#tf2 official content

[friendlyengie]

I think one of th things with soldier is that a lot of the times ppl just put him at his Maximum Everything. Maximum idiot maximum LOUD. But the thing is hes not really at 100 all of the time. Hes a very 0 to 100 type character. In the comics at least. Like i remember rereading the first comic and just sort of being fascinated by how he Is. Chill isnt really the right word but I dont know how else to explain it.

“The heart makes its own rules” what are you saying.

Anyways i think part of soldiers whole thing is that he operates in his own world on his own rules. He will say shit so casually or matter of factly but hes not always screaming it. Sometimes hes just. Saying things. With a tone that could convince you he knows what hes saying until you register the words and realize he is saying nothing sentences to you.

[meekusleekus]

"Hi Pyro- oh! Yeah... it's good to see you too!"

(click for better quality!)

More of these silly goobers :)

[yourspacevirus]

Also some very early pieces, first two being based off of real conversations myself and my Soldier main had. I don't ship SollyMed, but that doesn't seem to get me very far in my group.

It's devastating to fight Soldier's allegations when we play with other people.

Following, that was my first time drawing HeavyMedic- as evident by the lack of Heavy practice. Drawn off of the 2023 HeavyMedic livestream.

9.10.2023

[oldkamelle]

any tips on how to consume tf2 lore? i'm not a gamer i just want to rotate scout in my mind 24/7 :] thanks

NON GAMERS UNITE

I'd say watch the official animations, read the comics, peruse the game update pages on the official site cuz they of course hold some good shit (you can get to most of these by reading the side comics if i remember correctly, at the end it'll show a button that takes you to the update page for that particular comic)

Besides these, i don't know of any other canonical lore sources (for more canon info, maybe watch videos that explain the full background of the characters, they'll include tidbits that the previous sources dont).

After these, from my experience, it's just all fan content, of which there is an ungodly amount (game came out in like 2007 so you'll never get left with nothing). They inform you about the community more, while also fulfilling your blorbo needs.

[beaniebabs]

i am thinking about men SO hard. (medic tf2 specifically)

[headdunk]

tf2: $5 in 2011. thrice yearly cosmetics/map updates. discontinued stickybomb plush looks like itd be nice to touch

terraria: $10 in 2011 and is constantly been getting new final updates for the past five years. has a really pretty official yoyo

minecraft: 25, maybe 30 bucks in 2011. annual content updates. all timer for branded fidget cube aesthetic

observation: games that cost less than fourty bones in 2011 have interesting baubles i want to touch

[silent-scribbs]

Surprise! I’m alive!! (Not rlly)

Fellers, Welcome Home is officially kinda back on my mind. tf2 is dead /j

Have some epic WaterFallen/WF Wally content

[aprofessionalwithoutstandards]

>be me, new to actually playing tf2

>have picked up on its lore from friends who are more into it than me, have read a few fanfics

>am canadian (this will be relevant later)

>decide it sounds like fun

>consistently main healer in other games, decide tf2 is no exception and play medic

>spend what feels like eternity in community servers just absolutely being shit at it for no apparent reason

>finally manage to contribute to a match in a meaningful way by pocketing a soldier who was about to die to an enemy scout

>he thanks me and rocket jumps away

>youdeserveamedal.wav ringing in my ears

>brain chemistry immediately alters somehow

>start looking at fanfics again after the match is over

>nosedive hard into soldier/medic shit, start looking for any fan content i can find with soldier in it once i cant find any more

>go through all the comics and official renders in what feels like just a few minutes

>compile a passworded folder on my computer dedicated just to cute pictures of soldier just named “jane images”

>fucking hate how happy i get looking at pictures of my Special Guy

>most of my irls (also all canadian) know about this and call me a “freeaboo” (like a weeb but for america)

>admin of my irls discord server gives me the role “basically american” and they @ the role whenever the usa wins a sportsball thing

I DONT WANT TO BE AMERICAN I DONT WANT TO BE GAY FOR FUNNY HELMET MAN PLEASE I JUST WANTED TO PLAY THE SILLY HAT GAME NO NO NO HELP HEP HELP

ASSIGNED AMERICAN BY HAT GAME BOYFRIEND

[paranoidginger]

I've noticed a trend in the TF2 community whenever it comes to beating the shit out of specifically Blu Spies, and I think I have a theory as to why.

