19 ā¢ They/them ā¢ Demoman one chance please Iām begging one chanceā¦ ā¢ Pyro main wannabe ā¢ THIS IS A SIDEBLOG I follow from a different account
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The shipment is due in soonā¦ and we may have to bake a few pieces before putting them on displayā¦ but you can order anything youād like in the Ask Box!
SFW
This is currently our preferred stock but weāre looking into other merchandise to put on our shelves!
NSFWā¦?
Authorā¦ hasnāt ever written NSFW beforeā¦ But I will be taking requests for it to broaden my writing scope! Help me by requesting headcanons and easy oneshots please! Or should I sayā¦ we can order in some limes before we start selling lemons!
Youāre interested in placing an orderā¦? Perfect! But youāll need to follow a few key rules found under the cut!
Ėā§āā Request Rules āāā§ Ė
SFW, NSFW, and LGBTQ+ is allowed
Dark topics are allowed so long as you arenāt requesting them to be written explicitly
Reader will always be gender neutral! This is in exception to a trans written reader, wherein the requested pronouns will be used instead. In any other case, reader will be neutral with little to no exceptions.
If I am to write NSFW, reader will be neutrally written to the best of my writing ability or female anatomy aligned. This can be changed based on request, although Iām most likely to continue using neutral pronouns (unless reader is trans)
I will not write anything I am not comfortable writing. Therefore, I will not be posting anything that goes against my personal morals.
I will either refer to Reader asā¦ Reader or with āyouā. Reader will likely never be named unless itās a 10th mercenary situation where the reader would be referred to by an alias.
DONāT BE SCARED to REQUEST! If you think your idea might be in my āwonāt writeā box, send it as an anonymous ask and the worst Iāll do is ignore it tbhā¦ I will most likely hear you out before judging you, so please donāt worry! :)
These rules and terms are subject to change. Before sending in a request, double check!
thinking about Spy and Scout againā¦ specifically the fact that Scout dies PRESUMABLY before Spy would. Ouchā¦ ouchā¦. Their entire dynamic is just so sore I hate them!!
Also imagine abandoning your son and then thinking youād never see him again only for him to rock up at your new workplace lol awkwaaaaardā¦
Sorry guys that Iāve been gone for like A MONTH Iām literally (probably) going to lose my job this week? Point being, Iāve had a lot going on at the moment but this takes the cake! Iām hoping to update absolute territory this month so no one worry!! Thank you all for your patience and Iāll hopefully release Soldiers chapter at the end of Julyā¦
Sorry guys that Iāve been gone for like A MONTH Iām literally (probably) going to lose my job this week? Point being, Iāve had a lot going on at the moment but this takes the cake! Iām hoping to update absolute territory this month so no one worry!! Thank you all for your patience and Iāll hopefully release Soldiers chapter at the end of Julyā¦
Could I request Medic having The Mom Grip on Scoutās shoulder after the speedy moron almost let a mercenary secret slip while they weee getting groceries?
Three Europeans and two Americans walk into a grocery store in New Mexico.
I hope this is the right meme.
More silliness below.
This comic is the antithesis of the "wtf is a kilometre" joke.
The faces they make when they can't quite identify the type of brown bread in the bread aisle.
You don't know how [insert nationality here] you are until you go overseas and things are different.
Spy obviously has no problems with pretending to know how much a gallon of milk is, he just peeks into his conversion chart notes, pretending it's his shopping list.
I want to think Heavy is completely fine with having to readjust to a new unit system, he just eyeballs most practical things anyways by holding them up and mumbling about how they approximately weigh like a chicken or his kettle bell etc. He's always been living in practical ignorant bliss.
Medic has a peer reviewed meltdown the first time he realises there's no uniformity in "a cup of ____" because every object has different densities. He's diligent about memorising the conversion rates for ounces, pounds, the most common things etc., and recovers ok. He goes through the same stages of grief rage when he finds out about distances and lengths.
