#uggzomb

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In which Ugg is incoherent zombi because of love Dishonored much

OFFICIAL COSPLAY GUIDE.

HILARIOUS FAN ART.

LOVELY MEME COMMUNITY. (hi @justdishonoredthings u is a sweet!)

Listen I love these game so much I started this post several times and then I gave up because there’s no way this will be succinct.  This is all you’re getting from me before I sabotage ALL the posts.

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Fandom and mental health

We’ve known each other for sixteen years and have been friends for most of them. We’ve had real influence on each other’s lives. In that time, we’ve only been in two fandoms together. (TF2 is the second. We’ll let you wonder about the first.) We have OCs, and they mean the world to us, but more than that, the TF2 community has been instrumental to our mental health.

Because sometimes when things get bad, we spam each other with every piece of TF2 art we can get our hands on, and this was something we did before either one of us had even made a Tumblr account. The multitude of TF2 fic and the quality of the writing, that really made us think, because y’all are writing from experience too.

[Ugg] Like that time Red wanted to go back to school to get a Master’s, and whenever she got down, I’d pull out a character to cheer her up. Sometimes it’s Scout and his improbable persistence, sometimes it’s Heavy and his PhD in Russian Literature. Other circumstances got in the way so it didn’t happen, but she gave it her all, no regrets.

[Red] Or times when Ugg has had to deal with social obligations (because ew humans and your weird rules about interacting) and family members being unpleasant. Sometimes the best antidote for social anxiety is a sarcastic Frenchman whose wardrobe is supplied by monk tailors and whose je ne sais quoi is infinite.

[Ugg] Despite its abundant silliness, when it comes to serious matters, the TF2 community is incredible, and that’s influenced the way we wrote our OCs. No one but Red has ever heard about some of these characters, but an OC based on an OC based on a canon character ended up saving my life multiple times. They’ve helped me work through panic attacks and suicidal thoughts, and I’m stronger and better prepared to live with my conditions for it.

[Red] In a lot of ways, my TF2 OCs are more family than my actual family. I have some nasty physical ailments to go with my intracranial quirks (oh hey, “intracranial” is actually a word!), and it’s just…it’s been an invaluable therapy tool/angst reliever to have these people in my head, to help me work out my limits and fears and frustrations. My face-to-face interactions with people are necessarily limited (see: ew humans), and I’m kind of naturally a loner, but having “friends in the computer,” as my mom puts it, has been the most amazing support network ever. No matter what time of day it is, I can turn to this fandom and find something that helps.

That’s a part of why we’re doing this. Your incredible works --art, writing, videos, crafts-- both past and present, have literally helped shape our psyches. We’re not BNFs in this community; far from it. We don’t have names anyone would recognize. Still, we want you to know that what you do matters, and we hope our little contribution makes life a little easier for someone else, as it has for us.

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Green thumb?  What’s that?  Hahahahaha.

I love gardening, when I was growing up my gramma had four lovely gardens in three locations (granpa was loaded!).  Mom tries to maintain a nice garden, but she inevitably forgets or does something the plants don’t like, or they just die because we live in such an arid place.

Me, I’ve learned to identify the plants that’ll make me feel like I know what I’m doing… very few, the answer is very few.  I doubt they’d survive if my dear husband didn’t remember to water them.

So, unless you just want to have a cactus or two around, here are my suggestions for satisfyingly fast plants:

Tomatoes.  Oh man they grow so fast and the leaves smell amazing.

Bell peppers.  They grow fast and produce these little white flowers that then drop the petals and turn into peppers.  We only ever had one grow to a full-size pepper, and by full-size I mean thumbnail-size.  Still delicious!

Potatoes.  A little harder to grow in pots since they’ll want to walk, but possible nonetheless.  We didn’t take as much care of them and we thought they’d died and went to till their soil to use for something else when –surprise!– a little potato had grown after all!  So you have to be more patient with the potatz.

