polish fortress gigapost
basically at one point i went hey. poland had a shitty situation in the last century ESPECIALLY in the time that tf2 takes place resulting in a shit ton of poeple emigrating all over the world. so what if tf2 but polish? and theyre blu.
Heavy
our only actual slavic guy out of the game. i do think he'd still be russian and would know polish, but.. in the last pretty much 200 years there has been so many changes to poland's territory, including poeple emigrating and being displaced by force, he could be from literally anywhere. in his canon he was all over europe, but was still russian. here i genuienly don't know. he speaks polish tho!
his backstory would be the closest to canon, although squeeze some polish in there.
extras: since heavy wandered around europe so much he definetly has experience with pretty much every single slavic language and understands it at least a little. he'd actually be the person who can communicate the best with the dialect-speaking teammembers. unfortunately heavy has a bad habit of interchanging polish words he cant remember with russian ones, even on accident, so sometimes he can come out as kind of incomprehensible.
Engie
in tf2 our dear engie is already super into his own culture and speaks southern so itd make sense to bless him with a dialect also. this engie comes from a region in the south - podhale. he speaks the region's dialect góralski (wow this mesh of languages is getting to me). he's insistant on using it freely much to the dismay of many of his teammates who dont know polish that well.
his story would be that during PRL and the war it was too dangerous for him to stay in the country. america was full of new opportunities, so he fled and arrived at the other side of the world where he got those 11 goddamned phds.
extras: in poland at the beginning of may there are a metric ton of holidays and at this point its tradition to grill during the time, thus resident grill dad. his name is dariusz, darek in short. the traditional instrument there is a violin, so besides a guitar he also plays it. i think itd be funny if he had the hat from the regional clothing, but it was a hardhat made to look like it.
Demo
now this took a little bit of mental gymnastics. since scottish is sort of dialect of english i had to make demo speak a dialect. english is a germanic language so i thought 'hey, whats like the only dialect with german influence i know?' śląski! well. one of the ones used in śląsk.
his backstory would stay pretty much the same. maybe the death of his parents to the nessie would result in him getting adopted by a family who would later emigrate to america. his biological parents simply mysteriouslyy dissapearing after their supposed death and actually going to america? of course for more polish influence nessie could be replaced with bazyliszek, although im not sure where it originated.
extras: when demo initially joined the team he and medic bonded over the language aspect. in this little au of mine theyre the teams equivalent of heavymedic. demo and engie both also bonded over their dialects and are pretty good friends. demo's name is tadeusz, tadek for short.
Spy
he's built in to be pretty much any nationality you want him to be. everything fits, bc its built into his role to wander around the world and be pretty much anything.
i don't see spy as specifically polish like heavy. during the war and after poland was in the center of conflict and pretty much constantly in hot water. knowing german, russian, and polish was a good tool to have.
i think that spy knows polish very well. super formal, very eloquent. he'd propably read "pan tadeusz" and not only understand it, but also enjoy it.
pretty much most of the conflict of the team comes in the fact that even though spy knows polish very well he doesn't know dialects at all. too bad important poeple in the team or speak in hard accents or complete gibberish to him. 90% of the time he argues with engie tho. mostly its a thing that destroys communication, but sometimes is pretty funny, like engie and demo could call him names or insult him directly to his face and he wouldn't understand it.
extras: sort of leader of the team (yes, yes your mother and her dog already have this hc for blu team. let me have this.). he'd propably get sick of being in the center of the language conflict and would take measures to resolve it. propably forcing the entire team to revise a dialect dictioniary
Soldier
with a character who has been canonically to poland once to *reads* kill nazis.. Alright. its pretty easy to squeeze these headcanons into him.
his backstory goes the same, but in his road back to american he somehow finds out that he's actually polish. his parents were immigrants and he simply grew up in american without knowing so. america and poland are pretty similar at the foundation, right? pretty patriotic, super about freedom (especially at the time), fursona is an eagle, pretty into football. thus he learns polish in an instant. soldier still did the same bullshit that he did before but now simply under a new coat of paint. he still hates communists and heavy tho.
extras: ruins game nights. he adores football and screaming at the tv so he gets kicked outside like a dog. since soldier was born in america he'd still propably have the jane doe name, but going by the funnies his name would be joanna kowalska. renamed himself after finding out of course.