Just remember four inches are 10.16 cm and pray no one asks you to specify anything bigger than inches.
Everyone does a mental victory lap when they manage to guess how much Celsius the weather is because they keep forgetting it's Celsius*5/9+32=Fahrenheit, Engineer reminds them patiently.
The true victories are the correct temperature guesses we've made along the way.
One time, a friend asked me if I actually knew how much a tablespoon of flour was in gramms to convince me that metric users also make use of volume based units without thinking about them. But little did she know a heaped spoonful of 405 flour is about 15g and a level tablespoon is 10g.
They claim Oolong just tastes better when it's boiled to 80Ā°C exactly with a Bunsen burner.
You only asked for one scene but somehow I came up with a bunch of other things. This post was drawn across 2 months so the artstyle is all over the place. Thanks for your ask!
Genuinely thinking of making a video essay on Spyās individual character but then Iād feel an obligation to do the same for the other eight meeeeeeeeeercs (and Pauling, and I donāt think Iād give the Administrator any justice if I tried analysing her character)
the main characters Iād want to video essay for would be Spy, Scout (because ofc), Demo (I love you one chance - the video would be soooo biased) and Heavy.
It makes me so irrationally irritated when people frame Spy as sympathetic in regards to his abandonment of Scout as a Father.
His lack of responsibility as a Father is PATHETIC like genuinely his reasoning is pathetic. In the comics he admits to being āscaredā to commit to the role as a Father, and whether this fear came from a deep-rooted, theoretical trauma or not is nooooot an excuse but would be a wonderful REASON to why he abandoned Scout in the first place. A reason I DONT SEE PEOPLE EXPLORING.
I need people to stop dumbing it down to being āSpy abandoned his family for the greater goodā because a) it lacks so much depth and b) it sanitises Spyās character.
Iām not trying to be āelitistā as I believe itās impossible to have one conscious interpretation of any of the characters in TF2, so in any manner, all characterisation is in some form ācanonā to their characters BUT IT LITERALLY MAKES ME BREAK OUT IN HIVES.
Spy SHOULD be flawed, and you SHOULD allow him to make negatively charged decisions. Iām not saying he doesnāt REGRET abandoning his child and Iām not saying Spy is all-encompassing bad but I just wish people didnāt try to make his reasoning so āself-sacrificingā and āheroicā as a way to try and make his character seem more appealing and angelic.
The appeal from his character should come from his genuine desire to CHANGE. To be present for Scout, to be better, and in some way be āavailableā in a way he didnāt manage to be in Scoutās childhood.
Maybe itās projection (absent Father core) but Spy was selfish in his decision and you should allow yourself to frame it as so. This doesnāt make his character BAD, it makes him REALISTIC.
One day I stopped in my tracks and finally accepted the truth about my favourite character being and having to be wrong and not necessarily having 'good' intentions as leaving out of mere fear is very human-like, because humans fear taking responsibility, he was young, unfortunately, it is common for young men to leave due to not being ready to be a father + once I saw a post where a person mentioned that his wife had 7 other sons and it might also affect his decision because he might be not ready to take care of 8 children too
While it's important to acknowledge a huge mistake of his life that he considers(!) it is also important to realise that Spy is much more than this mistake that he made in his youth. And while this part of his lore makes him a deep character ā his own regret, his love for his son / children and children in general, his yearning to nurture small kids because he wants to fullfil a a hige hole in his chest, experiencing what he had missed which are those other personality traits of his and which shows that he is not entirely driven by selfishness, he has grown mentally, which is natural for a person to ā it's not everything about his character.
