#but spam bots have to FUCKING TAUNT ME

[redscreenofdeath]

"i think i should check if my posts have gotten any activity" logging onto tumblr "oh boy, 5 activity notifications!" foghorn.wav "aand it's spam bots that follow me for no apparent reason, great." i love bots baiting me into thinking i'm getting attention on this platform

[doctor-badadvice]

Maybe it's late to talk about Scream Fortress but whatever. I'm going to talk about the new maps.

I love Scream Fortress. It's a great time with good (free) cosmetics and what made me get into tf2 in the first place. My first hour in game was spent as a very confused Heavy on Brimstone. I had fun then and I come back for the event every year.

This year, unfortunately, the game decided to test my patience.

There's a different between wanting new content and digging through garbage with the raccoons for just about anything. Every time for the past two or three years whenever they added something new, it was either boring or broken. We had absolute pearls like Laughter and Crasher, two maps that are both beautiful and fun to play. Then we had Soulmill, Bonesaw, Precipice, fucking Sinshine and Graveyard and of course, a whole bunch of uninteresting cosmetics and taunts that just happened to have many votes on the workshop.

And I know that if I wasn't a nobody on the internet, I'd already have an angry mob at my door because I dared saying community made stuff is not the very good. How dare I have an opinion on something that's in the game I've played for way too many hours.

So this year we had a crate that didn't even reach 50 cents on the market for the first evening (something that even Christmas crates manage, mind you) and not one, not four, but a whole twelve new maps to try.

For the sake of my memory and because I want to discuss the zombie mode later, I'll just go in order of whatever I remember.

Spineyard

Let's start off with yet another damn reskin. This time it's Vineyard, a map that I played once then removed from my queue because it's yet another payload map that suffers from the Overwatch condition. Wide empty areas, lots of unused hallways where you're meant to flank but you won't find anyone there because it's an open area, everyone's playing Soldier or Demo and spamming anyway. But there's more! Every once in a while you'll hear a bell and then the undead mafia shows up.

The undead mafia. On a map based on Italy. How fucking original the makers are. Congrats on being fucking boring. I hope you step on a Lego.

Also they're basically SMG Sniper bots from MvM with a bit of skeleton AI, nothing groundbreaking.

Lava Pit

This map made me wonder whether there's people out there who sit around debating which stupid maps should get a reskin next. Sawmill won the last vote, now it's the turn of the map that's only ever been good for promotional material.

So we have a map that is inaccessibility incarnate. It's dark so you can't see Blu team unless you crank up your colors to the max and the rest is lava so Red melds with the background. You can't see sentries for shit because everything is red and brown. This map gave me a migraine.

Slime

"Hey, kids! Wanna play koth with Salmon Run ripoff skeleton reskins that for some reason move at 3fps and teleport around making it impossible to aim at them?"

Yeah, fuck this map. The stupid fish spawn en masse and never stop, making it impossible to even get to the point if you're in a small team. The sea shantie never stops playing so that's added torture. The only good thing out of this is that my mini sentry was still up at the end of the match so I got 60 contract points by waiting for the game to reload the map while I was tabbed out.

I take it someone made a video explaining how to program the skeleton AI in custom maps this year. Otherwise I don't see why the workshop was hit such a wave of originality this past year.

Perks:

"Hey kids! Want to play koth but, like, less? This is the map for you!"

Why the fuck are we playing arena in 2023? Every time it takes ages to complete these contracts because you make at best 5 points per match and that's just if you're stomping the other team! I wasted too much time on this shit. May it burn in the same pit as Graveyard. Fuck play to spectate mode. Valve had a point in removing it from pubs.

Mannsylvania

Every year they add a new chokepoint fest. All you do is leave spawn and hope you don't encounter the same piece of shit who's been camping the rare spell for the past twenty minutes. It's a bunch of hallways. You run around staring at the sky like an idiot hoping that this next turn is going to make you bump in the guy with the points you keep seeing through the walls. Horrid design. Shouldn't have been added at all.

Sandcastle

I don't have much to say about this map. It's DeGroot Keep but sand. The underworld is cute but there's nothing different otherwise. It's a summer map with spells active. I played it a little longer than the others because I like medieval mode.

