#Shadow.proj

[voraciouspangolin]

Guess who's planning another animation.... about tf2....

It's me. Yeah

Ik I've already done posts about past animations, but this one is one that I've been thinking about even as far back as when I was talking about those past animations, and I have not stopped thinking about it.

It's going to be about Pyro, and it's going to be set to the song Shadow by Amigo the Devil

What do I want out of this animation? Well the number one thing I want is for it to look awesome and in sync with the music. But I also want there to be a Lot of symbolism and underlying narratives that tie in to my own personal analysis of what Pyro's backstory could possibly be, since their backstory isn't actually clear in the tf2 lore. I want the animation to be like, a step into Pyro's mind kinda thing, a reflection of the horror behind being the person that is Pyro

My own personal analysis of his character is skewed by the fact that my main involvement with tf2 outside of playing the game is being part of tf2 tumblr, and there's a lot of bastardizing and reinventing how characters actually are in their original media. Which theres nothing inherently wrong with, in fact, I really enjoy seeing peoples' spin on the mercs. But... odds are my ideas seem completely out of place and like, too wacky for a broader tf2 audience...

but i dont care goddamnit I will make pyro a weirdo all I want

I still try my best to base my own ideas about the tf2 characters off of the lore, which is kinda hard to do...bc what is the Actual lore? there's SO MUCH that's unclear and left unsaid. Are the RED and BLU team clones of eachother? Are they different people? Is the Administrator the same woman as Elizabeth? Why are engineers eyes like that when he takes off his welding goggles?

and on top of that, there's like, what you even Count as the lore. Is the game accurate to the universe? Are the comics canon? Are cosmetics canon? Are the songs themselves canon? Voice lines? The sfm shorts?

The big problem with why this is like this is because, as stated by tf2 devs (I forget which one said this but it was on the blog post thingy), tf2 did not start off with a robust backstory

The backstory, the Administrator's character itself, was slowly added and woven into the IP.

and on top of that, since tf2 is an older game that's had an active fanbase and fandom since its start, the way the characters are depicted and perceived by the tf2 enjoyer diaspora has evolved and morphed over time, taking on a life of its own

I'd struggle a lot to even come up with ideas about say, medic's backstory.

There are established bits and bobs of his backstory- He crashed a wedding with a stolen ambulance and that's where he got all his doves- he's german and has some amount of experience acting as a combat medic- he's curiously implied to not actually be professionally trained in medicine, or at least that he once was trained but is no longer allowed to practice medicine- he made a deal with the devil, twice- etc.

I'd struggle a lot to even come up with ideas about things pertaining to his childhood or origin story.

But that's just it. Medic already has established lore, there is an actual vision for what his character is and isn't. And since I'm not part of the art direction at valve, I don't fully know what would be considered proper characterization and what wouldn't.

but pyro? Pyro is perfect

All the other mercs have a Raison D'etre for why they specialize in the subject that they do- excuse my flattening of the mercs for just a sec- Demo comes from a long line of demomen- Heavy is obsessed with bigass guns and has a family to care for- Engie's grandfather and father were both engineers and involved with the Mann brothers since almost the beginning- Scout is straight up just Fast and grew up in the slums of boston, so his weapons are his speed and wit- Sniper is a freak of nature reclusive bushman- Soldier is obsessed with the military like his life depends on it- Medic is some kind of mad scientist with a penchant for breaking the rules of nature- and Spy is... well, he's french and has some sort of superiority complex about being a spy. And also it's implied that he's been a spy for a really long time.

But pyro? I guess you could narrow down their character to "likes fire", but that doesn't answer how or why. The other mercs are all caricatures of a wide array of stereotypes, they literally have to be because of how many main characters there are- each character manages to be unique and identifiable both in gameplay and story-wise. But pyro is like.... its own stereotype. Sure I'm the Ignorer, I don't know a lot of tv tropes or character tropes and stuff like that, but I can't think of a single other character that Pyro would have ressembled at the time of his creation. It's not even clear if pyro is aware of the fact that he's burning people alive, or if he's stuck in his pyroland psychosis and views every violent action he does as "playing" with other people

we know almost nothing about him. we don't know their age, height, where he's from. We don't know how he got hired by TF industries, or why he was hired. We don't know his voice, we don't know how or why he's so obsessed with fire, or the reason behind why they experience some kind of full-perception psychosis in the form of Pyroland

So I feel like I *can* speak on what Pyro might or might not be

And the tf2 team has actually encouraged and rewarded fan speculation about Pyro- I'm sure Pyro was intended to be a man just like the rest of the mercs. In the comics and the game, pyro is referred to as he and stuff... But since pyro always wears a mask, and their body is ambiguously hidden by his flame retardent suit, and since gamers are horny as fuck... people have always entertained or fantasized about the idea that pyro could be a woman. So along the development of the story behind tf2, little easter eggs have been sprinkled around that feeds into the the idea that Pyro's gender *is* unknown.

The easter eggs are kinda few and far inbetween and can easily be dismissed as just jokes, but I think there's substance to be found there. The menstruating women attracting bears joke from A Cold Day in Hell comes to mind, as well as the in game voice lines that call into question pyros gender.

the appeal is that we *don't* know what he is, we aren't *supposed* to know. I don't even think the tf2 team know what pyro is either, because the unkown of his identity *is* his identity

And that's the appeal of his character

but it's not just about gender to me, my idea goes more into the dehumanized aspects of pyro

In Meet the Pyro, the interviewed mercs express fear and disgust for Pyro, Heavy referring to him as "That thing"

as though the odd behaviour and nature of their skillset with fire renders them stripped of their very humanity

I want my animation to explore my thoughts about all of that. About the grotesque and the disfiguration of someone who finds ecstatic joy in the reality of their actions

In a lot of ways, my characterization of Pyro is an allegory for many things- being trans, being gay, being poor, or autistic, or an immigrant, or disabled, or looking Not Normal, etc, etc. And I think that that's fascinating. There's a lot of room for projection onto Pyro's character from many different points of view, and I think that that has to do with the fact that Pyro is dehumanized and belittled and treated as an Other by the people around him in tf2. The very scaffolding of Pyro's character as something that isn't understood, something that's feared and othered, something reduced to "that thing" or "it", or something that is to be spoken to in the same tone one would speak to toddlers, is so relevant to so many different walks of life

And I think that that's brilliant

This is probably going to be a many years long project considering the length of the song and also the fact that I'm working alone.... but I'm excited