Moreover, Spy and this part of his lore has helped me to heal from my own father issues in a way, because while thinking about all this and understanding his character better, considering his possible motives and feelings before and after, I finally came to a realisation that it happens it is, once again, unfortunately, common, but the most important thing that I have to understand and accept is that it happened to me not because my father is an evil piece of shit, but because his was too scared and he wasn't ready, yes, it is harmful to his child, but his child cannot change him and bring him back, and, honestly, I do not want to, of course I do not force my own view on others, but I think that it is a sign that of an improvement since a person understands their own father better and does not hold any grudge against him anymore
I am sorry for writing a whole essay in reblogs, as you can see, I just love this character and, as you also can see, I am very normal about this character--- I do agree with the original post very much and I am glad that while expressing an irritation with how people try to make an unnecessary excuse for Spy you also do not claim that he is just evil and bad, and I hate him!!! But explain how not making an excuse for his actions actually makes him more deepš¹ā¤ļøš¤²
I was going to make a post in addition to my original one detailing how I feel Scout would perceive his Father.
I will say now I donāt believe Spyās entire character should revolve around his relationship with his son, and that Scoutās entire character should do the same for his Father. People are absent in life: it doesnāt mean that they should attach that as part of their personality - although, of course, these absences do influence it. While my post talks about that one aspect, I am not trying to pin it as the entire point of Spyās character. He has a job yknow likeā¦ he has other things to think aboutā¦
Point being, I have more to discuss on Spyās character that doesnāt solely focus on his aspect as a Father (or, lacking of). I just wanted to reply to clear up to everyone that I donāt hate him and that Iām not solely focusing on this part of his character to pin him as a horrible person š
Another point regarding Spy & Scout that Iāve been thinking about lately.
Iāve seen a lot of works in which Scout picks up the habit of smoking as a form of relaxation and stress relief whilst simultaneously paralleling Spyās habit of smoking (like father like son).
Again, this might be projection, but given Spyās absence in Scoutās childhood I do not see Scout picking up smoking as a habit ESPECIALLY when his job (RUNNING!!!!!) relies on having good lungs.
Reflecting myself in Scoutās character, my Mother smokes, and while I havenāt picked up smoking for myself (yet) I have had the desire arise in me as this is the environment I have been raised in. Projecting this onto Scout and applying it to HIS familial situation, I donāt think the desire to smoke would come to HIM given Spyās absence.
Of course, I am in agreement that Scout would have tried smoking at some point. He has seven older brothers all of whom are likeā¦ gang members there is no chance NONE of them smoke. He would try it to fit in with his brothers and get their approval (younger sibling š) but at max he wouldāve done it twice in my opinion.
INSTEAD!!! A parallel between Spy and Scout having addictive personalities is far more suitable in my opinion. If Scout has an addiction to adrenaline (and caffeine: BONK), then Spyās is to nicotine. Itās a small change but I genuinely think it has more impact than having Scout directly copy Spyās habit.
It makes me so irrationally irritated when people frame Spy as sympathetic in regards to his abandonment of Scout as a Father.
His lack of responsibility as a Father is PATHETIC like genuinely his reasoning is pathetic. In the comics he admits to being āscaredā to commit to the role as a Father, and whether this fear came from a deep-rooted, theoretical trauma or not is nooooot an excuse but would be a wonderful REASON to why he abandoned Scout in the first place. A reason I DONT SEE PEOPLE EXPLORING.
I need people to stop dumbing it down to being āSpy abandoned his family for the greater goodā because a) it lacks so much depth and b) it sanitises Spyās character.
Iām not trying to be āelitistā as I believe itās impossible to have one conscious interpretation of any of the characters in TF2, so in any manner, all characterisation is in some form ācanonā to their characters BUT IT LITERALLY MAKES ME BREAK OUT IN HIVES.
Spy SHOULD be flawed, and you SHOULD allow him to make negatively charged decisions. Iām not saying he doesnāt REGRET abandoning his child and Iām not saying Spy is all-encompassing bad but I just wish people didnāt try to make his reasoning so āself-sacrificingā and āheroicā as a way to try and make his character seem more appealing and angelic.