Corruption

I couldn't believe it at first. This is the one decent map. It's a payload map that isn't just a spam fest. It has the appropriate space for everyone, actual flanks and not just the same door slightly to the side. It forces both sides to be smart with and against buildings and charging in with uber is actually rewarded. And even better, you don't keep clipping into the clutter that's spread around the floor because ✨ aesthetics ✨ (Hello Bonesaw. Fuck you specifically). I don't get the logic behind the underworld being a mental asylum but still, a good map. It's incredible. I'd replay this one if I didn't run out of time.

Infection/L4Dvs/the zombie mode

Let's make a premise. Tf2 isn't good at explaining things. It's a game from another time where you were meant to learn through observation and a lot of trial and error. Minecraft is another game like this. You learn how to play from Youtube. But you know what Minecraft doesn't have? The projector.

In the old days, when you joined payload in quickplay for the first time, the game would show a little video with footage of the mode so you would know that Blu pushes the payload and Red tries to stop them. This zombie mode comes with a tutorial but it tells you 10% of what you're fucking supposed to do.

This is a community mode. Fine. What if I never played it? How am I supposed to know that the zombies can only…bite? Punch? It's a clunky melee attack that doesn't even feel good to land like a wrench swing or an actual punch. They don't tell you that the zombies have unique abilities. You just get a meter and then you have to figure it out. I played through all the maps and still don't know what half the classes do.

Well, obviously they're in some way based on the infected from Left4Dead, a game I often found myself thinking about while playing this mode. But what is, say, a guy who started playing the other day supposed to know about this?

Next time someone says Valve should fix the game's learning curve, I'm going to personally apply their clown makeup. This isn't 2016 to find out the latest updates from VNN.

What about the maps?

Murky

Red sits on a little platform surrounded by sentries. It's pitch dark next to the water so you have no way to even get close enough to look at it as a zombie. 60% of the map is unused. The grass is annoying as hell. I left as soon as the contract was finished because fuck.

Woods

The famous wild turtle engineer evolves into a skunk engineer by hiding in a mine with two small entrances crying and whimpering while the level 3 sentry delays the inevitable. What these players fail to realize is that the sentry doesn't shoot faster depending on how much meat throws itself at it. They're simply wasting everybody's time and for this…they should really feel bad.

Atoll

This map manages to be worse than Murky entirely because of the broken hitboxes. I've bumped into several invisible obstacles. Atoll gets the "Bonesaw of the Year" award entirely because I died to fake gaps and platforms with questionable tangibility.

Devastation

The spirits of Bonesaw and Lavapit came together to have a child named Devastation.

This map is too dark. There are corners where you can only spot players because of their cosmetics. Sometimes zombies have to simply walk into the whole Red team and die because they spawned in a place with only one exit and some zombie classes simply don't get to use their ability here because the rooms are too small. The only good thing about this mess is that it bugged out and Red won the round as soon as it started. 30 points with no effort at all. That saved me precious time.

Sanitarium

I kept the best one for last because it's the one I actually enjoyed playing. The setting isn't too dark for once, the inside of a building isn't covered with assets from Mann Manor and it actually feels like a location from a zombie game. You'd expect hordes of rabid Left4Dead infected charging at you from the front yard, past the reception and in every room up to the top floor.

You can't keep a sentry down here for too long either, meaning that everyone has to actually play the game and there is no one just stalling for time and I've seen people have a lot of fun messing around in the elevator.

The only negative I can think of is that it could have used some more polish. The elevator uses a noise that I think comes from Half Life which distracted me because I'm weird like that. But it's a Source noise™️, it's not that big of a deal. The more glaring flaw were the floating zombie skins around the map and the console commands popping up in the chat. It doesn't look great but hey, Bonesaw dropped without a playable objective, didn't it? There’s always worse.

In conclusion, I guess we got 12 maps because Valve noticed that there isn't as much junk to throw in the crates as it used to and is adding gamemodes to make people shut the hell up. The zombie mode left me craving for L4D2 but I don't have as many people to play it with anymore. The other maps were the usual random crap they've been tossing in the game for the past few years. There was nothing really outstanding from the regular gamemodes visually but it was refreshing to get a good experience gameplay wise instead of something that only looks good in screenshots.