In canon material, Blu Spy ends up getting pretty messed up, from being locked in Medic's fridge as a disembodied head in Meet The Medic, to having his own team's Soldier shoot him in the face with a shotgun in Meet The Spy. Those two are the ones I think of the most, but it frames Blu spies in a more pathetic light, in all honesty.

Thanks to the way Blu Spy is treated in official content, it leaves the audience seeing him as an inferior character to the Red Spy, even though in reality he is just as capable as his opposing counterpart.

Personally, I don't think Blu Spy is quite as good at close combat as Red Spy, and he probably relies more on general stealth. He's more of an actual *spy* than a fighter, and he's better at gathering information without getting caught than he is killing

Setting my headcanons aside, these are just my feelings about everyone's favorite French punching bag <3

[rosainta]

Team Fortress 2: MEGA Art Dump!

Finished January 26th, 2024 at 8:54PM, Home

(Post notes at end!)

Page #1: ROBLOX ‘Free Draw’ : “Miss Pauling - Full Body”

Page #2: ROBLOX ‘Free Draw’ : “Speeding Bullet (Sniper x Scout)”

Pages #3 and 4: Experimental sketches : “TF2 Comics Art Style Analysis [Miss Pauling, Sniper, Scout]”

Pages #5 and 6: Experimental sketches : “Miss Pauling Comic Style Analysis + Reference”

Page #7: Twitch Stream Sketch: “What is on Merasmus’s Sweater?!”

Pages #8, 9 and 10: Wallpaper : “Team Fortress 2 Personalized Wallpapers”

Pages #11 and 12: Spotify Playlist Cover : “Miss Pauling’s Mercenary Picks & Tribute to the Wild and Free”

~ * ~

Post Notes:

Hello world!

Yesterday during classes, I did some character analysis from the Team Fortress 2 comics, and while going through the work afterwards, I realized that I had of old art from before that I didn’t share yet - so, here they are!

This is basically just a compilation of some of my unpublished “refined” (or at least post-worthy) TF2 art dating back to May 2023.

A few of them were made without a lot of reference (like the ROBLOX ‘Free Draw’ ones), with a few disproportionate limbs (Miss Pauling: Reference Sheet) and using artwork from other artists (in the wallpapers & Spotify Playlist covers - taken from TF2 official comics & unknown artists [please message me if you know them so I can credit them!], but seeing as they didn’t ressemble chicken scratch or effortless scribbles that badly, I decided to post them anyway!

I’m quite proud with how some of them came out, specifically the ROBLOX ‘Free Draw’ ones and the wallpapers, because I worked pretty hard on them and was able to display / use them afterwards, so I’m happy to be able to show that to you as well!

Of course, there’s always room for improvement (considering the observations from the paragraph above), so I will continue to strive for betterment moving forward (specifically anatomy and expression practice).

I’ll try to keep you posted whenever I can! There’s more to come very soon.

Hope you enjoyed my mini burst of a TF2 gallery :-)

(For more quirky content, follow me here on some of these platforms! (I’ll eventually make an account list post so keep your eyes peeled for that 👀)

• TWITCH: RosainTWA [empty at the moment!]

• X (Twitter): RosainXA

• YOUTUBE: rosainquivan

• BANDLAB: RosainBLA

• AO3: RosainAO3 [also empty, but check out the ‘Bookmarks’ section for great fic recommendations!]

• ROBLOX: RainAtGames

… and more to be (eventually) added!)

~ Rosain Quivan

Credits: Team Fortress 2 by Valve, ‘Free Draw!’ by Free Draw! on ROBLOX, Unknown artists (Pages #11 and 12)

Image source: Rosain Quivan,

Created by Rosain Quivan [Cross-posted on Amino ( Rosain Quivan )]

