawings #85 - What if Poptarts hand gets sore? (GIF)

Bonus drawings #86 - Poptot

Bonus drawings #87 - Poncho Poptart

Bonus drawings #88 - de-ages your huggy leos*

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Idia, Silver: Somehow I’ll be Strong

Silver casually doing his usual knightly duties and Idia being shocked at such Chad behavior will never not be funny 🤡 but seeing Idia passionately share his hobbies in the vignettes was wholesome! (The story about Idia singing with Ortho as they went to the bathroom together at night was also adorable 🥺)

Idia’s legs are so damn long, everyone’s been memeing them to the Underworld and back 😂 … Okay, but wtf is up with THAT face he’s making in the groovy?? That’s on a whole new level of sinister 💀 Is this really your mans, Eliza—

asiulbdg8yoadasbqerqo I'M HYPERFIXATED ON ONE OF HIS VOICE LINES where Idia threatens to flick your forehead if you get in his way but then he also confesses that his finger will hurt from doing that so you'd feel bad for him... bro, how weak ARE you...

A Tale as Old as Time.

Gazing upon the good and righteous was nothing new for Idia. He had pored over countless manga and light novels, binged shounen anime after shounen anime.

Here was another hero, bathed in bronze sunlight, posing triumphantly, a sword to pave the way forward and a battered training dummy to protect. His trusty winged steed beside him, a stout, wizened satyr, his mentor, hanging off of one bulging bicep. True, the arena they stood in was empty, save for the training equipment scattered about—but there was no doubt that the world would soon know his name, and his face written in the stars.

A platinum frame divided Idia from that legendary man.

Clutching onto one limp, flabby arm, he quietly scoffed. Haaah, it looks like a scene straight out of some musclehead's training montage...

"You're admiring this painting too, Idia-senpai?"

Idia's thoughts came to a screeching halt. Goosebumps prickled his skin, hair standing on end. A young man with a build similar to the hero in the artwork had appeared, handsome-face framed by moonlight locks.

"E-Eep! S-Silver-shi?!" His voice was pinched, a reverberating squeak.

The knight bowed his head. "Hello. It sounds like you're in good spirits."

Idia took a step back, as if he were the night making way for the encroaching day. The shadows were where he felt the safest, wrapped up in a cloak that granted him near invisibility from the average onlooker. Not with Silver. He who cast a revealing light wherever he drifted.

"Y-Yeah, what a n-nice painting..." Idia mumbled, not bothering to summon the effort to lie. He attempted to skitter away, cutting the conversation short, but—to his dismay—Silver continued.

"I look up to him too. There's many historical heroes we can look back on and learn from," Silver said with a nod. "I refer to them when I consider my own training regiment. They're inspirations to us all."

What's this?! Idia paled. Obviously I was trying to signal to him that I was gonna go AFK but this guy just starts spamming the chat!! H-Have I accidentally tripped an event flag...!? Or does he lack even more social awareness than an introverted otaku like me!?

Silver regarded him seriously—innocently, even. "Can I ask if this is the one you aspire to?"

Idia grimaced at the suggestion. "You're joking, right? Th-There's no way I could be a fraction as buff as he is!!"

The second year blinked, seeming undisturbed by the flustered response. “I don't think that's a concern."

“How’s it not? A hero can’t do crazy godlike stunts if he doesn’t have the right stuff…”

Silver shook his head. “My father has told me stories of warriors who were able to overcome their lack of strength with other provisions. A woman once pretended to be a man to infiltrate the military. Her wit saved their entire country from collapse."

"This man too…” Silver indicated the placard below the platinum frame. “… He gave up his strength to protect someone he loved. It was his noble heart that made the heavens recognize his godhood."

“W-Well…” Idia but his lower lip. He knew the tales as well as Silver did, but still he hesitated. “That’s true, but… isn’t it too unrealistic to think ordinary people could rise to those kinds of feats?”

His grip on his sleeve tightened.

The main character in Star Rogue... He started off as a zero and became a hero. But that's just a video game. Can something like that really happen in real life...? When true heroes are one in a billion?

Silver-shi makes it sound so easy.

His stomach lurched, wrenching into distorted shapes.

“If you have the drive, you can go the distance and somehow become strong,” Silver told him. His tone, reassuring yet firm.

“Somehow? H-How vague can you possibly get? That’s no way to achieve results…”

“It’s not brawn alone that determines your worth as a hero. Please have more faith in yourself, Idia-senpai."

As if just saying that will make my faith meter shoot through the roof! Anxiety-induced sweat beaded on Idia’s forehead.

M-Maybe if I tell him what he wants to hear, he’ll leave me alone… He warily eyed Silver. “O-Okay… I get it already. I’ll try, so…”

Please stop talking to me!! I-I don’t know how much longer of this pure-hearted anime protag speech I can stomach!

“You will? That’s great.” Silver smiled softly. His expression, Idia realized, reminded him of that of the hero in the photo frame.