I hope we can go back to having a reasonable amount of maps added next year. Less is more these days of games diluting the experience so you stick around to buy the next season pass. Tf2 has no right, nor does it need these practices. It's a good game at the core without gachas or similar crap.

Also, the Toastmaster hasn't been broken for 0 days.

[rasnak2]

Ok before I start my rant, just a small thing I noticed and idk if you noticed or not, there is a hit by kudos bot and Hit by the Kudos Bot tag on AO3 so maybe large fics which are affected by the bot can mention it? It is a really small tag but I think it might help. Also, this is just my personal opinion on this and not everyone might feel the same.

Rn I can just feel my sanity slipping away from me with this kudos bot that is going around cuz seriously? It is just getting on my nerves. A lot. Like, I appreciate kudos, I appreciate guest kudos but the bot is just killing me because I don't want some random bot spamming my kudos cuz it a) also hides the guests who genuinely gives kudos to my work and b) it is just demotivational because it happens so randomly that it is so fucking obvious that it is not genuine. AND frankly speaking,

NO Kudos is BETTER than FALSE Kudos.

Like seriously, these fics are my babies and the false kudos hurt more that looking at the increasingly rising number of kudos that is just happening overnight and taunting me and spoiling my entire day cuz no matter how much inconsistent I am with the updating, no matter whether it is a part of a series, OS or a multichapter, in the end, I am putting in my time, energy and effort to get it out into the open and it is precious for me.

A genuine kudos really makes my day, even if I get it so far and few in between. But just looking at the Kudos-Hits ratio, especially when the number of kudos is HIGHER than the number of hits... it really messed me up.

I really am not a fan of the 'user only access' thing AO3 has but at this point, it is almost like I am being forced my hand to use it cuz the past 3 fics of mine (Halloween, Spice Time and Discoveries) have been hit continuously and it is just hitting me hard, harder than I think it should.

Especially with Discoveries. And I'd just posted it like around midnight today and when I went to sleep at 1:30ish? It was at 2 hits and 2 guest kudos. I wake up and then I see it at 17 guest kudos, 1 user kudos and 12 hits. Fast forward to between 5 and 6 pm, It has jumped to 30 guest kudos and 2 user kudos with just 19 hits. And at the moment of posting (around 45ish?) it is at 37 guest kudos, 2 user kudos and 19 hits. And it is still climbing. And I don't know how many of those are genuine guest kudos, which truly breaks my heart.

(Yes, I DID Record it all, maybe not in pics every minute but I did)

And I KNOW it is not normal for my fics to gain these many kudos without even the hits count cuz the first fic I had posted in the series (Closure) had just 35 kudos over the course of 8 months while this fic which I posted yesterday has fucking 40 kudos in barely a day? Fuck it, just fuck it.

If this is gonna persist, I might as well take a break from AO3 for the sake of my mental health.

[mangleschmidt]

DRV3 Boys playing TF2 Headcanons

(First made long before the F2P mute and bot crisis but I added the bot crisis)

Me and my bro made up many scenarios AND cosmetics for the class (my brother mostly help me with the idea)

I originally have the terminologies explained like market gardening, friendly and such but cut it because it’s getting too long. If you want the terminologies, you can tell me. Btw, I’m not an imagines blog, just doing this one for fun.

Kaito Momota

Main: Soldier

Thrilled to play this game, saying that's very manly and it's one of the coolest games yet

He, along with Kaede (and to an extend, Chiaki), are the ones who introduced the game to the class

Was a scout main at first and likes the scout unironically

A terrible tryhard warpig soldier

Saw a rocket jumping soldier at a High-tower map and wanted to imitate that, almost like he's blasting to space

Watch this guy try to market garden someone and then get fucking rekt by a Medic of all classes

He just dies, a lot, which is frustrating and his team gets mad at him

Kaito gets better at it fortunately, but it's a painfully slow process

You'll be lucky if he decides to go back to Scout in a round lmao

Rages in chat or voice but is the best cheerleader you can have in your team, he never actually shits on you for being shit on the game

There's that one time where Kaito got the Rocket Jumper from a drop, fired it at an enemy, got angry how it didn't worked, realized it doesn't do damage and embarrassed himself

Gets a bit pissy when no one is doing the objective so he avoids the maps Hightower and 2fort most of the time

Capture the flag and payload races mostly pisses him off for the same reason (tho he would go to Hightower for the sick rocket jumps)

So he doesn't like friendlies (but he may or may not, you know, do the conga, rock paper scissors, mannrobics, kazotsky kick-)

Anything that looks cool and manly cosmetics, but mostly you'll see him decked with space cosmetics

Bonus: Avoids Full Moon and Scream Fortress, is obviously afraid but he gives Alien Invasion a shot when it comes up, loves it. Also like Doomsday

Rantaro Amami

Main: Engineer

Everyone seems to be like it so why not give it a shot?

