TF2 Mugs

"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.)

What if scouts self esteem issues weren't caused by not having a dad but because his mother was neglectful af and he had to reaally work to get her attention until he "deserves" it but most of the time he felt like an empty space because ma is always busy with whatever she was doing outside of home having 8 children from different dads but anyways. Brothers fostered him and their mom was more like a visiting boss.

Scout must be very scared of not being noticed or being seen as unworthy of being with him because of that. Hence the overcompensation. Ma failed to admit his existence on a level that satisfies.

Homochka....🥹🌹🌹🌹

Happy Birthday to our beloved @oblique-lane and the author of the greatest fic ever "Anomaly Diversion" on ao3!!!! 🥹💘💘💘His works are wonderful from the bottom to the top and you should definitely check out his stuff,,, again, happy birthday bro!!3!3!

Right here, right now

That erotic tension between an artist and the urge to delete their works.........

Just wanted to say I loved your portal crossover drawings with TF2 a while back. Cave and Caroline looked spectacular (as did all the Tf2 crew)!

Thank you so much!

I love how similar portal 2 and tf2 are in many aspects, like. The eccentric moron CEO? The assistant who doesn't respect herself but will do anything for her boss? Wacky ass inventions? Random superpower elements (moon rocks, australium)? Medical malpractice (mantis dna / baboon hearts)???

If you think about it, Black Mesa also is a hilariously dumb facility. Like, they weren't even joking as much in hlvrai, what the hell are those pira cutter rooms? Random goo crushing press? Nothing is OSHA approved. Wtf are these for?😭

The orangeboxverse is just inherently funny.

My, my, well, I don't have hopes for the official comics but I am willing to explore this topic further.

Aside from Sniper, what are others' wounds that made them join this blasphemous corporation?? People don't pay much attention to it but how did the mercs join Mann Co. in the first place? They didn't just go there, knocked on the door and asked for employment, right? So what are the backstories?

I'm guessing Mann Co. wanted the best of the best men out there, but those who would actually take insane risks of their lives. This kind of reminds me of Portal but instead of Olympic champions and astronauts, Mann Co. wanted ABNORMAL men. What that means exactly is still an open question for now. But hear me out, Valve heroes are never trained fighters, they are just very desperate and have no other choice but to proceed.

Why would mercs be different?

I mean, is any one of them a certified fighter? I mean yeah, Engineer has 11 PhDs but he's still more of a mad scientist rather than a formal doc. Any other?? Soldier who has never been in a war, Medic with no license, unregistered demolition, mental hospital refugee, Scout who is just a street boy wtf is he doing at the frontline??

Smells fishy, isn't it?

They wouldn't be here if they were really trained professionals. So that's why I assume they got here because they had no other place to go. And Surprisingly, in here, they got everything they wished for.

(these are my headcanons that I tried to build based on logic, however, their bases aren't exactly stable, keep in mind)

Sniper wanted to be violent legally, so he doesn't think about his moral struggles anymore (except when he talks to his dad in the phone).

Scout was a school dropout who didn't have many options of what to work as. Although, while they were always diners and gas stations, his family of million brothers pushed him and his pride down, so in order to become a bigger man in society's eyes, he applied to military service. Probably meant to Korea or Vietnam but was redirected to Mann Co. instead.

Heavy had really difficult clashes with the Soviet Government (being a national enemy by many articles) he went to make money to US. He was probably known by Mann Co. even before his change of settlement, they knew the story about the Gulag demolition/escape, so they got interested in this person's potential.

While not being a nazi himself, Medic worked in the closed german experimental camps because it was the only place his unlicensed ass could apply (fleeing country in the wartime wasn't an option). And they needed mad scientist. However, instead of using prisoners as a resource, he made them super humans (baboon hearts kind of shit) so these prisoners killed the security guards and escaped. To avoid state persecution, Medic immigrated to America where was known and got invited to work for we-know-who.

Engineer's work is generational.

I don't know much about Demoman's lore (it's a little confusing) but "a reckless alcoholic extremist who desperately needs a job" sounds perfect for who they were looking for.

Spy is obviously not a real spy but rather a skillful conman who made through life by stealing, pretending and seducing rich women. Mafia history might be there too. But he wasn't invincible and the police was a pretty serious problem for him, so joining a secretive organisation was a solid solution. (Plus, someone could make a funny thing by setting up him and Scout together, because they knew.)

Pyro was a person who spent all their life in a mental hospital, seen as dangerous to society/unadjusted. Mann Co. reached to them and gave them a chance, which turned out great.

Soldier, too, was either a mental hospital often guest, a prisoner or a simple local crazy man who has severe amnesia and violent behavior. Good option too.

It's not a place where you could just ask to be employed, as not everyone actually could. It was some kind of a "safe heaven" for those who didn't have another place in the world. It was an insane but a very effective move by Administrator, who wanted this team of abnormal men to unite against something Big and Important ™ of which we still know nothing about. Does it make sense?

You know, I don't see a lot of people talking about this moment in the TF2 comics right here, seconds after Sniper realizes he's actually from New Zealand. Does anyone else think about how freaking insecure Sniper must have been growing up?

I know it has a somewhat comedic tone but I can't help but think about poor Sniper as a kid wondering why he was so different but never knowing why. With other Aussies being huge and muscular he must have thought something was wrong with him. And I feel like you can actually see the relief on his face in the bottom panel.

Also, side note, I love the bit about him throwing rocks from a tree which absolutely foreshadows his future as a sniper. His whole thing is shooting people from far away because he was never built to go on the offensive.

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

Simple BLU Scout fanart

Anomaly Diversion by @oblique-lane

hiya, i really liked the pyro piece ya made !! I was wondering, how'd you get the glowing effect on the beam coming outta their head?

Easy ;)

*drags the cigarette*

*sighs*

Tf2 lore..............................