[hop-a-lot]

hi!! im very new to the tf2 fandom and its super fun here already :)! im sending this ask to ask ab bidwell actually! i read the comics and oh he is absolutely adorable and a rly funny n cute side character! however, all the love he gets is making me wonder– is there any extra content im missing🤔 some super popular headcanons or lore🤔? or is he just a popular blorbo that everyone loves. thank you!<3

ahh yes I'm glad more peeps giving attention to Biddy :') I think the most well-known HC goes to Bidwell and Pauling being 'the overworked' besties, who both love guns and would get hyped over a clipboard. Another popular HC is about Bidwell being one of the Scout's brother (given that they both look somehow similar, in terms of the art style of TF2 official comic), while others like Reddy and Bidwell having a rather..unhealthy competitive relationship at first but eventually became business partners, two backbone of Mann Co. ...Though his popularity is undeniably nowhere near as the mercs (they are super popular) since he never make an appearance in any official media except the comics, I believe there are few people in the fandom still don't know or forget about him even though they have read the comic MULTIPLE times lol, despite that he's indeed a lovable side character

[honkshoo-zzz]

mm oddly specific tf2 headcanons in no particular order based around a fic i’m writing (some NSFW, so be warned, and some courtesy of @officialbananabro and our joint brainrot):

• sniper is an insomniac due to trauma-induced OCD. he has to check all windows and doors before going to sleep, and even then often ends up just keeping surveillance out the window all night because he can’t sleep

• scout runs for fun: helps get rid of excess energy and has just been doing it forever so he’ll jog around base if it gets particularly slow work-wise.

• scout is a comic-book enjoyer. what comics he likes are up to individual discretion, as i don’t know enough about em to pick em

• spy is a SLUT who is afraid of commitment (hence running from scout’s mom when he. made scout, and probably fucking a couple of the other mercs)

• sniper has a mullet. i don’t CARE what the official art says. THAT MAN HAS BUSINESS IN THE FRONT AND A PARTY IN THE BACK

• spy is a bottom fuck you

• sniper is NOT into piss but WILL make jokes about it and WILL NOT DENY IT when it’s brought up

• soldier cannot comprehend that two mercs would be fucking until it’s literally spelled out for him. he’s not homophobic he’s just a lil slow

• medic and heavy have been happily married for (probably) decades

• medic knows ALL of the hot-goss around base. he knows who’s fuckin who, and who knows about it, and who is SUPPOSED TO know about it. and he relays all of this information to heavy during brunch cause he thinks it’s funny

• sniper and medic are autistic, scout has adhd, soldier and demo have PTSD, and somehow spy is perfectly mentally healthy besides having mommy AND daddy issues (probably)

• engie is smart enough to determine who’s hiding relationships around base, but is polite and minds his business

• basically everyone knows sniper is fucking spy, and when he starts bonin’ scout, EXCEPT for soldier. and when sniper and scout announce their relationship soldier’s the only one to be like “WOW CONGRATULATIONS BOYS WHO WOULDA THUNK” but everyone else is unfazed

• medic is a HUGE masochist and likes heavy *literally* throwing him around the room during sex. like homelander-stormfront chucking-through-the-wall type shit. heavy’s not as into it but it makes medic happy so he does it

• spy also enjoys getting his hair pulled, but won’t take the mask off during sex so his partner has to do it from under the mask/use the mask instead (without pulling it off)

• scout and miss pauling, after scout confesses and miss pauling rejects him due to being lesbian (among other reasons, but that’s the biggest one), they become gay besties and scout goes to her for advice on sniper n they gossip n such

• however miss pauling being miss pauling already knows pretty much everything before scout gets to her so she’ll just. give the advice before he can even ask it. example:

s: “hey, miss pauling, can I ask you sum’?”

mp: “i can’t help you nor sniper with sniper’s ocd-induced insomnia, that’s something he needs to work on himself before i, let alone you, go butting into it. give him time, and be patient, and he’ll come to you when he’s ready.”

s:

s, stars in his eyes: “wow you’re good”

• also pyro, of course, knows everything but is too busy hosting tea parties and setting her guests on fire to do anything about it. shorty is living his best, aro-ace life, unproblematic and slaying.

ok i think that’s it for now. feel free to add i think these guys are silly and need as much content as possible thank you uwu

[freaky-funky]

I love freak fortress! We got….

