Uh Uhhhh Well Like I Said Gonna Have To Go Back And Take Notes, But

Sniper tf2 is such a guy. A very essence of guy. The male loneliness embodiment. I think if he was able to watch Ryan Gosling movies he would unironically say "literally me" on them without knowing the meme. I drive amirite? Blade runner fr. Russian doomer music Vol. 3 indeed.

Spy tf2 and his identity

Character analysis (or at least my vision on him, if you believe my reasoning)

What do we know about Spy? He's a disguise mastermind. He can pretend to be anyone in order to infiltrate into the scene to do his job - quite literally, stab people on the back. But when he's not in the battle, what is he to his teammates? A suave Frenchman, a gentleman with taste, somewhat a leader.

At least, that's the persona he prefers to show. But is he really..?

What if I tell you that this person never drops his disguise?

For a man who always wears a mask and who's identity being secret is a sacred part of his role in this job, isn't this persona too much to show if it is real? Frenchman, rich, ladykiller... Wouldn't it be too easy to decipher his identity with so much clues provided? Wouldn't it be dangerous?

While Miss Pauling and the Administrator definitely know Spy's real identity, hiding it is a major thing for whatever reason. One could assume it might be because of Scout (obvious guess) but I doubt he's a sole reason. Spy very much enjoys being the Spy all by himself. Do what's the deal?

Let's start from the beginning.

Why did Spy join Mann Co. in the first place?

Let's take this assumption as a fact: people come here out of desperation. They are professionals in their field, yet in their past/casual life there is a pattern of them having difficulties that push them into joining this service. I don't see why Spy would be an exception.

The reason for joining is usually money. Some people question why Spy, a wealthy man from higher society, would join Mann Co. if he has it all already.

Well, probably because he really does not.

Have you ever met an aristocrat? Wealthy people don't get so protective about their expensive suits, they can afford cleaning or a new one. Regardless, rich people don't usually get stingy about material goods, especially if they're mass produced.

At least, not those who were born into wealth.

Spy's defensiveness about his "wealthy stuff", his pomp-ness, disgust and arrogance towards "plebs" gives off a man who knows what it means to live in poverty and who doesn't want to be associated with it ever again.

(Not even talking about his own filthy habits such as not washing his mask and pissing on walls? Jesus Christ)

Dare I even guess that he might be not French at all? His French is so broken. (Although, so is Medic's German, but at least he uses his language much more frequently and in more complex sentences, while Spy only uses French to say some basic expressions, occasionally confusing them with other languages). Definitely not a native.

If anything, he's not giving "rich man" at all, he's giving con man. And that fits my picture perfectly.

So, poor upbringing. How old is Spy? If he's Scout's father (and he was young when he was conceived), I'd say he's no less than 20 years older than him. I'd give him a few more years actually. So, approximately Spy is around 50 at the events of the game (1968-1972). Let's assume he was born somewhere in the 1910s.

Even if he's not French, I still agree that he's probably European. Hmm, what was happening in Europe at the time Spy was a kid?

Oh yeah. The Great Depression.

See my picture: imagine, a child from a lower class family during the Great Depression, his parents were most likely to not take good care about him (both because of the economical situation AND as an echo to Spy's struggles with his own fatherhood). He has to run away from home early and start to make money. Any way possible.

Unavoidably, it leads to crime.

Petty theft, blackmail, scams. Changing identities. Selling low quality products and services. Changing identities again. When older, seducing rich women to stay at their homes overnight, be fed and supported. Running away from the police. Walking into a trap of the mafia, and then joining them as their goon.

In this nightmare of a life he just had to keep pretending to be someone else, someone better and stronger, in order to his ego to not completely shutter. He had to imagine he was an invincible mastermind trickster of some sort, not just a poor boo-hoo victim of poverty who has never knew normal life and care.

And if you pretend for long enough, you become your role eventually... Right?

His true self was long lost forgotten under many layers of new identities. Worse, his true self was never known. And he didn't want it to be known in its ugly and disgusting vulnerability. Narcissism became his lifeline.

It's so much better to be Spy. To be rich and elegant and respected. His ego rebuilt.