He got invested and also found the trading system

Rantaro usually plays engineer but is willing to change classes if the team needs a class

Is at least good at every other class

Rarely does turtling or battle engie but enjoys doing it with the other engies for laughs, and is very good at battle engie

Some people confused him with Uncle Dane

Hc that Rantaro looks up to Uncle Dane

Imagine Rantaro and Uncle Dane having a collab, that would be sick as fuck

Casual and competitive but more casual, often plays in community servers

That type of person who voice chats

Rantaro is one of the ones who would help his classmates play, along with Kaito. Imagine him like in a server with Kaito and Gonta, helping Gonta how to play and Avocado and Space boy act as a translator while Bug boy plays cutely

Doesn't mind friendlies, he chills with them a lot and he is easily well liked by the community

Some even suggested him to make a tf2 youtube channel

Has an unusual hat, making him look like a pro, has a lot of medic girlfriends because of this

One of the two reasons why the whole class have a wide array of cosmetics

Gonta Gokuhara

Main: Medic

At first he doesn't like how violent the game is

But since this violence is just for fun and in game and no one is actually getting hurt and dead so he's at least convinced

Still wants to play passively so Gonta goes with Medic, healing and helping his team seems to be a fitting choice!

The game is not too complex so he learns easily... i-in a way

Best boy learns fast, he should be fine

He's definitely that type of Medic who would go to someone when they press the E key and whoever is near him

Doesn't know where to look most of the time, gets lost easily to big maps like the control points

Gonta still has a firm grasp on what to do, like if he noticed that someone is in low health, he'll heal them immediately without needing the 'e', build up uber, spy check the patient, and never heal spies when they're disguised

Can't aim for shit, though he supposedly gets better at it with the crusader's crossbow

He sometimes would accidentally forget to pop when it's necessary and then die

"Danke!" Says that a lot

He doesn't play a lot despite having fun, he's an outdoor type of guy

Absolutely LOVES friendlies and just loves it when someone just stops, does the conga taunt and everyone follows, creating a conga line (until someone kills them all but it's all in good fun!) He loves silly servers

Is honestly surprised that there’s even such thing as silly servers and friendlies, thought it’s all blood and gore (he sometimes switch to pyro vision googles to avoid gore)

Sometimes plays as Heavy for the protecting part and the friendly Hoovy part for this reason

Anything fancy for the cosmetics, especially for hats the Gentleman's Gabsy or the Vintage Tyrolean (a good cosmetic for a good gentleman!)

Has a lot of cosmetics like Rantaro and trades them with the class

Bonus: Isn't fond of Banana Bay and the Second Banana... because banana

Kokichi Ouma

Main: None (most played: Scout)

Bold of you to assumed he never played this game before

... or is it a lie?

Needless to say he likes it for the cartoony and chaotic vibe of the game

Switches between the 9 classes, even if there's 5 spies he'll be the 6th one

He'd be that Medic who would leave the others to die, Scout that steals sandwiches from Heavy that's meant for the dying Medic and so forth

He might as well pretend to be a sniper bot

Chaos incarnate

This is the fucker who spams E and X+5 (Place the dispenser)

Also taunts in every kill

When he's on a losing team, he would try to bind kill right before the time is up or taunt kill in humiliation, sometimes works

Actually really good at the game, he's one of the very few people who picked up very quickly

Though he fooled Gonta once as a disguised enemy spy. He got rekt when they both noticed the achievement

Also dominated someone so badly that they immediately rage quit, another achievement

Another "you'll be lucky if he plays seriously" which is rare

Is definitely on a 30+ killstreak

People would sometimes thought he’s a squeaker (a kid who rages in voice chat) so he just fucks around with them and then just pulls a no u card