We’ve also had limited success with basil, watermelon, oranges, and apples, but they’re more picky.  Olives are very, very resilient, and I was surprised to see the coffee tree so happy in its little pot and growing so fast.  The difference between growing your own and buying one turned out to be an adjustment period– when you change their environment, the plants will usually freak out and shed a ton of leaves, and need a bit of TLC and reassurance to grow back.    

Yes I’m the sort of weirdo that loves plants more than animals.  Plants don’t poop!  Depending on what you think of each merc, they’re either the one handing out the TLC or the one that makes plants wilt with a single glance.  Only plant people understand #thestruggle.

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Tick tock!

It's coming! Start your engines! Sharpen your pencils! Break out those mad skillz!

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First day!

This has been an intense first day of any first days of anything.  Thank you all so much for telling us you’re into this and spreading the word!  Not only that, I’ve already seen our li’l competition pop up on my main blog.  Y’all rock!

Now for an oldie but goodie to fire up those imaginations, everybody dance now~

it me, ugg zombi

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You know what deserves another comic?  Portal.  Valve hasn’t really fleshed out the world there because the worlds of Half Life and Team Fortress 2 are bigger, though of course they’re all connected.  If you’re a fan of both, you’re probably also fond of Sniper/Caroline <3 

(If you don’t know that reference: the voice actor for Sniper, John Patrick Lowrie, is married to the voice actress for GLaDOS/Caroline, Ellen McLain.)

It makes me sad that thinkingwithportals has been gone for a year now, but the mapping community continues to make amazing levels in the Workshop!  Both the fandom and the stories really shine in the community maps.  Some are just puzzles or brain teasers, others are more linear stories, and still other explore entirely new stories on their own.  This game really thrives on its community content.

So if you’re looking to crossover with Portal, check out the comic or try some new levels!

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(!) Borderlands is now Choice of Romance

Howdy y’all, we goofed.

When deciding on the list of games, we tried to find games we had both played, even if weren’t really into the fandoms.  Somehow in that long discussion, we both ended up thinking “Cool, you can judge Borderlands, I’ve heard a lot about it but haven’t played it”.  As we were preparing new posts, we realized neither one had played it.  Lesson learned: just because you trust each other’s judgement, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t double-check!

So the new game is Affairs of the Court: Choice of Romance, and we’ve updated the rules accordingly.  If you haven’t played it, click the link!  You can probably finish it a few times in one day.  It’s a bit unconventional because there’s no official art, but the world is quite vivid, so you’ve got more freedom there.  The rest of the rules are the same; stick to the canon characters (in both worlds!) and you’re good to go.

Please accept our most embarrassed apologies.  We hope you understand this was simply the result of our experience with running competitions: none whatsoever.

Did you already have a Borderlands piece in progress?  Please get in touch with us here on Tumblr or via email: uggredzomb at gmail dot com

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Grease is one of those films that normalized various problems even back in its day, and it hasn’t aged well in that department.  We’re not even touching on that.

Everything else?  There’s a reason this show continues to play internationally.  The setting, the costumes, the costumes, and the incredibly catchy nonsense late 70s songs, the petty fights all around.  It’s too catchy!

But primarily, how convenient is it that it’s 1972 in the comics and 1978 when the film came out after seven years as a play?  This one’s barely a crossover!

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Star Trek.  On.  Netflix.

Red and I only have one series in common, and that’s TNG.  It’s because she’s old, so old.  

If you’re planning your submission to be a Star Trek crossover, you already know all about the world and the influence of this series on all of fandom, so instead I’ll tell you about how I watched it way too late.

I don’t think I ever stopped watching Star Trek since I first started, and that was... in university.  Sci-fi isn’t really big where I am so it was rarely on TV even at its height.  When I became a teenager and the internet became a thing, I was under the impression that you had to choose a camp-- Star Trek or Star Wars.  The difference, it was explained to me, is that Trek is harder sci-fi and Wars is softer sci-fi.  So I picked camp Trek because I wanted to be badass.  I never watched it because this was the days before streaming, before even Amazon.  The local VHS place didn’t stock sci-fi series.