-dead content creators who stopped posting 8 years ago

-good tf2 freaks who haven’t been on the official tf2 freak page because whatever god knows what

-Gmodviolet fighting for his life on deviantart and fandom page

-Trans kids who have a weird obsession with a clown scout

-goth kids who like Christian middle aged men but we all know if they saw them in real life they would absolutely eradicate them on tiktok

-Kugwatten

-Lavaspy

-Scoutit (list goes on)

-a scout named after a literal slur but Yk, sillies! (Seek help)

-if you don’t talk about Christian brutal sniper, ass pancakes or painis cupcake you will be dropped off at the nearest SAW location.

-deviantart

-mysterious YouTube video you see once in your life and then it gets deleted

-did CW vs TK vs episode 5 ever get a thing????

Come on down to freak fortress!

[catbountry]

It's hard trying to talk about the shift in fandom culture without getting off track and talking about many things at once, because change can never be attributed to one thing alone. It's a collection of multiple factors that happen at a certain place at a certain time that shape the broader culture around us. And right now, a lot of that shaping is being done by TikTok and Twitter. Internet content, i.e. creative works, should be bite-sized and digestible. There's always been a flood of low-effort fan content spewed into the shapeless mass that is the internet, ephemeral and disposable. But it feels different now. Like the algorithm incentivizes such low-effort content. I would much rather read someone's long-winded essay on why they agree that my OTP is amazing rather than a quick little text post written by a high schooler that isn't funny, witty or memorable featuring said OTP. But the latter still comes to my attention anyway.

The internet is still mostly text based, but it's increasingly being replaced by video and audio. Podcasts, video essays and streams provide background noise for when we're doing other things. I really, really would love to see some long-form fic by a seasoned author that doesn't fucking suck. I'm sure it exists, but I'm counting on the judgement of my friends to recommend me these things. Fic isn't shareable the way fanart is, and long form fan comics were already rare. God, remember Cuanta Vida? I don't think a single long-form TF2 comic aside from that has ever been drawn to completion. That includes the official comics as well. It's been 10,000 years, Valve, please.

Working on my own long-form comic, I've had to cut corners to keep from taking too long between updates and even that doesn't work since production slowed around summer of last year. I know people are reading them, they have a ton of hidden bookmarks and thousands of comments. I know the content of these comics, as well as my soured reputation, have made sharing them publicly harder. But like... man. IDK.

Look, I just don't want to see some cringey 50 word text post of my OTP on my dash that feels like this thing meant to be quickly read and shared as just another piece of content. It feels hollow. It doesn't reflect the passion I've seen from fans on their creative output for over a decade. I've been spoiled. My standards are too high.

I hate the algorithm. Me and my homies all hate the algorithm.

[opalrosechalydra]

Emesis Blue & Postmeta Art

We live in a media driven society. Our most famous celebrities star in our favorite movies and TV shows, our politicians are elected by whose propaganda-adjacent advertising campaigns were the most effective, even our youngest children are put in front of screens which permanently alter their brain chemistry. In a world where all of us must abide by systems that force us to sacrifice our whole lives at jobs and all of our free time managing our non-guaranteed shelter, food and health, we have to find solace in something easy to consume and easier to distribute. When your work day is done, what better way to wind down than by putting something on the television for your tired mind to be lost in? 

The history of media is almost as old as our most ancient civilization. It has evolved to become a very complicated, interconnected system of referential pieces. Martin Luther wrote the 95 theses critiquing the Catholic church in 1517. Papers at the turn of the 20th century critiqued films of the blossoming industry of cinema. Musicians preached an anti-war message throughout the US invasion of Vietnam and Korea. Now, there is an entire video sharing platform where independent videographers, filmmakers, editors, artists, and thespians may share projects with their own views and opinions. YouTube is home to a number of genres as defined by the internet communities who participate in them. Critiques, reviews, essays and more, all in video form by people who are unbound by contractual restraint and free to express their personal feelings.

Those who rise to the top of this massive, competitive industry are those whose feelings resonate with the most people. Oftentimes, it can be difficult to pin down exactly what something is saying, but the fact that it invokes a primal emotion tends to indicate that it resonates with the experiences of the viewer. Many experimental films have stood the test of time despite having unclear messages, or perhaps being made with no intended message at all. Eraserhead, The Holy Mountain, A Serbian Film and more are difficult for viewers to get through due to their subject matter and presentation, but have remained among the most influential movies ever produced. Many analyze them, try to derive meaning from sequences of abstract or even nonsensical images. These things disturb us on a greater level than just their superfluous design. There is a deeper message that these films convey which lets them stay with viewers for longer than just the night they watched it. This, obviously, brings us to… 

Team Fortress 2.

