Luna I'm in a bit of a writing rut and I really enjoy reading your interpretations of the tf2 mercs to help me figure out situations and scenarios and their reactions in those situations. I was wondering how you think the boys process grief or guilt.
Lord I’ve been in a rut myself. I feel you, anon. Idk about you but I find working from prompts helps a lot when ideas are not flowing readily. So yeah, lemme see what I can cook up.
Scout tends to Not Deal With It. He starts off numb, and tries hard to keep that going. He distracts himself, aggressively, daydreaming when the slightest hint of pain begins to bubble up, and when he breaks he BREAKS. He curls up in a ball, ugly-cries, and wails until he’s either spent himself or someone comes to comfort him. When dealing with grief he’s barely held together. Internally shivering like a small, cold dog, feeling like he’s gonna shake apart. Guilt tends to fly over his head thanks to the big buffer of ego he has. But if he actually feels guilty, he does everything he can to make it up. He will make a display of making himself suffer as a way of apology. It ends up being annoying, accidentally, but he has no real idea how to fix it otherwise, and he desperately wants things to go back to the way they were and it aches when he has to just wait for time to heal things.
Soldier tends to try and channel it all into anger. Anger is easy to handle. Anger can be predictable to someone used to its presence. Anger can be pushed into aggression and action, and let out through things like physical activity, yelling and bluster, and violence. You know Soldier is hurting inside when he gets EXTRA savage on the battlefield, because it’s his release. It’s how he lets it out, screaming more, fighting harder, meaner, dirtier. He tends to dominate more on the field during those times, picking an enemy to be the personification of his problems and MAKING THEM PAY. When he has no outlets, he becomes a bundle of nervous energy and tends to lash out verbally without meaning it. He doesn’t know how NOT to channel it into aggression, and so if he can’t blow off steam, it sits in his gut like a lead weight and he can’t really process it. If he’s feeling guilt in particular he might attempt to foster cameraderie with the person he’s wronged, include them on things more, try to ameliorate the situation with reminders of why he IS worth their time. Says sorry more than you’d expect out of a guy like him.
Pyro mopes, and uses escapism to cope, kind of like Scout. Except they tend to retreat into their delusions, or surround themselves with things that make them happy, and feel safe. Even so, they tend to lay around curled up under fluffy blankets for a while until they manage to process things enough to begin coming around. Guilt is usually made up for by extravagant expressions of apology and appreciation for the person they have wronged. Hand-made gifts are common.
Demoman is a big blubbery ball of exposed nerves and raw emotion. He doesn’t just wear it on his sleeve, his whole outfit is a hairshirt of sorrow. He drinks to cope. We all know that. He drinks at work to make himself reckless enough, but he also does it to fight back flashbacks to his lifetime traumas. Losing his eye, his adoptive parents, his birth father. He’s lived a life of grief and guilt and loss and self-deprication. We know plainly how Demo deals: NOT WELL. He drinks as a crutch, and it brings it all out in tears and declarations of how much the people he loves mean to him. He needs people, and they keep leaving him, so he is adamant to tell the people he cares about how much they matter to him. That said, when sober, I feel like Demo pushes things down and tries to put on a brave face, going by how he was sad but calm when his Mum was reminiscing about his Dad in the WAR! comic. But when bottling it up is too much, he turns to a different bottle. He’s not good at processing things healthily, and honestly could use therapy to help him. Guilt is something he carries, especially regarding his adoptive parents. He deals with it as well as he does grief, and probably gets a little more reckless and self-destructive when reminded of how he’s harmed others he cares about. Help this poor, sweet boy.
Heavy carries so many scars in his heart, and he does so with silent dignity. He tends not to display things like this outwardly, feeling it pointless, and that it would only burden the people around him. His problems are his own, for good or ill. Instead, he lets it out in writing. When Heavy hurts, his tears are in the form of words on a page. Poetry, mostly, but he’s been known to write stories of his experiences, somewhat fictionalized accounts of other people suffering his own fate, in which he can safely examine things from an exterior view. The narrative tends to stay distant and emotionally uninvolved in those prose pieces, lest he weep as his hand drags the pen across page. Guilt is a burden Heavy bears with a slouch of his shoulders and determined resgination. He will often forget to say the words I’m Sorry, because of his tendency to not like speaking words that are implicit in his actions. It’s something a partner might have to train into him. But he makes up for it in other ways, particularly by being more kind and tender to a person, by pulling them into a close hug, or cooking them one of his mama’s recipes, or just doing lots of practical kindnesses for them. If he can help it, he will never do the thing he is guilty of again.