Then Amazon became a thing but I still didn’t buy it because shipping was prohibitively expensive so I only made one order every few months.  Besides, I wasn’t sure where to start and I didn’t have anyone to explain the world to me.

That someone turned up in university, a boy my age who was liked by the geeks and who I therefore wanted to impress.  He told me that people our age typically have Picard as their Captain, so I asked the group for help and one of them hooked me up with TNG, DS9, and Voyager.  I spent the next few years watching it and then watching it again.

My Star Trek craze was kind of fading by the time I met my husband, who, it turned out, had never seen it, because he was too busy being a huge nerd.  So the cycle began again, and now that it’s on Netflix?  The cycle will probably never end!

I never watched Star Wars.  Now I make it a point not to, because what’s fandom without silly wars?*

* Also because being a geek this long, it’s nigh on impossible to avoid knowing the basic plot and references, and really Star Trek is old school morality tales while Star Wars is straight up fantasy monomyth dressed up as sci-fi, they’re different experiences and the latter doesn’t appeal to me as much.  But it’s so much more fun to frame it as sheer stubbornness!

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Hahahaha I love how this trailer makes the game look like it isn’t 99% walking around in an isometric world!  Nice job, GOG.

This game is the Bonus because we know it’s relatively unknown, but also if you have the patience for older games, you should check it out*!  Here’s the history of the company that made it from Wikipedia:

“In 1997, Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky and Jason Anderson were working on the Fallout sequel at Interplay. Finishing the initial design for Fallout 2, they were unable to come to an agreement with Interplay about the future team structure. They decide to leave Interplay to form a company that felt more like the old Interplay, producing role-playing video games for PC in 1997. They formed their company on April 1, 1998, calling their new company Troika Games (a Russian word “Тройка” meaning “three of any kind”), since they were the three key Designers/Artists/Coders behind the critically acclaimed Fallout. They initially planned to do games exclusively for one publisher (Sierra Entertainment), but every game was published by a different company. After being unable to secure funding for future projects, they were forced to lay off their staff in late 2004 and later close their doors on February 24, 2005.”

Before this game, the only RPG I had ever played was Arx Fatalis, which is the game that gets pulled out and dusted off every time someone goes why don’t more games have a hunger mechanism?  It wasn’t a good choice to be someone’s first RPG, especially since I was coming out of Thief II at that time and was too used to engaging with enemies on my own terms.

Arcanum, being turn-based, turned out to be a much better fit.  My first time playing it I persisted until around level 25, which is about halfway through.  It was long-winded and I tended more towards sci-fi, so Red gently ushered me towards Fallout, which was convenient because they’re basically the same engine.  Although I liked Fallout, I quit it much sooner than Arcanum because I still didn’t know how to minmax to match the difficulty curve.

By the time I played it again and finished it I had changed computers and had to start over, only this time I was older and wiser and less likely to get frustrated with old mechanics I wasn’t familiar with.  I’m still picky about RPGs, but I’m still playing Fallout 4 and I’m excited about 5.

* Seriously, if this game seems interesting and you’d like to try it for the competition, hit us up and we’ll send you a gift code for GOG**.

** Yeah, this decision came about as a result of us writing this post and fangirling about how more people need to try this game.***

(This is the point where I asked Red, “By the way, why did you even recommend it to me back then?”  And thenceforth this post was hijacked.  More below the cut from Red!)

Red here!

Oh my God, I love this game so much. Arcanum was my official introduction to steampunk and gaslamp fantasy, both of which I adore, so this is a game you should definitely check out if you’re into Jules Verne or H. G. Wells or Girl Genius. It does have some standard Tolkien-fantasy aspects (elves vs. dwarves AGAIN, anyone?), but there’s plenty of food for thought (and plenty of shoot-'em-up/hack-and-slash action) too.