Anomaly Diversion (Chapter 3) IS OUT!

The day RED Sniper spared an injured BLU Scout, he noticed that something about this guy was suspiciously off. In fact, he had long ago begun to notice: there was *something* off about everything around here. Or in other words, how does it feel to find out that all this time the people you and your friends fought... Were your clones? Who the REDs and the BLUs actually were? What other horrors were hidden from mere mercenaries? And what was wrong with the 'faces'? Scout and Sniper from the opposing teams secretly bond together to find this out. Welcome to a story of forbidden friendship, conspiracy, and existential dread!

Tags: Gen, Explicit, Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death; Themes of Dissociation/Derealization, Suicidal themes, Hurt/Comfort, Slice of life, Spotlight for every character.

[ENG] AO3

[RUS] Ficbook

Вy ObliqueLane

I'm gonna nnnyyyeeeehhhmhmhhmh😢😢😢🥀🥀🥀💥💥💥💥🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂 strangle him.

Simple BLU Scout fanart

Anomaly Diversion by @oblique-lane

References for Anomaly Diversion!!!

Official!! finally!!

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 cut↓↓↓

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!

"RED and BLU mercs look the same because of the game mechanic! They represent different people while using the same models! YOU are the player, so YOU are the mercenary too!"

Fair, but. Even if it is just a game limitation... I can't help but be confused as to WHY those game characters are SO UNIQUE IN PERSONALITIES if they are meant to be a representative mass?

I have to questions to hl1 scientist. No question no hl2 citizens. To CS characters. They are plain and faceless, they are meant to be background masses.

Tf2 mercs, however? SO unique and distinct. Their shapes and bodies, their movements, their voicelines - even with no particular story about them, there's SO MUCH personality! They have to be heroes! Not JUST classes!

I've never understood the explanation "they are different people who look similar to eachother" because eeehh... Have fun as you want, but I'm personally not convinced. Even with a rhetoric "Heavies have to be strong af and scouts have to be fast and small and all medics are insane and Germans" that's still not it.

Obviously I don't think about it while playing the game, but when it's time to think about the lore... The comics never answered the question of who the teams are - retconed and ignored.

I was surprised and confused as to why it was never brought up anywhere in canon. Maybe because this case is so exceptional and unique to tf2, it was actually cursed by it's own greatness?

Let's be real, tf2 characters are heroes. Yet unlike Overwatch and such, players ARE allowed to have as many repeating classes as they want. Moreso - the opposite team is designed to be the same characters.

What the fuck.

Tf2 mercs exist in a superposition where they are more than just classes but not enough humans to be heroes.

And that brings us to my other point...

Now you might say "but the lore is goofy, they WOULD hire people with very specific features –" shhhhh. Don't you see? That's part of the issue.

The mercs are constantly dehumanized.

For whatever reason people think is useful. In the comics they are shown to be absolute idiots for comedic effect, sometimes flanderizing them even, reducing any human feature that isn't funny enough.

In fandom it's enough to just dress a merc in different clothes for people to start calling them OCs. Even if you didn't mean to make an oc.

With the goddamn clone theory I've seen people often saying that since BLU are clones, they are subhuman/unworthy - authors thoughts, not just in-univrse rhetoric.

It's almost as... Tf2 mercs are not human but a species??? Creatures without autonomy?

Always been like this?

Maybe I'm the only one bothered by this, but... You know me, I'm a no fun who loves taking this kind of shit seriously.

...

I started from talking about why they look identical on different teams. I think the clone theory is very probable, even though many people say it's cringe. The clone theory would make so much sense if it was real.

Recently I've watched Mickey 17. It felt so good to be finally understood. Every point of this film is all the things I feel towards tf2.

Respawn makes you less human. And corporations treat you as expendable, always. If they find a way to dehumanize you, it will be easier to convince everyone that you deserve violence/it's not a big deal.

If in tf2 the two identical megacorps fight with eachother over power (tf2 wiki/ original game setting), it would make all the sense for them to just clone the 9 mercs and make them expendable. It's cheaper. Emesis Blue did it right.

And since everyone thinks that the mercs are subhuman, because they are stereotypes, because stupid illiterate criminals, because they're psychopaths, because they're clones, because they're expendable... No one ever thinks to look behind it and see them as people.