The appeal from his character should come from his genuine desire to CHANGE. To be present for Scout, to be better, and in some way be āavailableā in a way he didnāt manage to be in Scoutās childhood.
Maybe itās projection (absent Father core) but Spy was selfish in his decision and you should allow yourself to frame it as so. This doesnāt make his character BAD, it makes him REALISTIC.
You are the Programmer and you work as a member for GRN - Global Radio Network. With trouble arising in your previous job, you had been reassigned and given a nine month deadline to reestablish yourself as someone worthy of working under GRN, by improving and helping the communications and publicity of Team RED.
But RED is different and a far cry from what you know, and the people seem to distrust anyone who works under GRN.
You've been tasked to help them but really it feels like you've been tasked to survive.
Content Warnings - n/aā¦? Reader gets thrown like eight times.
āWhat country were you BORN and BRED in, MAGGOT?!ā
Every other syllable rings in your ears. The mental work of dissolving sentences in your head melts with the manner Soldier speaks, pointed and snappy with a direction to his words. It doesnāt help the growing ache in your head that he speaks so loud, nor did it help that youād been hoisted from the dark meeting room into the heat of Teufort with little say in the matter.
Heād positioned you - more so thrown you, as youād rather describe the notion - into the shade formed by the first brick building, your shadow not quite reaching the light where he stood himself, marching back and forth like a mechanical toy forced into action. His limbs lay flat and jointless, thick planks of muscle that broaden his shoulders, perpetuating him in an upright stance; his arms swing at his sides like a weighted pendulum, moving in conjunction with his steps: he faces the sun when addressing you, and walks by its side when heās not. When the light hits him, his contours are lost - fed into the coarse gravel background and turning his face pale like the sand. The light bounces from the muted metal of his helmet and your eyes burn to readjust to the sudden offence.
Youā¦ think he meant to say raisedā¦ not bredā¦
From your daze, you scramble for a mental grounding, words blustered and forming uncomfortably in your mouth. You attempt to find your sense, though you mustāve forgotten to pack that when you got this job.
āI- uhā¦ I was born in-ā
āSilence SCUM!ā
He halts in front of you, body stiff - poised in a formality as though etiquette helped in war - and governed in a way you couldnāt quite say was his own. His finger jabs towards you, following it like a dowsing rod until it stabs into your clavicle, twisting into the bone like he were butting out a cigarette. His features - now darkened from the shade - pull into a vicious scowl, his head tilting up to glare down at you by his nose.
āIt doesnāt matter WHAT weak country you were born into - youāre on American ground now: you ACT like youāre on American ground!ā
His hat jolts about, the metal rattling against what must have been a cave of a skull, knocking what little sense he may have had. His words come out pronounced - accusatory - and his breath falls chillingly against the heat of your skin.
āI may not be the smartest doo-hickey in the arsenal of nuclear weaponry, but I know a Spy when I see oneā¦ā
Teeth flat and grit, he stares at you with a malice you find hard to forget. You get the impression there is an instability to fear of this man - unpredictability. He swiftly swipes his finger up, flicking your nose harshly enough that his rigid nail snags you, making you cup your nose in the utter shock of it. You watch as he backs off, resuming his pacing with a strict formality.
āYouāll be put to the test, Spying Scum! There is no regiment crueller than that of RED!ā he barks, sounding pleased with himself, āif you survive my trainingā¦ then youāll be put down by my handā¦ā
At this point, you canāt really hide your annoyance, scowling as he monologues about the āsuperior and dangerous initiation of team REDā. This only makes you wish you were sent to BLU instead. Your duffle bag had started weighing into your shoulder, digging into the skin so harshly you know itāll leave a mark, your head was still ringing with the emergence of a headache, and the folder Miss Pauling had given you had begun to make your arm ache. And now, as you scrunch your nose, youāre given the choice to die suffering, or suffering to die. What was this? Lose-lose?!