For its time, Arcanum delves into some pretty heavy treatment of race and class: player gender doesn’t really matter, but NPCs will react VERY differently to a half-ogre than to a human. Is your Intelligence low? You’ll be somewhat disliked (and pitied), you won’t be able to use much magic or tech, and there will be side quests that aren’t available to you. Is your Beauty high? NPCs will love you and you’ll get away with more. Want to be purely evil? You can do that and not break the game, but you may not like the outcome.

The roles of magic and technology are a huge part of the game’s plot. Balancing the two is possible --you can be a gun-toting wizard, for example-- but difficult, and there's a very real sense that the "old ways" represented by magic are being gradually pushed aside by science and industry. Politics (in the general sense-- no Democrats or Republicans here) plays a surprising role as well. Gnomish conspiracies! Oppression of half-ogres! (That side quest was really disturbing.) Orcs forming labor unions! Unjust imprisonment of dwarves! And you, lucky player, get to have a hand in all of that–and as with Fallout, your choices shape the game ending.

Arcanum isn’t without its faults: most notably it suffers from a big case of Humans Are White (and so is everyone else). Some high-level magic weapons aren’t available unless you’re lucky enough to stumble across their locations (they’re not related to quests), and there are schematics for high-tech weapons that can’t be built (there are plot reasons for this, but still). There’s a huge side-quest involving gods and altars that will literally kill you if you don’t perform the steps in a specific order (luckily walkthroughs exist for this). Most annoyingly, the sequel (Journey to the Center of Arcanum) never got made. Still, it’s dear to my heart, it inspired me to create my own steampunk fantasy universe, and for a game made in the 1990s, it’s got a huge replayability factor. In fact, I think it’s time I paid Arcanum another visit…

*** A disclaimer: This game is old as rocks, so on newer devices you might have to tinker a bit to get it to work.  Steam has added it, but the advantage with GOG is that they generally take care of the patching.  We’ve tried it on Windows 7 and 8.  Either way, totally worth it, especially if isometric turn-based steampunk RPGs are your aesthetic.

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Did you know that Scout’s voice actor streams TF2 on Twitch?  He’s also read the comics live and does hilarious voices.  

If you’re looking to do some Out of Frame Comics, check out the latest vid above for some inspiration!

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[brief interlude in posts because of mental health issues. red is working on helping ugg through this episode. stay tuned for more posts! in the meantime, here are some important links.]

The Rules 

Translation Call

Feedback Form

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Painting!

Listen, y'all.  I paint as stress relief.  I’m not skilled at it, like at all.  That’s not a humblebrag, I really am terrible because I don’t otherwise practice unless I’m feeling bad.

So here’s a little pearl of wisdom.

Your best friend with oil painting is…

Are you ready for this?

GLOVES.

(maybe not those specific gloves, you can get thinner latex or nitrile gloves for pretty cheap!)

Seriously, snap on a pair of gloves, dip into that paint and let it all out.  Using gloves also allows you to change colors easily, especially if you use multiple fingers to paint, and disposable gloves make cleanup much less of a hassle.

The results are usually messy unless you know what you’re doing (which I don’t!) but I just pass them off as ‘abstract’ to the few people that get to see them.

I feel like this one’s applicable to many characters.  It’s canon that Scout can draw far better than he can read.  It seems to be popular fanon that Pyro like to play with crayons (presumably before burning them).  Soldier has made his own medals.  Engie can make blueprints, which is sort of like art!  And Medic can probably whip out a decent medical reference.

Happy painting!

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Red Zombie is amused how much I’m into Disney.  She doesn’t understand.  But you do!

So go watch some After Ever After if you’re planning to do some kickass Disney.

(also these songs are sooo catchy!) 

it me, Ugg Zombi