Neutral opinion on friendlies though he gets bored when no one is doing the objective or any action happening so he burns them all and watches them get mad in the chat

Obnoxious combos of cosmetics that you can easily recognize that purple neon Scunt from afar even if he's under an alias

Korekiyo Shinguuji

Main: Spy/Sniper

Not interested at first but is interested when others play and hovers over their shoulders to watch

While watching Gonta and Kiibo playing with the friendlies, he got interested

You don't see that in a lot of fps games

Korekiyo looks like an edgy sniper/spy main who just watches the chaos enveloping from the distance and getting headshots/backstabs out of nowhere

He's very calm and collective despite the crazy amount of chaos and all the deafening sounds of the vc

It's amusing to him, he even find the Administrator interesting and would sometimes go into many modes to hear her voice tone changes and a lot of behaviors of many players too

He even noticed the voice lines of the mercs and got invested in the lore of Team Fortress 2

Korekiyo still does his job in the game but can sometimes be interpreted as him in afk, almost got him kicked

Though he does get kicked for the being good at sniper, people getting butt hurt and called him a hacker

Also an amazing spy checker

Is interested about friendlies, he would come up to them close and observe them and he plays along with the taunts

He got really interested to see this "culture", like how most of the players collectively decides to play silly, serious or both, resulting him trying out almost every game mode and map there is

Unironically loves 2fort, Hightower, Suijin and Degroot Keep

Often joins community servers and silly servers but will do casual/pub servers whenever he feels like it

Something that resembles him irl, he looks edgy with the mask tbh

Other than that, his cosmetics changes depending on what mood or observation he wants to do

Ryoma Hoshi

Main: None (most played: Demoman)

Convinced by Kaito into playing

Not that much actually

Mediocre at best, he’s just doing his own thing

Definitely would stick around even if there’s one person in the server

Imagine getting killed by a Medic as a Demoknight in a melee fight with a shit weapon Do No Harm, couldn’t be me... or Ryoma

Likely plays Passtime

He will never admit it but he finds the ragdolls in the game funny

Also unironically likes the Scout

Demoknight tf2

God, imagine Ryoma has demonknight speed, combine it with his own speed and Solarlight skills, he’d be infinitely flying across all maps and go beyond the skybox

Ryoma too strong pls nerf

Doesn't play it often, not really his thing

Doesn’t mind friendlies, honestly surprised that there’s even such thing as one

Doesn't customize himself, though he likes the animal cosmetics

I apologize to the Ryoma fans out there for this being short

Shuichi Saihara

Main: None (most played: Spy)

Also doesn't see the appeal, but convinced by Kaito into playing

When he played the game for the first time, every time he dies, he switch to a class just to test them out

It’s too much for him, please hold him

Probably fell off a cliff several times-

Imagine the sheer amount of panic he feels when playing any class, especially Medic since Medic is a death magnet

Rockets, explosives, bullets, fire, blood and ragdolls everywhere! ... oh hey why is that guy just crouching with a melee?

He gets the hang of it over time

One of the best spy checker there is as well, not only as Pyro, though he feels sorry for the new spies (or newbies in general) so he tries to teach them the best way he can

The server kicked him for using hacks to find spies but for him, it’s obvious???

He usually plays the class whatever the team needs at the moment

Hard reads are strong in this one

Sushi likes the friendlies, chills with them a lot :>

Doesn’t customized himself, Kaito’s the one who helped him with it

K1-B0

Main: None (most played: Heavy)

Tries it out

It's ok I guess

He also doesn't have a main because he'll try to accommodate in which class is needed

If the whole team is like a full house of cards (in a 4 snipers, 5 engies type of way, you get the idea), he'll mostly go for the Medic since he knows it's vital for a team to have a Medic

There's rarely any Medics or Heavies in the start of the round, are they an endangered species??

He might start an event or something dedicating to the two classes

It never goes well despite Keebo's efforts in those, let's be honest

Though sometimes the team has like three Medics, the poor boy is confused

He's actually doing alright with all the class

The bot problem, oh god the bot problem

So there's that one time where the Myg0t bot joined, the enemy team said in the chat about kicking the bot

Well... obviously this made Keebo upset, as he thought they were referring to him

The server thought Keebo was trolling when he said something about him being a robot and saying that they're being robophobic... and sending them to court-

By some kind of miracle, the server liked Keebo because of this so he wasn't kicked out but he's incredibly salty throughout the match

"The server is robophobic" "Keebo, they were referring to the aimbots, they weren't robophobic" "... What Aimbots?"