āNOW! On with the tour, newbie!ā
Soldier leads the one man march, with you tailing behind with less enthusiasm. He takes several detours, sharply turning in odd directions; you forget heās actually leading a ātourā and not trying to get you lost. He yammers, hardly stopping for breath, speaking in non-sentient ramblings you quickly learn to tune out. Focusing instead on your surroundings, you find that the base is much smaller than it looked.
The courtyard exaggerates the base's size. Chain-fenced and guarded with cameras, most of it is empty, tracks beaten between buildings and formed by time; you believe the base was previously government owned - demilitarised by the Administrator and renovated by YLW. Where you walk was probably the parading grounds: where you came from - the administrative building.
The building he takes you to first is domed and ugly. A sad beige littered with specks of grey presents itself to you, dug into the ground slightly sending you down a flight of stairs when you enter. The doors make a horrible rattle as they slide open, lights flickering in canon revealing malnourished, brittle shelving that appear to have been cheaply made - the Warehouse. Each row gives ten shelves total for storage with yellow fluorescent lights between them: the thin strings of metal somehow hold the various boxes scattered about with only one shelf crumbling from the weight. Crates are segregated at the back near a large industrial door, second to the one youād entered from.
You are āwarnedā (more so briefly and off-handedly told: had you tuned him out this very moment youādāve missed it) that the door leading outside is heavily guarded and āweaponised with tools only the genius of RED could come up withā. Your presumption is that it wards off anyone from BLU attempting an infiltration: another part of you thinks itās a way of keeping you in.
When you leave, Soldier drags you through four left turns, effectively circling the large building youād just been in. As you walk, dragging your feet behind Soldierās more peppy steps, you catch the sight of some of the other mercenaries as they move on with their day; even from across the courtyard, you can feel their pitying, yet hateful gazes on you. Itās the type of look that portrays you, wounded with bloodhounds on your trail; dread - had it not settled yet - becomes much more evident. They watch you like theyāve seen you before: like you werenāt the first of many.
In particular, the tall kid (you strain to remember his name) laughs mockingly in the distance, seeing your exhausted state from the weight you were carrying and from the laps Soldier was forcing from you. He makes it a point to call out.
āHey Soldier-!ā and he stops so suddenly you nearly crash into his back, āwhat do you call someone who can barely walk a hundred yards? THE PROGRAMMER!ā
He cackles, as does Soldier who stomps his foot and slaps his knee.
āIād just call them BRITISH!ā
Suddenly you think youāre in school again, sitting in a classroom while your classmates laugh through the window. Goddamn comediansā¦ they never get far in life. But neither did you, evidently, to wind up here.
He bolts to the building he was heading to, the longest and farthest from where you stand. Youāre sure he does this in an attempt to taunt you, proving youāre weak, slow and beneath him, and in a way, heās right, but only because you donāt feel like chasing a man who wasnāt worth your time.
For all the efforts the warehouse put into its camouflage, the second building Soldier takes you to immediately nullifies the effect. Usually, youād describe a building of this state to be āone a bomb had been dropped upon, demolishing what little dignity it had towards its functionā. In this case, you fully believe it to be true.
The body is charred across its right side, a near perfect split between one half of the building and the next. Where blown out windows are bandaged with wooden planks, broken glass and rubble accompany it, not yet removed from the stage of destruction. Itās a scorn against the image of the base - a shameful mark of carelessness thatās patched in a way of negligence. The wall is scalded with soot stains the shade of black coffee, patterned across the red brick like an oil spill and darkened in the areas of impact. A coal scent lingers, dancing with the vapours of oil. The buildingās twin - the left side - remains unmarked, at least, not to the extent of the right. It serves as a reminder to its abuse: to the decency it lost.
Coming closer, the sounds of machinery spark. A garage door stands, sealed on the bare wall to the left, muffling the horrors enacting behind it. It sounds like sundering metal and you can presume who is the cause of it - the Engineer.