A sparkling face, full of hope for the future.

A hero in the making.

That could be you, a tiny voice in his mind whispered.

A weight in his chest steadily lifted, then dropped again. Like a lost soul bobbing between life and death. Unsure of which way to go.

No, don’t be deceived. Life isn’t a game route that plays out with an easy ending. One misstep, and I’ll be floating in the River Styx.

Idia cut away from his underclassman. The hero’s big grin snagged in the corner of his eye.

Perfect, pearly, perky. Not a visible crack in a man seemingly chiseled out of marble.

But nobody’s perfect, not even the immortals. Everyone has a weakness or two in their systems, a security flaw, bug to exploit—and the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

Trust in excess turned into gullibility. Willingness to help could become one’s hubris. Goodness twisting into other shapes.

Suddenly, the hero was no longer infallible. His courage, painted foolishly.

If a hero could crumble, then so, too, could those at their lowest points rise up and rebuild a city. Make something of themselves. True one way, and true the other.

Someday, somehow, he’d be strong enough to face the odds—turning the impossible into the possible.

A slow, sinister smile crept onto his lips. Eerie, gleeful laughter filled the air. His shoulders, shuddering.

“Hihihihihihi…”

Silver’s ears perked. He inclined his head toward his upperclassman. It looks like Idia-senpai is reinvigorated. I’m glad I could encourage him.

[zcorners120]

ponytail

haven't written for charles in awhile, so here's a quick drabble ;p

charles leclerc x fem!reader MASTERLIST

synopsis; in a challenge video, carlos finds out how charles is so good at one specific hair style..

warnings; swearing, mentions of sex / sexual implications.

"So today, we will be trying hairstyles on these mannequins in front of us, and see who will be the fastest. Obviously, it will be me." Carlos' thick Spanish accent explains to the camera, along with Charles nodding next to him.

"Oh no no, it will be me watch." Charles turns to him and argues, as the camera records their bickering.

"I have a little sister so I know, you only have brothers." Carlos tuts, ignoring Charles' justification and just stares into the camera, shaking his head.

The camera cuts to the first style, a bun.

"A bun?" Carlos looks confused, picking up the reference picture.

"Ah, I know what to do!" His competitive teammate shrieks, brushing through the hair. He gathered the hair to the top, trying to twist and move it around, sealing it with a hair tie.

"That's how it's done mate." He points, satisfied with his work, when it looks more like a messy birds nest.

Carlos' attempt was arguably better, with the hair a lot neater and in place on top compared to Charles'.

"Alright, next one. Dutch braid.." Carlos reads the paper out, looking to Charles before singing.. "Max, Max, Max, super Max!"

The camera cuts as Charles looks into the distance, not a thought behind his eyes as his teammate has decided to cheer his rival on.

"How the fuck do girls do this?" Charles swears, frustrated as his braid was coming out as more a tangled twist.

"I give up, how?" His teammate also whines, hitting the side of mannequin's head, accidentally sending it flying out of shot as covers his mouth in shock.

"Ay, I did not mean that! I am not violent to women!" He rants fast, hearing Charles' laughing as he runs to pick the mannequin head up.

Both of their braids came out quite sloppy and pathetic, but not bad for them.

"Next one is ze ponytail, oh this is easy." Charles reads out the cue card, French accent prominent.

Carlos smirks as he watches Charles put the mannequin's hair into a perfectly neat ponytail with ease.

"How did you learn that, eh?" Carlos starts laughing, along with the camera crew as they watch Charles go red.

"Y/N taught me some things." He says awkwardly, laughing as Carlos comes to tears.

"Okay I think it is obvious who won this one, as Charles has had some previous experience." Carlos spoke to the camera, nudging Charles with his last comment as he looks down at the difference between the two ponytails.

They tried a few other styles, camera cutting every seconds with their squabbles, laughter and rage quits.

"Okay so I hope you all enjoyed ze video, leave a comment down below and tell us who won!" Charles claps his hands, folding them together in front of himself.

"Subscribe and like, make sure to vote Carlos. Bye everybody!" Carlos waves, as the camera finally cuts.

The video blew up way more than expected, with multiple clips making their way into tiktoks, 'f1 crack' meme videos, and most importantly Charles' ponytail skills.

[seventeendeer]

TF2 analysis - on cultural references, context as characterization, and how to analyze comedy

-taps mic- HELLO, TEAM FORTRESS 2 COMMUNITY !

A while back, I received an ask requesting analysis of one of my favorite video games of all time and special interest of 12+ years, and you know I just had to go and turn that into a several thousand word essay for the reading pleasure of the people.

Because that shit got way too long, I’ve decided to put it into a post of its own. Hopefully a big title and no previous context being necessary will give more people an incentive to read it. I spent a long time on it and I think it’s pretty cool, and I would love some nice attention for my effort. ;w;

The ask I received went a little something like this:

Below the cut, I will be replying to these questions individually. It touches on everything from Cold War propaganda to the media landscape at the game’s launch in 2007 to first-person shooters as a genre - all to gain a better understanding of author intent, expected audience reaction, characterization and themes.