It’s a silly game, truly. It detaches itself from its predecessor with a cartoony artstyle, quirky dialogue and somewhat developed characters. Each of the nine playable classes is fleshed out in a series of, “Meet the…” videos released by Valve. These little nuggets of cinematic gold characterize each mercenary through an expert use of comedy, receiving further depth in the official Team Fortress 2 comic series for fans hard enough to the core to read through. However, this content was sparse and separate from the main game. Players who wanted to experience more stories involving these characters had to make some themselves. 

Fanfiction is a very common aspect of any online community surrounding media. People will inevitably want more from products than its producers can produce. The one thing that set TF2’s fanbase apart from others is that Valve released a tool that allowed users to stage scenes using assets from all of Valve’s games: Source Filmmaker. Valve has famously stopped releasing accessible mainline entries in their franchises for a decade now, with Dota 2 in 2013 being their last non-spinoff/non-VR release. Their older releases still maintain a decently high level of popularity despite minimal updates. One of the main reasons they stay so loved is because of Source Filmmaker. SFM gave fans a creative outlet to contribute to their favorite Valve games when Valve themselves weren’t. These videos can be indistinguishable from the professionally made animations Valve produced if given enough time and effort.

Something happened to Team Fortress 2’s mercenaries as the fans took the creative reins from Valve. The same thing happened to many other IP’s, most famously Sonic the Hedgehog and Garfield. When an internet community puts their twist onto a neglected franchise, it usually turns out experimental. There are things that small internet communities can get away with that large publishers seeking the widest audience can’t risk. TF2’s characters took on insane personas that spoke in broken sentences edited together from their existing voice lines. For every SFM video there was, there were two Gary’s Mod videos with rougher animation and wilder content. These videos broke every law of physics that these characters should abide by for the sake of surreal, mildly horrific humor. Fans eventually stopped associating TF2 characters with their in-game personas, replaced with odd inside jokes like Sandvich, Spycrab and Surprise Buttsex. 

As public perception of TF2 became altered by these niche YouTubers, the game itself underwent a bit of a crisis. Blizzard released Overwatch in 2016 as a much larger, more diverse Hero Shooter heavily inspired by Team Fortress 2. It had the cartoony artstyle, quirky dialogue and somewhat developed characters. Each character was fleshed out in video packages released by Blizzard and an Overwatch comic. Essentially, a much larger company just made a fresh game that represented more people that the company would pay more attention to than Valve had with Team Fortress 2 at that point. This revitalization of the Hero Shooter genre pushed other large developers like Respawn Entertainment and Riot Games to come out with their own. TF2 was seen as the old man game with all these young upstart series doing what TF2 did with a more effective understanding of the, “video games as a service,” trend that continues to dominate the market.

Players moved from TF2 to these alternatives over the next few years. This depopulation made two existing problems within the game worse: Bots and hackers. Bots made up such a large portion of the player base that #SaveTF2 went viral among fans wishing to combat the issue. Updates would come out tackling random exploits, but no progress on the bot issue was ever really made. These bots have been reported to spam hateful rhetoric including homophobic and racist slurs in game chat. Given how progressive Overwatch and its new wave of Hero Shooters presented themselves, these bots made TF2’s community seem like an even worse haven of bigotry. The hacker issue is mainly rooted in the Valve Anti-cheat (VAC.) It had been around since 2002, meaning that players had over a decade to figure out ways to get around its archaic system. Less players meant that a higher ratio of them were these hackers who dedicated too much time to learning how to mess with the game to leave now. TF2 seemed unplayable in comparison to the more well regulated alternatives throughout the late 2010s and early 2020s.

What seemed like the final nail in the coffin for TF2 was a source code leak that occurred in 2020. On top of all of the other factors pushing players out from TF2, it was revealed that simply playing the game could expose an unwitting player to malware. Team Fortress 2 became this wasteland of godlike cheaters among mindless zombies that worked together to attack people and invade their privacy, represented by twisted corruptions of the game’s original cast. All of the fun times that people had with the game years prior seemed to come to an end in a cataclysmic sequence of events worse than the last. 

