Ok ok so I have just been hit by a vision from God himself.
What if Spy is the youngest of like a million brothers. Just like Scout. He’s the weeny runt of the litter that all his older brothers love but make fun of constantly. Little baby man.
So much for being that posh, fancy lad. Here’s a bunch of guys who can tell you how he spent half his life running around in their over-sized hand-me-down clothes while playing in mudflats and gutters. And how he threw up and cried when one of them persuaded him to try a cigarette for the first time. And how he got his ass beat by the local baker when he got caught stealing croissants. And how he used to sneak around to try and avoid his older brothers play-fighting with him because he’d always lose. And how he was weirdly obsessed with knives as a teen and they all joked he’d grow up to be some kind of serial killer.
(I’m sure none of this had any impact on the man he grew up to be.)
Because people were interested, here's my personal recollection of how the cultural zeitgeist of the Tumblr TF2 fandom has changed over the ten+ years I've been lurking here.
First of all, disclaimers:
-This is just my memory/impression of the areas of the fandom I was involved with. TF2 was released in 2007. I joined the fandom around ten years ago, so a LOT of stuff had happened before my time. Meet the team videos, tentaspies, Cuanta vida etc etc. Over the years I’ve gravitated more towards the Tumblr/fic/fan art side of things, so will be pretty ignorant of drama outside of that. Additionally, I may have forgotten things, misremembered them, or simply have a different interpretation of events from others. I’d be interested in hearing from other people who have been around for a while what their impression/memory of things is. There’s bound to be some big stuff I missed or blocked from memory lol.
So, the early days were before my time in the fandom, but I was around on the internet and I’ve dug through the remnants of TF2Chan enough to get a feel for it.
This was back in the wild west, highly anonymous days of the internet. It was rare for peoples’ online lives to have a direct link to their real life and the general attitude was, ‘well, it’s the internet, what do you expect?’ ‘It’s the internet, get over it.’
Basically, you were expected to upload your fan content and contribute to the fandom, but you were also expected to just suck it up and have a thick skin if people were rude about it because being an asshole to each other was kind of just the norm. It was a very edgy time. The themes in fics also reflected it. So many edgy, extremely explicit fics. Exploring dark themes through fics was normal.
This continued during my early days in the fandom. The BNFs were mostly NSFW authors/artists from what I recall. They certainly inspired people to follow in their footsteps and some pockets of the fandom seemed to be competing to be as edgy as possible. I was young(er) and innocent in those days so that could just be my impression. However, some very dark/edgy content does still stand out for me from those days.
For example there was an OC known as 'Feral Sniper' and his thing was that he absolutely stank, was infested with parasites, and raped everybody he could get his hands on. He was popular and fan art of him regularly appeared in the main tags with no consistent tag of his own, making the content really hard to block. There were people who labelled themselves as his 'wives,' (apparently what he called his rape victims), including at least one young teen.
Things then swung completely in the opposite direction. A lot of the BNFs left the fandom (of their own accord or because they were bullied/driven out for their content? I didn’t interact with the NSFW side of the fandom so I’m out of the loop on that one. I got the impression some moved onto the Overwatch fandom though.)
Around the same time there seemed to be an influx of younger newcomers. New blood, great! Except...they brought with them the purity police. It was nice that people could now talk about their trans merc headcanons without being mocked for it. On the other hand, there were some people you couldn’t say ‘I don’t think *merc* is trans’ without getting immediate backlash.
Likewise, around then, a fight broke out on Tumblr about Medic’s race. Some people had taken colour swatches of his skin and declared he was not a white man. Instead of this just being an interpretation of the character to play with, this was treated as canon, and to call him white was a sure way to get anon hate.
Then there was the Deplorable Blocklist.
If you weren’t around for these era of the fandom, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do this justice. I also wasn’t on the inside of either side of this matter, so I could be wrong on aspects. Take my reporting on the following drama with a good pinch of salt.
I believe it started with people going into the ChevyMedic tags to find who shipped Medic x Classic Heavy, as they saw this as the fandom’s most problematic and icky ship. So instead of blocking/ignoring/minding their own business/etc, they went intentionally looking for the content to report to one another.
This started a Google doc that was widely shared, called the TF2 Deplorable Blocklist.
Anybody who did anything they deemed as remotely problematic was added to this public list and decried as a terrible human being. There was no room for nuance or exploring controversial themes through fiction.
For example, depicting Medic as a Nazi? Yeah, understandable that you might not want to see that. But fan art of Medic in Nazi uniform (yeah that was a thing) was considered on parr with exploring the idea of Medic having fought for the German army in his younger days and having to come to terms with the harm that ideology had done to the world.
You don't have to want to read/view either of those to see there's a difference, surely.
I’m sure some of those listed had done legit unpleasant things, and some of the categories they used were certainly damning, but there were enough situations I’d witnessed myself or people I knew personally, that it was obvious the list itself was the more toxic and harmful thing going on here.