Anon previously requested help writing more accurate fanfiction, and damn it, that is what they are going to get!! and MORE

Introductory disclaimer:

First of all, for clarity's sake: this analysis is going to specifically talk about TF2 as seen through a fandom lens. I'm going to be talking about the game as a piece of media, creator intention, and the fandom's reactions to the game and extended canon - that is, the slice of the TF2 fandom that is interested in the characters, in the world and in doing at least semi-faithful fanworks.

I will not be touching on TF2's wider playerbase or meme culture. I greatly enjoy both, but they are not relevant to the post I made that sparked this anon's questions (I will link this post in the replies, in case anyone is curious).

I also have to disclaim that any references I make to real world history in this post have to be taken with a hard grain of salt. I've done my best to fact-check everything, but I am not infallible! For a better understanding of the historical elements I talk about here, please do your own research, and approach my claims with a healthy amount of scepticism, same as you would any unsourced social media post. (Readers may notice examples I give below primarily feature Soldier, Spy and Scout. This is because I feel I have the most solid grasp on the historical events and media that informs their characters, compared to the other classes. All the classes contain these contexts and meta complexities, but in an effort to not talk out of my ass too much, I have decided to focus on the characters I feel the most confident dissecting.)

>1) What tropes was the game parodying/what cultural contexts would you say are essential to understand, in order to better understand the game?

The characters of TF2 were specifically designed as satiric takes on national stereotypes depicted in American propaganda media during the Cold War. Two easy-to-explain examples to illustrate:

- Soldier embodies the ideal of a "red-blooded American" who is strong, brave, hyper-masculine, hates foreign superpowers, loves the vague ideal of "freedom" and firmly believes America is the greatest nation in the world. He prides himself on having personally murdered nazis in the past, despite actually having accomplished no such thing (comparable to the US taking a disproportionate amount of credit for defeating Nazi Germany in World War 2; at the time, WW2 was a very recent cultural memory that made for good propaganda fodder). He fears, hates and dehumanizes communists (as Soviet Russia was the US's highly-villified opponent during the Cold War). The satiric angle: he is depicted as so brainwashed by propaganda that he has become immune to facts and logic. He is horribly sadistic, brutal, paranoid and xenophobic. The ideal he is based on is portrayed as shockingly and disproportionally violent and illogical to the point of being laughable.

- Spy is based on how the US viewed France during the Cold War: as a weak, cowardly, “unmanly” nation. At the time, France was depicted this way because they were perceived to have surrendered to Nazi Germany early on in World War 2 out of cowardice. Spy is one of the least macho of the mercs, he is ineffective when fighting enemies head on, and his main method of attack is reliant on trickery and “not fighting fair.” The satiric angle: Spy isn't actually much of a coward - he is more intelligent, more tactical and more resourceful than many of the others, and simply doesn’t feel the need to risk his neck when he could be working smarter, not harder. The other characters are portrayed as a bunch of meatheads for picking on him. The negative stereotype he is based on is portrayed as largely unearned and ridiculous. (Though note that Spy is also depicted as an upperclass prick to contrast with Engineer being working class; in that dynamic, Spy is depicted as a pompous asshole, while Engie is depicted in a more favorable light. The characters are multi-faceted and no class is universally “better” or “worse” than the others, but right now I'm specifically focusing on the "Cold War stereotype" aspect.)

Notice how, while these two characters have different nationalities in-universe, they are both based on stereotypes seen through an American lens. Notice the way the American character is based on a comedically deconstructed ideal, while the character from a nation the US did not view favorably at the time is depicted as falsely judged by an unfair and ridiculous metric.

The entire TF2 cast and universe revolves on this axis! It takes old American ideals and prejudices and uses them for comedy, adding exaggeration and caveats to make those ideals look absurd.

It’s a parody of media produced in the US during the Cold War, which contained massive amounts of propaganda. It satirizes the political ideals that were glorified in said propaganda media.

Very important extra cultural context: this satiric depiction of old war propaganda was specifically designed to be instantly recognizable to TF2's central demographic at the time of release in 2007.

Older Valve games like TF2 were very specifically made to appeal to pop culture-savvy, nerdy young adult gamers. This demographic was expected to see the characters and think "oh hey, it's like a funny version of X character type I've seen in movies!"

Because those kinds of movies were still everywhere at the time. The Cold War ended in 1991. TF2 was released only 16 years later. To put this into perspective: the Legally Blonde movie came out 22 years ago, in 2001. Think about how many Legally Blonde memes are still floating around the web today, how fondly remembered this one movie is and how often it’s still referenced in contemporary media. Now consider that media produced during the Cold War was fresher in the cultural memory at the time of TF2′s release than Legally Blonde is for us today.