āPROGRAMMER!ā Soldier speaks suddenly, as though youāve stepped on his heels, ādo you want to see somethingā¦ FUNNY?ā
You perk to the suggestion, a feeling of camaraderie coming to you - an opportunity for connection in this place, to prove yourself worthy of being here! You agree readily, disregarding the feeling you have in your gut, and he grins at you furtively. He leads you closer to the garage door, like a stalker to its game, to a smaller one off-set at its corner. When youāre moments away, he hoists you at the collar, kicking the door and chucking you in.
The weight of your duffle sets you off-balance and you clatter first into the edge of a table, and then second to the ground. Your files spill from your hands, papers scattering alongside a holder of pencils, and your scream is only slightly out-classed by the jolted hollar of āDANG NABBITā. When you peel your head from the tile floor, you're met with the image of a very angry, very stressed, Southern man.
āLil Pop Quiz for you: when a door has a āDo Not Disturbā sign on it, what dāyou do?ā
Itās a simple question yet your words elude you. Turning for support, you find your āguideā has disappeared, leaving you in the wreckage. Your eye twitches involuntarily, yet somehow you feel this is your fault: logic speaks that itās not, instinct claims it is. You begin your plea, body lifting from the floor like youāre begging forgiveness from the Lord Himself.
āIām so sorry, I did NOT mean to-ā
āYouād better start praying, boy-ā he interrupts before restraining himself, knuckles fisting as his sights sit past you, āSoldier. You have a part to play in this.ā
Itās not a question but the Soldier answers like it is anyway, āaffirmativeā coughing from his throat. Itās like he teleports behind you, unable to keep from getting involved in the situation HE CAUSED. You thought he disappeared to have plausible deniability and yet he doesnāt fight to claim his own āinnocenceā.
ā...why donāt you get along now before one of you gets hurt?ā the Engineer suggests with barely contained irritation.
You make a sound of agreement, scuttling for your papers before you begin sweeping up his pencils by hand: he clears his throat harshly, barely disguising the hateful sneer on his lips. It gives you pause long enough to offer him a loosely grit smile.
ā...you donāt want me to-?ā
āJust get the fuck outta my workshop,ā he stresses, rubbing his temples with his middle finger and thumb.
Message received loud and clear. You back out, passing the threshold, and the door immediately meets the tip of your nose. For a communications āexpertā, you are making a horrible first impression: what kind of curse was set on you to place you here in Teufort? You know why, and yet you feel the punishment is ill-fit for your crimeā¦
Stupefied, your body turns slowly like a haunted carousel, directing towards Soldier who stands innocently at your side; it takes will-power not to leap at him, mouth agape - near foaming - as you try to kindly word āwhat the fuck his damage isā without inciting a physical attack. Naturally, youāre stopped before you start.
āThat was a pathetic display,ā Soldier says and the civil approach youād planned to use gets thrown to the curb.
ā...WHAT DO YOU MEAN-ā
āI MEAN! You should GROW. SOME. BALLS, SNOWFLAKE!ā
A guillotine, his arm sharply lifts like the blade, slamming onto your shoulder with a pronounced thud you jump violently at. His grip is strong, thumb dug under your collar bone, and you flinch with the thought heāll punch you.
āIf you want pure blooded RED to run through your VEINS, you have to start MANNING UP! You GRN Men are all WEAK: cowering at the sight of conflictā¦ā
He snags you by the scruff of your neck and begins towards the last standing building. At this point, you allow yourself to get dragged along, the fight that had sparked diminished by a tidal wave.
āYou will TRAIN. SIX AM. We donāt need WIMPS in this BASE! WEāRE AT WAR!!ā
Itās endless! And your will is slowly getting chipped at. He insults your profession, and simultaneously his own - did the man think wars were won without the help of admin? - but then, youāre only ever reminded of war from those who stand on the field.