Scout
i had to make scout still somewhat dialect-y as he is, while also sticking to his vibe.
scout's ma emigrated to america before/at the start of the war where she had scout. maybe a few of scout's brothers were born before that and they still somewhat remember poland.
scout was born in boston as he is in canon, but raised speaking polish and on polish values. if he was actually in poland he'd be from łódź or warszawa. big city boy.
he also struggles to understand the dialect-speakers of the team.
extras: scout is pretty much the only one besides sniper who doesn't have a polish name and gets made fun of it relentlessly. i mean, what normal polish child at the time was named jeremiasz.
Pyro
this one im undecided on. pyro doesn't have a specific canon nationality or much of an identity, so it's already hard enough to assign them anything. although i have two ideas:
one, where no one knows where pyro is actually from and is the only english only speaker in the team. they understand nothing that is being said to them whatsoever and no one knows.
in another pyro is actually polish but from kaszuby - an area of poland where lives an ethnogroup (well, like fucking everywhere here), who's dialect is so different from standard polish its a seperate language. so this one would check my need to make everyone speak dialects and come from hyperspecific places of poland.
either way pyro wouldnt understand anything so both are funny to me.
extras: theres a christian holiday here called "niedziela palmowa" that happens a week before easter. the tradition is that poeple make huge, colorful palms that get blessed later. by tradition (or atleast where im from) theyre burned in the winter and their ash is used on ash wednesday. my proposition: a melee for pyro that is the sunday palm. its functionally as useless as the wrap assasin, until its set on fire. then it works like the axtinguisher (without extinguishing?) or the flare gun but in melee form. (edit: or more of the sun on a stick when you think about it)
here are some doodles i made a while ago for it:
(pyro is bumping the palm on heavy bc theres an old tradition that if you do so with farm animals itll bring them health and better crop or something LOL)
Sniper
this one im also super conflicted on.
he could be one of the only ones not from poland and learned to speak polish for some reason. he'd just be as close to canon as possible just with a polish-speaking coat of paint. although i dont like this one and in the same time i find it funny that sniper, who's an aussie and speaks a dialect, would speaks polish in a simple and potentionally broken way the same way that canon heavy does in english.
on the other hand he of course could be polish and not speak any specific dialect, just casual polish.
either way i'm not satisfied or entirely sure lol
Medic
this guy im pretty sure of.
so, RED canon medic is a sadistic, cruel mad scientist who ditches any real medicine and common sense in the favor of his experiments. this guy? completely opposite.
he has a medical license and actually respects any rules or standards set by medicine. hes very strict with them, save for using the medigun during surgeries similarly to the RED medic. he still uses sedatives. medic despises the RED, actively making fun of him for how unprofessional and frivolous he is. with respecting medicine comes respecting the hippocratic oath, which he does, thus is pretty defenseless when actually left alone.
in terms of actually being polish, germany also had a ton of things happening with its land at the time, especially when the borders were changed when ww2 ended. medic definetly interacted a lot with poeple from variety of nations thus he knows a little bit of everything.
i dont wanna get into the nitty-gritty of medic being a german during ww2. tf2 is supposed to be a cartoonish exaggeration of that reality as a military themed power fantasy for all the teenage boys and it puts a bad taste in my mouth to bring in horrible tragedies, so i will not bring it here either.
besides all of that, as pretty much every single merc here, medic immigrated to america in pursue of better resources as a doctor and better.... pretty much anything.
extras: still has the german accent, but compared to the other members of the team he's the one they have the least trouble understanding. when he ended up on the team and heard demo speaking, medic thinking he's german, they instantly clicked. turns out he just has a dialect that has plenty of things from german, but at least now medic has someone to give his ubers to. medic's name stays the same bullshit one he's got in canon.
besides character specific stuff, the team would be a nightmare to read for the opposite team. besides things that carry over (uber, etc) the red team would have no idea what theyre saying. especially the red spy, who's job is 100x harder than it already is. potentially he could know polish, but its way funnier if he tried to blend in as much as possible without speaking.
actually on the same topic meet the spy wouldve gone a LOT differently. RED spy would be completely against having to go deep within the enemy's base who's language he doesnt understand, but he'd get dragged into it anyway. soldier would realize immediately that scout not talking at all means something's wrong and he'd have RED spy caught in no time. i like to think that even with that small victory theyd fuck up a hundered times, get killed and get their intellegence stolen anyway.
besides all of this i cant remember or much of anything i'd like to add. well here it is! what ive been going insane over for like a year at this point