TF2 was never meant to be seen in a vacuum. It was always meant to be in conversation with old media that it expected everyone playing to be extremely familiar with.

I'll say that again: the cast of TF2 are based on Cold War stereotypes - comedically exaggerated - so they would clearly read as parodies to people in 2007.

Those are 3 different overlapping lenses to consider when approaching the characters.

The characters are more than just funny cartoon men with guns and an unusual amount of differing accents. They are commentary on older media trends.

Now, someone might ask - why did the developers choose this specific aesthetic and tone for their online shooter video game?

The developers have stated multiple reasons, including wanting the characters to be immediately recognizable both physically (they generally look like the stereotypical depictions they're based on) and audibly (the differing accents and regional dialects make it easy to identify which class is yelling in your ear mid-combat during gameplay).

However, I also have another theory:

It's been confirmed TF2's comedic tone was designed to combat a lot of negative aspects of shooters in the genre at the time of its creation. I have seen developers discuss that they were going for a lighthearted atmosphere to discourage player hostility.

I, personally, also think it is extremely likely the developers opted for satirizing old war propaganda partially in order to combat the tendency of other shooters often being war propaganda. Valve has always been a politically left-leaning company, with a history of depicting military-like forces and unchecked capitalism in a negative light (see the Half-Life and Portal series, respectively).

By depicting the cast of TF2 as generally unhinged, illogical and clownish, they were able to communicate to players: "War is dumb, nationalism is dumb, whatever Call of Duty has been telling you is cool is actually illogical and copying it makes you look like like an idiot. That being said, we all sometimes wish we could beat the shit out of other people in the desert with a shovel, so let's get our aggressions out in a safe, non-serious environment with no consequences. Come play pretend you're a murderous sadist blowing up equally unhinged people with us, it's silly, but it's so fun."

I believe everything from the cartoonishly over-the-top, non-permanent deaths to the deserted, remote environments, to the lack of any truly innocent or defenseless characters was all a carefully crafted foundation made to encourage players to make the informed decision to leave their inhibitions and moral hangups at the door. They wanted players to have fun and go nuts engaging in military-like violence, without encouraging pro-military attitudes in their playerbase.

For an example of a game that royally screwed up doing the same thing, just look at Overwatch - it tried to preach a "wholesome" vibe that was completely mismatched with its gameplay. Overwatch tries to justify extreme violence as Okay When Good Guys Do It To Bad Guys, which ... yeah, again, that is straight up modern military propaganda, on purpose or not (and knowing the US military’s tendency to pour money into video games that glorify war, “on purpose” isn’t as much of a stretch as one might think). Paradoxically, TF2 comes out both looking and feeling better to play, because it handles aligning player emotions VS in-game actions much more elegantly. It accounts for common pitfalls in its genre. OW jumps into those pitfalls with both legs and instead ends up looking shallow and nauseatingly twee.

Of course, all of this is personal speculation. Whether or not this was the reading that Valve intended, I do believe it's a big reason why TF2 has remained so profoundly loveable over the years - it uses its writing and art direction to put the player in the perfect mindspace to Fuck Shit Up.

It's a fantastic example of how to carefully and artfully craft something extremely stupid for maximum intended effect. It uses the strengths of comedy as a genre to its absolute fullest.

Unfortunately, because of cultural shifts since the game's release, newer fans do end up missing out on a lot of what makes this game so expertly done. Many newer fans don't come into the game with the base cultural knowledge it expected of its original audience. To gain a better grasp on the characters and enjoy this piece of media as it was intended, I think it will be extremely helpful to familiarize yourself with the material it is referencing.

For an introduction to media produced and influenced by the Cold War, I would recommend the Wikipedia article Culture during the Cold War as a starting point.

(I have skimmed, but not read, the full article; I encourage readers to be especially source-critical when engaging with pages like this that detail themes of history and propaganda - it's a starting point, not a finish line!)

>2) What themes/layers do you feel the fandom has lost sight of, over time? (or never really managed to acknowledge to begin with?)

Some of this is covered in the previous section, but I'll use this question as an opportunity to talk about another thing I feel is overlooked by fans (and, frankly, the writers of the newer comics too), especially when creating fanworks:

The fact that the characters are extremely dependent on their setup and narrative context to be likeable.

Something I think fandom culture struggles with in general is interpreting and handling fictional characters not as real, independent people who exist in a vacuum, but as the sum total of countless moving parts inside a narrative all working together to create the impression of a real person.

In a comedy, characters are especially dependent on presentation to feel like themselves. It is not enough to loyally recreate an arbitrary list of personality traits in order to create accurate fanworks - recreating the sorts of situations they get into, the kinds of people they interact with, and cherry-picking the information they have access to is neccessary for bringing out what makes the characters so charming!

This is especially important when interpreting and handling a cast made up exclusively of characters who are mean people with bad intentions, bad opinions and a complete lack of adequate self-reflection across the board.