He takes you to the front of the last building: gnarly and plain with curtained panes watching you like eyes. Squished, the roof is flat, a single story drags on to make up for the lack of height. Itās walls are fashioned plainly, rugged and worn like a charity case. Gun holes scatter down twin doors, displaying the hollowed out wood and meeting with torch marks rising from the bottom. Itās sets you up for a weakened expectation and thin walls: if you expect privacy, you also expect very little of it.
You can understand why YLW use cheaper material now, if only for the frequency the base clearly gets abused. Soldier enters without thought and you catch the door behind him, letting it gently fall shut as you enter after.
Itās a long hallway with a large, arching door at the end of it: the entrance to the cafeteria. Soldier actually points this out - the only useful thing heās done this entire tour - only to mention something about bread? You care very little, haven learnt not to trust his word. The place has more rooms than people working there. Youāre surprised to find everyone HAS rooms rather than being lumped in one shared hall. You spot a communal restroom at the furthest end by the doors to the cafeteria, and next to that you believe are the communal showers.
You move further down, observing the doors as you pass them with keen attention. Thereās different logos on each door and you notice a total of nine variations, bar the one Soldier drops you off at - your door - marked with GRNās logo (a radio antenna).
Entering your room, the first thing you notice is the mirror across to your door. You see your state, all soaked in sweat and grime, knees dirtied by filth and clothing slightly ary: you smooth a hand down your face only to feel how caked in oil it had become. With a click, your door shuts behind you, and you observe your life for the next nine months.
Itās noticeably bare. That wasā¦ to be expected and yet the sight sinks in how far from home you are. Your new mattress adorns a thin bedding, draped over itself at the pillow and tucked in at the edges: itās hoisted up by a thin, fragile frame that creaks in threat when you drop your bag upon it. You briefly consider the survival rate of deserting this job. You donāt think about it too long.
Youāre given a work desk - folder flung there, your poor arms ache - a lamp, a ceiling light that flickers and sparks when you test it out, and a single unit for dressing, alongside that mirror that mocks you at the door. The bed aligns itself with the window, a thin fabric hooked across it that barely serves its function, room bright even with the curtains drawn. The first thing you consider is replacing them. On the opposite wall, your dresser and desk sit, aligning with your bedroom door. To the left of the dresser, another door rests. You open it to find a bathroom.
Itās small, cheap and shitty - nothing spectacular and just barely a privilege - with a single standing shower. It comes with a small bottle of MannCo branded ā5-in-one shampoo, conditioner, body wash, aftershave, and melee weapon!ā you refuse to touch in fear itāll peel your skin straight off. A bowl shaped sink sits under a dull mirror, fake as though you lived in a dollhouse, the material used probably nothing more than a reflective coating. Itās clear enough to voice your misery and you quickly recede to your room once more.
You have two boxes that were delivered before your entry. The first, you find, are basic necessities. Your favourite mug, a small radio, a few books both for reading and writing: nothing too interesting so you set it by your desk. The next - and you chuckle, guilty at the sight - are your sheets and, in tow, your small collection of plushies. You grab the box and flip it, fabrics falling onto the bed softly and your plushies smacking into the hard mattress. One of the smaller toys (a round toy bomb with a beanbag in it) rolls from the bed and onto the floor with a soft thump. You pick it up and throw it in your hand. Youād won it one summer in an arcade with friends: friends you wonāt be seeing any time soon. The other soft toys are equally symbolic, mostly kept as a reach for your childhood, and you almost feel bad for bringing them to this place.
You finally take a seat at the desk - your desk - thumbing through the pages of the file Miss Pauling had given you. You are the Programmer, the identity supplied to you by RED, and you work for GRN.
Global Radio Networking: the company desired control and monetisation. Youāre here to paint a picture to both the world and the Administrator: youāre here to lower their guards.
Youāre being tasked with the work of five men, you find, with your description outlining report writing, resource allocation, the programming of your station and how itāll be structured. Half of it is what you were already used to: the other half are foreign demands from team RED. In the back of your mind, however, you have clear instructions from GRN. Gain information.