Engineer fixes things. It’s what he does. He has to fix it. He can fix anything? Why can’t he fix this? Why can’t it be fixed? If Engineer has no control over a situation, if he can’t make it right, it gnaws at him. It frustrates him. He retreats to his work, but in the end he does his worst work when he’s like this because he can’t think straight and dwells on how things could have been different. What he could have done to make things turn out differently. It often comes with a wave of self-loathing, and ends up with him cursing, probably smashing something in frustration, and vegging out in front of the TV or a campfire with a beer in his hand and a scowl on his face. Engie doesn’t process things well. Emotional literacy was never much of a priority in a family built on hard science, hard work, and cattle ranching. Oftentimes, the best thing someone can do for Engie in times like these is to take him out into the desert with some projects he hates and has given up on and some explosives or high-calibre guns, and just let him work it out with a bit of immature violence. Guilt is another one of those MUST FIX IT situations, to the point where if he can’t fix it with words, he’ll start making gifts or fixing things around the house or doing little things like that for the person, making their day easier and thus making it easier for them to get over their anger/hurt. If that doesn’t eventually solve things, see above. Another one that is hard to actually wrench the words “I’m sorry” out of. He’s more likely to use self-deprication to apologize.
Medic has never done anything wrong in his life. Okay that’s a lie but Medic’s ego is a POWERFUL buffer against trifles like grief and guilt. He tends to take a surprising amount of things in stride. His tendency toward not building strong personal relationships is a big part of this. His family was always self-absorbed and distant, and he is not too far away from that even as an adult. When he lost his parents, he mourned, but it didn’t destroy him in the way it might do to some. They spent their time, they made their mark, and they left good memories as well as bad. He isn’t afraid to weep when sad, but he’s not the type to scream to the heavens unless it’s in excitement. When he is closer to people, however, it’s a little harder to untangle himself. Losing someone he’s truly made a connection with is a deep blow to Medic. A reminder of his own mortality in addition to the ache of loss. He throws himself into his work as a coping mechanism, distracting himself as best he can, and breaking down into fits of torpor and ennui when he cannot. When he actually bonds to people, it’s struggle with the knowledge that people are all temporary, because now he’s aware that he only has so much time with this person, and if he hurts them, he has wasted that time. He is quick to apologize and tries to ameliorate the situation as swiftly and effectively as possible, because life is entirely too short and delicate to waste on unkindness between people who care about one another. People he truly cares about, he’ll frequently do his best to make them sturdier, less delicate, and his experimentation both facilitates and is the result of that. He rarely feels guilty for long, because it is a waste to flagellate oneself when sometimes, time, distance, and sufficient supplication are the best medicine for hurt feelings. His time, and everyone else’s as well, is too precious to waste on self-loathing.
Sniper wastes a lot of time on self-loathing. Guilt and grief cling to his back like a rabid koala, and drags him slowly downward. It’s part of why Sniper is such a professional. His work distracts him. It also gives him structure. Politeness, professionalism, research, all of it is a good distraction, as well as a good maxim for keeping him in a routine. Laying in his bunk for days on end being miserable and sleeping away his pain is tempting, but it’s not professional. He gets up, grooms, and dresses every day, even if he has nothing to do, because it’s a level of self-care he needs, a normalcy and routine that keeps him moving. It’s very easy for Sniper to lapse into despair otherwise. He’s also hard to drag an I’m Sorry out of, which is strange, because he’ll go into a shame-spiral just fine, but fuck if he’s willing to admit to someone’s face he’s wrong. His Sin is definitely pride, in spite of it all.
Spy doesn’t have the time or energy for grief or guilt. He can’t slow down. He can’t stop. He must push ever forward, or else a lifetime of hurting people and himself will catch up to him immediately, and drag him into the darkness. He pushes it down. He pushes it away. He bottles it up and smokes more than usual. He busies himself with work and indulges his sweet tooth. He keeps sentimental tokens, but rarely fishes them out and looks a them, lest he open that wound. Spy is loath to admit wrongdoing, but when required to, he will offer a short apology, and attempt to make up for it with actions. A fancy dinner, an expensive gift, a heartfelt slew of compliments. He is very much a Problem Solver, like Engineer, but instead of getting frustrated if his efforts are impotent, he becomes distant.
Miss Pauling has designated guilt breaks every four hours, for fifteen minutes. Grief breaks are a half an hour off the clock every five hours, and shame breaks are five minutes for every six hours worked, but cannot be sequential.