Canon makes them all come off amazingly likeable, but this is because the writers were manipulating tone, relationship dynamics, setting, and much more to show off the characters at their most distinct, least detestable and absolute funniest.

Overlooking this aspect of writing comedy characters often leads to a very common pitfall in many, many fandoms out there - following the logic of a character's canon personality to a place they don't like, and getting rid of those personality traits to combat their own discomfort.

Making characters too kind, too understanding, too progressive, etc., is an endless source of micharacterization in fandoms in general, but especially in fandoms of media where the characters are a bunch of dicks in canon.

To be clear, I fully understand where this is coming from. Fans get attached to characters like these because they're funny (and intended to be loved!) - realizing that a character you really like would logically react in an unlikeable way if you put them into certain situations feels bad. No one wants to turn a character they love into something they find they don't love anymore.

But this is where carefully engineering your setup and narrative comes into play.

Example:

A lot of TF2 fans are queer. Queers flock to TF2 because let’s face it, the campy vibes and silly fun masculinity and weird women are like catnip to us.

But a lot of queer fans go into the fandom aspect of the game and find that ... wait, shit, these characters are not exactly pillars of progressiveness. Reconciling some of the extremist political views of the characters with queer narratives, with queer values, seems a daunting task to some. Because what’s a queer fan to do? Portray a character they love in a way that makes them unloveable? Painstakingly depict shitty, uncomfortable characterization in the name of “realism” that ultimately detracts from their own and other people’s enjoyment of the story? That’s not fun. Fandom is supposed to be fun. So, what, do they just portray the characters as miraculously having perfectly amicable social politics by the standards of the larger queer community in 2023?

Some do, of course, for their own comfort, and it’s understandable, but it’s not good storytelling. It’s an excessively shallow way of interacting with media - the fanfiction equivalent of confidently sitting down to write an in-depth, flowery review of a horror movie you watched with your hands over your eyes during all the scary parts. You cannot create fanworks that are even remotely faithful to the spirit of the canon while deliberately ignoring the core themes and author intention of the canon you’re working with. These things are, unfortunately, mutually exclusive. TF2 characters are meant to be wrong about most things politically. Hopefully my reply to the first question in this post adequately illustrates why that’s so important.

But the good news is that bastardizing canon in order to avoid making characters unlikeable also isn’t necessary.

There’s a reason Soldier, in canon mocks his enemies for everything from failing at masculinity to being disabled, yet doesn’t have a single homophobic line:

The people writing his lines figured it would detract from the character. It would hurt real people’s feelings and make the character less fun to play as, so they didn’t include it. No excuses, no explanation; it is simply omitted for the sake of likeability.

(For contrast, notice that the writers did not extend the same kindness to certain other minorities, like fat people - playing as Heavy fucking sucks when you’re fat, because every other class hurls fatphobic abuse at him. This is a fuck-up on the writers’ side; they failed to identify this type of humor as meaningfully detracting from the experience for a significant amount of players, and so ignorantly decided to include it.)

This is what I mean by “setup and narrative context.” I also like to call this “maneuvering”, because it involves selectively portraying a character in contexts and situations where they shine and instill the intended audience reaction, while steering them away from situations where they would logically act in ways that counteract how the audience is intended to feel about them.

Fanworks can absolutely do the same thing! Fanworks can even take the technique further, because they’re not bound by limited time and focus, the way the original work is!

Sticking with the above example of wondering What The Hell To Do when portraying a character who, due to the ideal he’s satirizing, should by all rights be on the wrong side of history in relation to queer rights, let me make a bold statement:

Soldier TF2 is not homophobic. He's a nationalist, a right-winger, a sexist, a xenophobe - but he's not homophobic.

Why? Because he just so happens to never encounter any gay people in canon. They happen to never cross his mind. He's thinking about other shit. If there's a Pride riot in Teufort, he just so happens to be looking the other way.

Soldier TF2 is not homophobic, because he can't think for himself. He's an idea, a fraction of a bigger narrative that he does not exist outside of.

And if he needs to encounter gay people in a fanfiction, don’t just passively follow the logic of his character to that uncomfortable place none of us enjoy going to - use that maneuvering! Make him misinformed, make him misunderstand, give him incomplete information - the character is not only a face with personality traits attached, his soul is also in the context of the story!

Make him homophobic, but he's pretty sure only Europeans can be gay (just look at them!), and it's already so damn sad that they weren't born in beautiful, paradisical AMERICA, so he pities them instead of hating them. Make him think he's successfully being homophobic, but he has misunderstood what a gay person is and thinks it's a particularly venomous type of snake (men who kiss other men are fine, why would he care about that when there are HORRIBLE HOMOSEXUALS slithering around in the desert that he needs to go blow up right now before they bring this glorious nation to ruin). Make him homophobic, but literally "phobic" - he's shaking and crying hiding inside a cupboard, and his newly-outed gay friends have to lure him out with canned meat and a trail of small American flags, treating him like a feral cat that needs a little time and space to get used to people.