Youāre expendable and theyāve put you here as a bit of a trust fall. You were valuable enough to keep, yet not enough to not question. Your mistakes have marked your name: you have to prove your worth.
Your deadline is nine months. And in nine months, youāll have either secured your job at GRN, or died trying. Youāre being tossed between Deathās hands and itās only fate that can sway you one way.
You lean back on your chair and sigh. You might as well unpack.
Great news everyone! Absolute Territory part two is DONE but I am waiting for my proofreaders to RESPOND!!!! So, it will be released either TONIGHT or TOMORROW depending how much I care about it actually being proofread.
I hope you donāt grill me for how I present the characters šš
I feel like I need to apologise because I AM working on the second part of Absolute Territory but I have no trust in my writing skills and everything I put down is āhorribleā and šš I keep on cutting shit out and Iām trying to decide the importance of other parts. I have the entire framework put down but I feel like Iām yapping a lot???
Itās a lot ofā¦ world description on how I imagine the base looks, and while Soldier tours you heās not as much of a focus par the first part. Iām trying to decide how much of *other* characters youāll see and how much youāll interact with them this chapter. Part of me thinks itās important to establish the dynamics, another part is worried about word count (and if most of my descriptions are filler and boring š)
I think my issue is that Iām writing with the presumption that the reader knows NOTHING about TF2 and how the characters act and interact becauseā¦ thatās just how I writeā¦? I think I have a habit of using more words needed
Anyways, chapter two release tomorrow or sunday? Please? Begging?
I wanted to make their design stand out, so I created them from scratch; they're not loadouts you can find in-game. Plus a little bit of character description because I'm dying to talk about them and their roles in the story (*wearing a shirt that says "please talk to me about my fic"*).
Now I can finally draw them often!!
Somewhat goofy clothing sheets under the cutāāā
I tried to design them the way their silhouettes and colors stay recognisable, as if they were meant to be used in-game later, to not to break the gameplay rules. I also wanted them to look as tf2-like as possible, I studied the hell out of the 3d models and on the last three I guess it started to turn out decent. Drawing Spy is still pain though.
Or maybe it's just that I'm not attracted to the majority of the mercs visually?? That's why they don't look satisfying?? Lmao. Need to adjust them to my tastes later.
I'm not sure I can exactly explain my design choices with these... How exactly they correlate to their characters. There is something, but I went for it fully intuitively.
//
For BLU scout I went for the softer, rounder oversized clothing to accent his insecurity and the need to shield himself for comfort. It still needed to shape his torso (game rules) but his hood and sleeves do the deed. There is also a strict rule in how to draw his freckles: they look more like moles and there's 7 or 8 of them. You won't believe me if I say this is lore relevant.
For RED Scout, I went with the more aggressive military style. I think I literally took this jacket design from a real military one. There should be an accent on his heavy relations with the army. His clothes are tight because he still likes himself.
RED Sniper is giving hunter vibes, forest type. BLU Sniper looks more like a fisher or a winter hunter. Not sure what deeper meaning I could assign to this except that BLU Sniper was heavily referenced on Ogata Hyakunosuke.
BLU Spy should radiate tiredness. His look is quite unkept for his standards but at this point it doesn't matter anymore. The turtleneck and the boots are special requests from @/gentlesurgeryenjoyer (xoxo)
BLU Medic just looks so freaking cool in a black shirt. It was a vision. I'm not sure if black and white accents mean anything in terms of which side those characters are on. I also wanted to separate him from another famous horror witnessing Medic.
And Miss Pauling was the most satisfying to draw, it was a gift to draw her last... I gave her pants because it's getting cold outside at the time when the story takes place. I also find it very impractical to go killing job in a pencil skirt, I'm sorry. She probably also wears snickers underneath.
And also thanks to @nightly-headache for helping out and assistance!