TF2’s reality was completely distorted. Players could look back at a golden age over a decade ago where these problems could barely be conceived of. The game could still be fun if you went through the effort of finding servers unaffected by its litany of issues. As established, this world is one that leaves people with little energy. Why waste time trying to find safe servers to play on when there are so many alternatives with modern solutions which avoid these problems? It comes back down to ease of access, which is very important to most of the working class laborers of the world. 

This frustration, combined with the disruption of realism within the community’s fan-made content, inspired a group to action. There is a massive history known to millions of people, a history that ~100k people still partake in daily, which had never been put to art. It is only collectively archived in the minds of those who partake in the game’s legacy, be it playing the game itself or following the animators who made content for it long after Valve’s abandonment. These all collectively made up what people thought of TF2, but were never combined in a meaningful way. There was SFM/Garry’s Mod, then there was the game itself. This is what Fortress Films wanted to unify in their impressive passion project:

Emesis Blue

Emesis Blue is a fantastic representation of the progress fanmade media has made. People have been making their own video game content since before the internet gave it a worldwide platform. Players on old school cartridge based systems would tinker with their favorite games to create ROM hacks that completely changed its content. Sprites would be ripped by early 2000’s Newgrounds users who would create astounding animations with them. Even Valve chose to publish Gary’s Mod six years before they released Source Filmmaker because players could not stop themselves from trying to make their own content. 

Not only does it show how far the quality of the tools has come, but it raises the bar for the artistry that these pieces are made with. Emesis Blue is art. Many people have claimed that it’s a cinematic masterpiece deserving to be played in theaters. As much credit as Emesis Blue deserves, it is the natural next step in a further industrializing YouTube. Channels continue to make longer and longer videos, providing aspiring filmmakers with a space to release passion projects that would never be picked up by sound of mind producers. YouTubers have to make the most emotional pieces that they can to stay afloat among the 500 other hours of content uploaded to the site every minute. This crushing amount is supposed to be compartmentalized by the YouTube algorithm, though many professional YouTube content creators have claimed that it is a wildly irrational system that cannot be tamed. In place of trying to master the system, the best channels master their craft.

Following the human desire to organize, a genre began developing among the most experimental of these art pieces. Fans produced content for their favorite franchises, some of which evolved to accommodate all the angst that came with being fans of these series. Sonic the Hedgehog has perhaps the most famous fan community of any video game in history for this reason. Many young artists growing up into a confusing world used Sonic as a tool to vent their frustrations. It often came out very cringeworthy, giving Sonic fans the reputation they have today. However, the outlandish behaviors of the Sonic community have been deconstructed through comics like Tails Gets Trolled and games like Sonic Dreams Collection. Despite not being official, fans used canon characters to provide a meta commentary on the original piece.

This occurred again with Garfield. Though most people wouldn’t consider themselves fans of Garfield, there was something to be said about the success it received. That little orange cat is perhaps one of the most recognizable characters globally. The lack of depth compared to its astounding success inspired observers to create pieces that commented on Garfield's indomitable presence and the shadow it cast over Jim Davis as a cartoonist. The characters of Garfield and John Arbuckle are featured prominently in fan works like Lasagna Cat and those posted in r/ImSorryJon. Yet again, artists used pre-existing characters to create a meta narrative of their source.

Three for three, Emesis Blue followed this trend for Team Fortress 2. The chaos occurring in TF2 during the production of Emesis Blue was captured in the aggressive non-linear pacing. The unnecessary brutality of bots was captured in the hyperviolence of the film's most gruesome moments and in the throngs of mindless zombie-like monsters that pursue the main cast. Many entities, such as the Medic, defy the laws of the world to gain an unfair advantage like the hackers that plagued servers. 2020’s source code leak could be felt when Scout’s home was invaded and the multiple unsolicited phone calls Blu team received. All the while, the game being abandoned for fresher titles inspired the decrepit look of the classic 2Fort map.