His classmates were able to explain with videos and experiences, and also told him about several other types of bots that ruins the fun, which made Keebo embarrassed for having the wrong assumption

Though he still gets offended whenever it happens-

Like Kaito, he also doesn't like friendlies, insisting that that it's not how really play the game, though is guilty in pre-game conga lines, mannrobics and kazotski taunts, he likes the mannrobics

Bonus: Does NOT like the bot deco and is conflicted with the Mann vs Machine game mode

[dr-oshawott]

LoL Support Champion Stereotypes

Take note that this is bad and is not meant to be taken seriously.

Alistar: This guy lives for the turret dives and making those Flash W Q combos.

Bard: Probably watched Aladdin too many times or just wants to screw someone over: whether it be through his magical journey, ult, or roaming

Braum: Generally a guy who isn't looking to be toxic but just might if you don't follow up his engage.

Blitzcrank: Probably really hates squishy supports or just wants to make the enemy bot lane's life a living hell. Plus they're probably him because Pyke was taken or banned.

Janna: Probably one of the most laziest players you'll ever see. Though agressive one's that poke with W can be irritating.

Karma: These guys love to poke you out of lane and intimidate with the root. Chances are she'll level up her Q in the early game, so try to pick a kill support

Leona: Where do I start? I could go on about how they go ham 24/7, how their overloaded kit of CC, damage, and 10,000 armor/MR make you want to uninstall. Why her W doesn't have a longer cooldown so she can't engage all the time is anyone's guess.

Lulu: There are two types of Lulu players. One group tries to be appropriately aggressive and lose more than half their health for doing so (me), or there are ones that are perfectly aggressive and can manage their mana correctly so they're always prepared. So Lulu's can either make lane a living hell or you'll wish you dodged from all the feeding she did.

Morgana: You love to see your enemies cry as they sit in a 3 second root while they rapidly rightclicj to avoid danger but can't because the root lasts forever.

Nami: This is either a player that's actually nice and plays fair champions or they're one of league's assholes. The latter will use champion emotes when you see them to tilt you.

Nautilus: Chances are they really love bioshock and/or keeping someone in one place for a long time. Ones that duo with Jhin on the other hand kick puppies.

Pyke: Chances are they're an asshole in game and an real life. Seriously, whoever designed this character's kit needs to retake a physics class because a support that's designed to execute is not balanced in the slightest.

Rakan: They're either playing him as some ghetto Leona or only because Xayah's the ADC. They're also probably nice people.

Sona: Sona players like to piss off the enemy in the lane with their stupid Q and an ult that guarentee's death most if the time. Plus they have a heal as a crutch so that's fun.

Soraka: These players only know 5 things, and those are flinging Q all over the place, mashing W on the carry, warding, putting E under the carry, and keeping an eye on everyone's health. Paired with a poke carry like ezreal, she just hates everyone and everything.

Tahm Kench: These guys are either the biggest trolls on the planet, ths most ass-wipe of a person, or really good at sustaining their carry. His tounge taunt is funny enough, but his laugh spam will make you wish emote spam was a reportable offense.

Taric: Probably 'Heya' fans or like the playstyle of a healing tank. That and they live for incoming teamfights with the ult and love that chest

Thresh: Finally I get to talk about the evil King of support. These guys always talk shit in chat, spam their mastery 7 and land hooks like they script. The ones NOT like that though are tolerable, but dealing with Thresh is nevee fun unless you're uninteractive yourself by playing Sivir

Zilean: He probably pairs up with an Aatrox for the never-ending death or thinks his carry isn't smart enough to stay alive. That and BOMB THROWING.

Damage supports: I've decided to clump all the mage supports ("supports"), such as Brand, Velkoz, and Zyra, because they all go as following:

People who play Damage supports are pieces of shit.

Supports are supposed to hold the carry's hand and help the team out with utility, not be some kind of fucking secondary midlaner and ruin the game for bot lane. People who play them are either upset they didn't get a role known for killing, or they're so bad at the game they need to lane with someone else just to do anything but die.