For example, one category was for people accused of racism. Bad stuff, you would assume. But with one of the cases, I remember being there in the tags for it. OP was accused of being racist for whitewashing Demoman, but here was the context as far as I can recall it years later:
-OP posts artwork of Demoman dressed like a prince, labelling him, ‘the fairest in the land,’ and adding the context that this is their first time trying watercolours. Watercolours, which can lead to washed-out colours if you don’t have experience with them. And being traditional art, we were viewing a photograph of it that further washed the tones out. The end result was a piece of art that was obviously Demoman, and obviously not a white man, but paler than canon.
-Someone replied to this something along the lines of, ‘Oh no! The poor ickle whitey is scared of the big bad black man! Oh no! What’s the matter pwecious innocent little whitey, is dark skin scawwwyyy?’
-The OP tried to explain the above about watercolours and their lack of bad intention.
-Replier doubled down, using the same weird, mocking baby talk, telling OP they were racist etc.
-OP replied, ‘Bitch, I’m black!’
-Replier refused to believe them, continued to accuse them of being racist and of being a white person lying about their identity
-Even when OP’s mutuals claimed to have seen photos of OP (or knew them in real life?), the other person continued to be hostile and aggressive
In short, it was a mess. And then OP was added to the list for it.
Other things that got you added were shipping Pauling with any of the mercs, shipping completely unrelated Scout and Spy OCs, writing anything they perceived as abusive relationships, arguing with them over the list, etc.
So, basically stuff that’s not going to appeal to a lot of people. (Most of the time, me included!) But at the same time… seriously?
Curating your own experience within a fandom is one thing. Driving out and harassing those that you don’t, is frankly, the deplorable thing here.
Privately giving your friend a heads-up that someone in the fandom posts content you know they find triggering? Sure. Sensible. Good way of looking out for someone. Loudly naming and shaming anyone who posts in that tag? No man. That's not okay.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFDDD -My cat's addition to the write-up. He wasn't born then, which is why he doesn't have much to contribute.
And unfortunately, this was the general vibe of much of the Tumblr side of the fandom for a while. It was all about walking on eggshells to avoid upsetting people, because the moment you did something ‘wrong,’ you’d face vicious consequences.
It sucked, honestly, and though I never did anything to attract he attention of these people, I kept my head down and started to distance myself from the fandom.
In recent times I’ve drifted back in, but I’m still wary of how quickly things can swing from one extreme to another, even within a fandom that’s honestly had less drama than the average, from what I’ve seen.
These days things seem a bit more settled? Trans mercs are still embraced but I haven’t seen any hate mail over cis headcanons. Maybe we’ve got over the worst of it? Maybe so many people got chased out that there’s not much left to argue over? Maybe the puritanical people grew up and got over it? Maybe they moved onto another fandom? Or maybe we’re just waiting for our next influx of people who wish to aggressively police us…
Please feel free to reply with/add on your own recollections if you've been around in the fandom for a while. Please don't start heated arguments or send hate mail to anyone who had a different experience to you though. Because, well, read above. (Me included please...I am a sweet, delicate flower, your words, they would wound me so...don't do it, I beg of you.)
i’m so obsessed with your fic “The Devil in Your Back” ITS SO GOOD, you single-handedly brought back my tf2 hyperfixation lol
i saw how you mentioned the song Toes by Glass Animals fits super well for Si and Panga, i’ve been listening to nothing but Glass Animals lately and I feel like Walla Walla has the same thing but for Nath and Renard.
Thank you!
Singlehandedly my favourite album in the universe.
And ooh, interesting!
I've always thought of Walla Walla as an extension of Toes, Si + Panga-wise myself. Hadn't even thought of it with the other two until now!
Coco Hooves though! Coco Hooves is perfect, and part of my Nath x Renard playlist.
Pools works beautifully for Nath x Michelle.
Wyrd is on Renard's playlist.
Flip though... For me Flip is a different beast entirely, and the inspo for a completely separate Spy-centric fic I've wanted to write for years but probably will never get the chance to ;.;
One of the things Silent Spy admired about Nath was his incredible concentration. However, it sometimes lead to situations like this.
He’d first leaned over Nath (who was entirely engrossed in drawing a picture of one of Hippie’s chickens) with just his jacket off and the top two buttons of his shirt undone.
Nath didn’t notice. Not surprising really, he’d never been good at picking up subtle cues.
Silent Spy would just have to make things a bit more obvious.
Next he had his top off, and rested a hand on Nath’s shoulder as though just stopping by to admire his artwork (which admittedly, was very good.)
Nath paused to squeeze the hand on his shoulder, giving a small, happy hum. Nothing more though.
Not even when all Silent Spy’s clothes were gone and he reached right across the table under the guise of clearing away a coffee mug.
Really?
Really???
Right. Silent Spy neatly made the bed, draped himself across it elegantly, and threw a shoe at Nath’s head.
‘Ouch! What the hell? What are you up- Oh. Ooh, hello.’