Cloning is inherently a horror. When I just entered the fandom, I was convinced there will be some horror level lore underneath the silly game. It made sense.

But there was none of it.

I might be the one stupid here for thinking about tf2 that way. But I can't change my perspective now. To me the whole tf2 lore situation is just a recursive mirror on itself: the whole thing almost begs to be analyzed existentially but isn't because the goofy part of it is so sacred, it cannot be destroyed. As if taking tf2 seriously is almost a taboo.

"Don't look there, there's nothing there, don't think about it, they're silly, it's just a game" then why do I keep seeing holes on this curtain???

Purposefully not thinking about the lore is constant effort. It cannot be truly silly at least because it's war. If there's no respawn, it's scary because they can die anytime. If there is respawn - it's triple scary, because they don't belong to themselves.

In-game voicelines suggest that respawn does exist. Even if they love fighting and treat it like we treat videogames - since they are practically immortal - it's still inherently horror. Even if it's a comedy, ignoring the basic technical aspects of the world and covering up with "everything is unserious and stupid" agenda... Is ironically suspicious. For me.

It's almost as if they're trying to hide something underneath all this silliness. I know they don't. But it feels like it. It feels like a propaganda so people don't dare to try explaining how this world logically works.

A second you try to dissect the lore and it crumbles apart. It contradicts itself and it overcompensates for what it's not. It crumbles. I've stumbled upon it a hundred times for all these years in the fandom...

When you play the game you see so much environmental storytelling - the coverups of spy tech, the cold war, nukes and stuff... The early wiki info told us about megacorps who want to rule the world. It's realistic and pragmatic and so fun. Close to earth. When I play on the older maps I keep wondering what it was really about. I wonder about who the characters are, how did they get on this war?

But what I got was "the mercs are very stupid, and everything in this world is stupid because old people fight over nothing, and once they die everyone lives happily ever after AFTER SACRIFICING NOTHING". The mercs aren't even the main characters. We still know fucking nothing about them, about why they fight– they don't even fight for the same thing as in game. Everything is retconed.

I feel so conflicted. I know people love the comics but I can't help but hate it, I'm sorry. The same questions I had joining the fandom almost 2 years ago - I still have them now. It's itching, it's uncomfortable to stand in a lore which is a mess and will never be explained.

I looked at the lore with a suspicious squint, trying to compromise: maybe there IS something about the worldbuilding that I've missed that would make sense. I've analysed left and right– no. There's nothing of my interest. I had to explain things myself and it only started make sense once I stopped relying on the comics, like, at all.

And once you strip away the comics, there's barely anything left. Just the game, the bits and crumbs from the wiki...

The tf2 I enjoy now is the tf2 50% of which I created in my head to overcompensate. But who am I? I'm not Valve. I'm uncomfortable with that. Because while the lore now makes sense in my head, it's still just headcanons.

People don't know it.

I feel pretty lonely in this situation.

(This post should've been be just about dehumanization in the context of tf2, but I've noticed that everything I hurt about this media is a one big thing and one doesn't go without another. Someday I will let go.)

Just read your fic after reading your entire blog and I must say that you have such a big sexy brain. I mean, the writing is immaculate, the character analysis is top-notch, and the art pieces filled with symbolism are also incredible. You truly are a blessing to this fandom.

uughuhhh wuuhuww huhuuh ughhuhwhuuu

Interloper C was truly something...

In the act of uniting the souls in pure rage and hatred ❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹

!!SPOILERS FOR ANOMALY DIVERSION CHAPTER 3!!

!!TRIGGER WARNING FOR BLOOD AND VIOLENCE!!

Please read Anomaly Diversion, it’s such a good fanfic I could go on forever about it

Uwahhh!! I know the newest chapter came out about 4 days ago, and it’s kinda fast, but I wanted to do something almost immediately after reading it.

I tried something new with coloring this time. It took forever, but I enjoyed doing it.

Cosmetics: Thermal Tracker (Scout) ~ Snow Sleeves (Sniper)

Anomaly Diversion by @oblique-lane

Regarding the previous post