That's funny. It's likeable, it's charming. He isn't portrayed as a good person, or woke in a way that clashes with the themes of his character, but with a little maneuvering, he is faithful to what makes him such a legendary character in canon - being a silly caricature that brings us joy.

If Soldier himself needs to be gay? There are ways to make it happen. Same approach. Get creative. Make it silly. Go for thematically appropriate comedic explanations, not cop-outs or realism*.

That is what I think the TF2 fandom is lacking - understanding of how to manipulate context to make a character feel like their own unique, lovable selves.

Characters are not just visuals and personality traits. They are also what happens to them, what they conveniently find out, what they happen to miss.

This is the same for every story, but it is especially important to understand in a comedy. Doubly so in a whimsical, hyper-violent, morbid comedy like TF2.

It's one of the most important layers to be able to recognize, and an even more important one to be willing to try to recreate.

*Unless you feel like doing a deliberate deconstruction, in which case, go ham, sometimes actively engaging with canon means doing some real weird stuff to it to make a certain point on a meta level. This is obviously different from the issues I described above.

>3) "even the newer official comics don't even seem to really "get" the original game" … I've had a nagging sense for years now that the TF2 comics don't really match the game, tonally -- which has admittedly soured my enjoyment of them -- but I've never been able to put two and two together and fully determine why that is. What would you say they've failed to "get" about the work they're based off of?

While I very much love the newer comics on their own merits, I do think they are wildly removed from the game, and lack a lot of depth by comparison.

I believe the greatest failing of the comics, especially the long-form comic, is that the writers do not seem to be aware of either of the subjects I covered above.

They do not handle the satirical aspect well. The newer comic writers don't even really seem to be aware that there is a satirical aspect - they treat the world as just a silly version of mid-1900′s media, with a narrow focus on silver age comics (which were primarily superhero comics, not an easy genre to match with TF2′s more grounded setting - see the comic’s limp attempt at doing a Superman parody with Sniper) + a dash of the Man’s Life magazines (would have been a good match, if not for the fact that it’s primarily used as aesthetics, with no attention given to themes the way the game does with its own media references). They attempt to write parody only, and even the parody aspect is a hollow effort. Crucially, the writers don't seem to have much of an opinion of the old media properties they're parodying, and without opinions to guide a parody, it becomes shallow and lifeless. "Mid-1900′s media was a bit silly, right?" isn't enough of a hot take to justify its existence. It needs an axis on which to spin to feel complete.

Reiterating the point I made in my answer to question 1: the game's satirical aspect circled the point that was "American media made during the Cold War pushed a narrative that was illogical and ridiculously misaligned with reality."

Its absurd humor is grounded in reality and follows a thematic red thread that the comic does not. As a result, the comic (again, primarily later entries) loses a lot of the sting and edge of the game.

Even though the comic attempts to be more serious and "dark" at certain points, the much more silly and easy-going game (and Meet the Team videos, not to mention) comes out looking more mature, interesting and layered, even though many of the layers remain subtextual. The game is fully married to comedy and has no intention of "getting real", but it is loyal to the spirit of satire. It has opinions. It has bite.

In the game and early supplementary material, there is a dread and horror in the subtext that the comics tried to bring to light later on, but the comic writers didn't know what the scary thing behind the curtain was.

The scary thing was - is - the Cold War.

The scary thing is the dread injected into the genre it's satirizing by people who wanted American readers and movie-goers to be afraid. Scaring people into compliance, into finding a sense of safety and comfort in their national identity, was the entire purpose of many, many pieces of media released at the time.

The comic writers didn't notice the subtext and figured they had to make up their own reasons for why the world of TF2 is so utterly fucked.

They didn't understand the cultural context, and they missed the mark entirely.

This also hindered the comic writers' ability to reproduce the game's humor and characterization. Without understanding where exactly the game's humor was coming from or why the characters were so likeable despite being horrible people, they lacked direction. They made the characters at the same time too impassionate, too stupid, too uncaring, and too nice. All together, the characters became less interesting, less likeable.

Example:

- In the game, Spy was not intended to be Scout's father. Spy having a relationship with Scout's mother emphasized Spy's craftiness and intelligence (undermining the enemy team not only through brute force, but through infiltrating their personal lives), and showed off the strengths of his aforementioned "softness" and sentimentality (he's the only mercenary shown to have consistent luck with women). It also emphasized the flaws in Scout's worldview, and his status as the team underdog, and showed a clear contrast to Scout's non-existent love life. Spy came out of the situation funny and likeable because he 1. was portrayed as cool and capable in a way the other mercs aren't, and 2. his softer side is simultaneously humorously endearing, consistent with the rest of his characterization, and highly informed by the satirical aspect of his character in a way that clicks perfectly thematically. Scout comes out of the situation likeable because his ego is balanced out by his bad luck - you can simultaneously see that he's trying too hard and why he's trying too hard. Spy and Scout's dynamic in-game is also fun and interesting, because you have a tough, hyper-violent, wannabe-macho young man who is desperate to gain the respect of both his team and his enemies getting freaking owned by a guy who is nowhere near the impressive-tough-guy ideal Scout strives to embody. The game's satirical points inform the characters and their actions, which gives the comedy depth and nuance, which in turn makes all characters involved fun to watch and easy to get invested in. It is the establishing of and subsequent pointing-and-laughing-at an ideal that produces engaging, character-driven comedy in this situation.