Emesis Blue captured TF2 fans' frustrations and insecurities through a surrealist psychological horror. It was an unofficial piece of brilliance that added lore to a game that had been mostly forgotten by the people who made it and departed fans. Emesis Blue has the supreme luck of being provided assets directly from the games to express feelings about its greater existence outside of just its canon. It is also significant as a milestone in a new medium that seems to be taking off. There will be many more projects inspired by it utilizing the same core principles. As such, these pieces must be compartmentalized into their own genre:

POSTMETA - Being composed of storytelling elements belonging to a medias canon, such as characters and settings, which produces a narrative which provides commentary to the reputation the source media has in reality

Emesis Blue obviously is not the first Postmeta piece, but it marks a point where a coincidence becomes a trend. These works are indicative of the place that media has in our lives. Passionately followed media are taken from the hands of neglectful producers by an online fan base too vast to stop. Where companies fail to provide, the people will make up for it. They will also use that opportunity to capture the reality of that product as it influences people's lives, not just providing more escapist fiction to be consumed mindlessly. As people have sacrificed their time and money to make art more prosperous, it is able to say more about the human condition. Even through something as silly as a cartoony Hero Shooter, Fortress Films is able to bring out emotions within us that spark questions about our society. There’s something beautiful to that.

A miraculous thing has happened with TF2 in 2023. Though its player base was slowly decreasing in numbers since the release of its competitors, only a few months after the release of Emesis Blue did Team Fortress 2 break its peak player count at 253,225 in June of 2023. In a combined effort with fellow enduring YouTubers like Uncle Dane and Elmaxo, Fortress Films helped to bring TF2 to a level of popularity far surpassing that of its golden age. As of the time this essay is being written, Emesis Blue itself has over 8.7 million views and TF2 averaged over 100k players throughout the entirety of 2023, almost twice the number of players in its darkest periods. Art resonates with people, and it inspires people to action. No matter what the source is, how abstract it becomes, or even how relevant the subject is anymore, there is something to be felt in every corner of the world. Art about art does not devalue it, but simply gives it a value we couldn’t rightly calculate in a world where that didn’t happen. And a video about a game almost 2 decades old got that sentence to be written. Watch Emesis Blue, play Team Fortress 2, and enjoy the new wave of Postmeta art that it and pieces like it will inspire.

[marlee-goat]

What's your favorite game you played this year?

oohooohooh ok so this is sort of a toughie. favorite games this year consisted of all really fucking good games but if I had to rate them based on how I enjoyed them it would definitely go

mario wonder

pizza tower

antonblast

vividlope

(...i know antonblast isn't technically out yet, but hush)

in general mario wonder was a fucking GREAT experience. got it day 1. streamed it to like 3 people. played on my own for the rest of that day. proceeded to beat it the next. then I 100%ed it within the next two days (minus the standees because I did stupid shit and totally forgot to spend my flower coins on them so I missed all the bonuses that would have made that easier) but all in all holy shit I love that game. the online is so fun and im still trying to figure out if I can take up lexis offer on racing it heuheuheu...

pizza tower is also a Really Fucking Good Game god. I waited 5 years and I was not disappointed. this [cheesy pizza pun redacted]. i recently p-ranked the final boss to finish my 100% savefile and it's so fun to replay tbh. not to mention the modding scene god it's big and the amount of shit people are doing with this game is insane. and they're still adding new official content to the game too!!! it's crazy !! cannot fucking wait for the noise update...

ANTON BLAST 💥💥💥 was pretty fuckin good. i love the ctr boost mechanic. not to mention the voice clips and music and sound design and the animations and everything else about the game is just mwah. very pretty. it's just two levels right now and I'm having a [antonblast pun redacted]. people kept saying pizza tower is a wariolike but I beg to differ, frankly. pt is much more similar to like. sonic. i believe antonblast is the true wariolike here. can't wait to play it when it comes out ^^

vividlope was a pleasant surprise! one of my friends introduced it to me while they were srteaming it in a vc and god it's fun. best way I can explain it is like. Autistic Q*Bert. lil painter rabbit girl walking simulator.. 3 dimensional.. and they added a level editor a little bit back too so now you can make funny levels and things like this!!

although this game is fucking infuriating at times. jaklub you are a monster

also not really on the list because it's not a new game but one I've really been playing more. god i love tf2 and I will always love tf2. I've been getting back in the swing of making content for it and dear lord it's so fun. one of my main recommendations any day. might be tough to get into but I urge anyone who can to play it...

thanks for the ask sky!! ive been waiting for it ...