- By contrast, the comics decided that Spy was Scout's father. Spy's motives for getting involved with Scout's mother is no longer about gaining intel on his enemies. In this version of events, his motives are reduced to merely wanting to reconnect with an old flame. This completely undermines the dynamic described above, for multiple reasons: the situation no longer shows Spy as having a particular skillset that sets him apart from the other mercs, he is no longer portrayed as emotionally "softer" than the others (in fact, having left a poor woman to raise and feed 8 kids on her own while he was off enjoying his upperclass life makes him look incredibly cold in a way that is distinctly unfunny; I don’t think the writers thought this part through), Scout's comedic poor luck is no longer on display, and the "macho character is humiliated by the type of guy he respects the least" satirical aspect no longer works. There is an attempt to replace it with a mutual "ugh, I'm related to this guy?" running gag, but it's a very pale substitute for the layered, strongly characterized, thematically appropriate dynamic present in the original game. Spy comes out of it looking like more of a cowardly, cold-hearted fuck-up than a hilariously brilliant tactician with a heart. Scout comes off way too pitiable, because he is not responsible for his own misery here, and the person horribly bullying him and picking apart his self-esteem on the battlefield is his absent father who abandoned him as a child. He's not an objectively badass character who nonetheless fucks himself over in humorous ways trying to chase an ideal that objectively sucks - he's just a regular shitty guy who ended up in bad circumstances because of things outside of his control.

The comic writers didn't understand what Spy and Scout respectively represented in the game, and because of this, they didn't realize they were taking the characters off the rails and making them much less interesting as a result. They didn't realize they were killing off an endless source of comedy that supported the game's satirical angle in a fun, unique, dynamic way.

It resulted in a flat, flavorless subplot. It had some superficial attempts at "heartwarming" moments ...

... but here's my take: if the writers wanted to include more warmth and sincerity in the comics, wouldn't it have been way more heartwarming if Spy started treating Scout as his son even though he wasn't?

Would it not have been way more endearing to see him look out for his girlfriend's child, not because he has any personal ties to him himself, but because he knew if anything happened to Scout, his mother would be devastated?

Why not build from there? Why not make it an active choice? Why not preserve the existing dynamic and themes, and just follow that narrative thread to its logical conclusion?

Spy has an established sentimental side. Scout is desperate for approval. The reluctant surrogate father/son development practically writes itself. It would have been such a good way to explore TF2's themes more explicitly, too!

But again, the comic writers did not seem to realize the game even had themes.

I do like the newer comics. I do think they're really fun, and I did even enjoy the "Spy is Scout's father" subplot in its own way. But this complete inability to identify the game's themes, and thus the source of all its comedy, and thus the red thread defining characterization - it resulted in supplemental material that was lackluster, directionless and unable to scratch the same itch the game does.

They're good comics, but they're hardly TF2 comics.

>4a) … Sheerly out of curiosity, how do you feel Expiration Date holds up, in comparison?

Similar to the way I dislike Spy being revealed to be Scout’s biological father for coming off as a stilted, superficial attempt at being “heartwarming,” I also immensely dislike later supplementary material trying to promote Ms. Pauling to Scout’s recurring love interest for the exact same reason. Expiration Date pushes this subplot way past its breaking point and shows off extremely well why the “jerk characters are secretly a bunch of softies” treatment is so deeply, deeply out of place in TF2.

Back in the early comics, Scout hitting on Miss Pauling was played as a joke at his expense. He was an idiotic, sexist guy incapable of talking to a pretty woman without trying to fuck - she was a highly skilled and deviously manipulative minor character who mostly existed to show off how dangerously competent the Administrator and her people were. Scout acting like an utter dumbass too entrenched in his own limited worldview to notice what was happening right in front of him was important characterization for him, Miss Pauling’s quiet, calculating efficiency was important characterization for her boss, and their clashing personalities set the tone for the dynamic between the entire team of mercenaries and the conspiracy going on right under their noses.

Expiration Date chose to eliminate these layers and invent a completely new conflict for these two specific characters to go play with in a corner, which had nothing to do with their original characterization or the larger plot. Scout is now portrayed as being genuinely in love with Pauling, even noticing small details about her mannerisms and knowing about some of her interests, even though the entire point of their original interactions were that Scout was so busy trying to live his tough-guy-with-a-pretty-girl-on-his-arm fantasy he did not bother to listen to or learn anything about the women unfortunate enough to cross his path, allowing Pauling to carry out her job without causing suspicion.

Instead, Scout’s sexist approach to interacting with women is played for sympathy (”he’s actually a romantic underdog because the lady he likes accurately clocked him as an idiot!”) and inadvertently validated (”once she gave him a chance, she found out he’s actually a pretty okay guy!”).

In the process, Miss Pauling loses far too much of her usual competence, being visibly freaked out over having to perform a job she’s been shown to handle with grace in the past, and being taken aback by what should by all rights be routine weirdness in this world, all so she can have an eye-roll-worthy forced positive reaction to the entire experience at the end of the short, in a weak attempt to justify why she comes to like Scout more despite all the trouble he’s caused for her and wants to spend more time with him in the future.

The romance subplot is only made possible because the characters are heavily edited compared to their past portrayals, is only able to develop in the direction it does by aligning itself with the values of a character who existed to be a laughable, obviously-mistaken caricature, and is only able to distill a happy ending to the whole mess by stripping the other character of personal standards and agency.

Scout and Pauling are frankly two halves of a whole shitshow in Expiration Date, because the writers either didn’t notice or didn’t care about what older works were gunning for - all they saw was that Boy Liked Girl, Girl Did Not Like Boy, and that just wouldn’t stand! After all, everyone likes romance, right?

Scout, as he is portrayed in the game and in the early supplementary material, is one of my absolute favorites of the mercs. I find him incredibly funny, and the way his hyperactive, fun-loving, jokey traits overlap with his intense bloodlust (literally - he’s the class with the most weapons available that cause bleed damage!) and barely-suppressed rage makes him fun and fascinating. The little man has so much unchecked ADHD and cultural trauma he just has to go and kill people about it, which is just so intensely relatable in the “forbidden mood” way TF2 handles so well.

Unfortunately, I get the impression he has in later years fallen victim to the curse of being a skinny young white guy character, making him a target for writers who think every series needs a relatable everyman protagonist for either themselves or the audience to project onto (and who think skinny young white guys are the most relatable people around, for reasons you can probably imagine I’m not personally very fond of).

TF2 absolutely does not need a character like that, and butchering Scout’s established personality in the name of “relatable” and “wholesome” is first of all Some Bullshit, and second of all a lost cause. The character simply has too much baggage as an over-the-top caricature to be comfortably rewired into an author- or audience-surrogate. He’s always going to come out looking like an asshole - whether this aspect of his character turns out likeable or unlikeable is entirely controlled by whether the story itself acknowledges it.

I did find Scout and Spy's dynamic to be quite well done, though, especially if you ignore the "Spy is Scout's father" reveal from the later comics.

The idea that Spy didn't have to go and do all that, but has grown a soft spot for Scout purely because his girlfriend clearly loves her incredibly annoying boy and her happiness is his happiness, is perfectly in-character. Scout has also long been established to desperately crave approval from his teammates, and on paper, the idea of putting him in a situation where he had to let go of some of his macho man dignity, imitate Spy more closely and ultimately win a tiny bit of that approval he's been looking for is interesting and plays well with the game's existing themes.

It's just a shame Scout's motivations ended up being conjured out of thin air, in direct conflict with past characterization, for the purpose of enabling a schmaltzy, tonally dissonant romantic subplot.

tl;dr, I'm conflicted on the subject of Expiration Date. It's funny, it's cute when it's not trying too hard, and seeing the mercs dick around off the clock getting into stupid shenanigans together is something I've always wanted to see in a longer animated format. It’s largely a good time and a fun watch, despite its questionable gender politics and trope-y execution.

However, like the newer comics, it suffers immensely from writers who are simply unable to identify the themes, characterization and comedy style of older material, and thus, in my opinion, falls way, way short of its potential.

>4b) I'd be very curious to hear your thoughts on Emesis Blue, should you end up watching it.

I'll be sure to share my opinions if I ever get around to watching it!! I'm super curious about it. As I mentioned in another post, what little I've heard of it seems much more on-point thematically, and even with the characters being so far removed from their official characterization, I really get the impression this is a deliberate, informed choice, in stark contrast to the newer official supplementary material. I’ll be sure to drop some words on it if I ever get around to watching the full thing!

Anyway, that about wraps up my thoughts! If you’ve read this far, thank you for sticking with it, and please do consider reblogging - I’ve spent an insane amount of time writing and re-writing and fact-checking this, and I would love for it to reach just half of all the people who were curious about my initial posts on the subject. :’)

Follow-up questions are very welcome, though to be clear: I’m not really interested in “debating” the subjects I’ve talked about here. I know I posit a lot of hard opinions in this post and not everyone is going to agree with me and that’s fine - if you feel differently, I invite you to simply ignore me and write your own take on your own blog. No hard feelings, I just don’t enjoy those kinds of discussions. (Corrections on any factual mistakes I’ve made are of course encouraged).