#i just repeated an entire paragraph from a previous application almost word-for-word

[dieschwartzman]

if there’s a plagiarism checker for cover letters then i’m in trouble

[thetriggeredhappy]

👀 hmmmmmm?

ok, the WIP itself is going under a cut because it’s pretty long, but the explanation will stay up here above it.

so the premise was that i wanted more practice with experimental storytelling because, i’ll be honest, i was in a weird place mentally and that’s one way i work shit out. so i did the thing everyone else who writes for the TF2 motherfuckers does and i messed with the understood conventions of Respawn. the idea was that Respawn does three things: first of all, it brings people back from the dead and to a previous save state of them, a singular state at a specific age for all of them. this means that none of them age, because every time they die, that counter just restarts. second, it erases basically all memory from before they died--it resets them to a state before they’d made those memory pathways. then the team often catches up whoever died on what all happened, and they believe it at face value. however, if the whole team dies, they’re basically entirely reset. and thirdly, the system has tweaked them in a very specific way; none of them are very prone to asking questions, and none of them are very prone to going anywhere off-base.

the idea was, there would be a singular repeating opening to every single chapter--or maybe three respawns per chapter or so, depending on length--and every time, one or two words would be tweaked just a little bit in a weird game of telephone. there would be slight deviations in one direction or another, elaborating in different ways, with two constants: seven days after Scout last died he would realize he was in love with Sniper, and that never, ever, ever would they interact or witness a human being besides the ones on the team. this is because scout’s save state is that he’s trapped shortly before he realizes he’s in love, and because the team has no concept of time outside of their base, and unbeknownst to them, the world outside of their little sphere has ended, and they’ve been fighting in the gravel pits for hundreds of years. the announcer is just pre-recorded messages, the other team is also caught in the same system, the bases are entirely self-sufficient, and none of them know that the rest of the world has died.

i realized 1. i could run with this concept literally forever, and this would be like 100k words, and i do not have the time or energy to ever run with it for that long i would Literally Die, 2. i could probably adapt the concept in some ways to be applicable to original work that i could then potentially make money off of because i do think the idea’s pretty good, and then eventually 3. Oh Wait I Sort Of Wrote This Already, I Did A Whole Play On Time Travel, Like A Groundhog Day Thing, I Can’t Do This Again I’ll Die

but since i’m almost positive i’ll never finish it, here’s the work i already have featuring the editing notes as well. the working title was “Loops!AU”. literally absolutely feel free to run with this idea

1. His name is Mickey Lawrence Mundy, and he’s thirty-one years old, and he’s been a smoker for fifteen of those years. He’s tall by American standards and short by Australian, and his parents hate his chosen career path and fashion choices, and his favorite holiday is Halloween because it’s in the fall, his favorite season.

Not a single one of those details would ever be important, out here in the desert far from everywhere, fighting and killing.

The missions start and stop abruptly with little warning, sometimes heralded by the sound of a little motorcycle carrying a girl who’s worth a hundred times her weight in danger, but generally not. He always goes with, even when he’s not so terribly needed, because he’s told to and he gets paid if he does. He hasn’t checked his back account balance in almost two years. He knows it’s probably giving some poor Swiss intern a stress ulcer just looking at it. Rarely does something memorable happen, at most one of his teammates getting taken out and needing to be retrieved, but usually not much of anything at all. They’re important though, apparently. That’s how he’s getting so much money.

His teammates are as remarkable as they are unremarkable—so oddly human despite being absolute freakshows, much like himself. He’d argue with the Spy, avoid the Medic, try and keep the Pyro in his line of sight, and tended to get pestered by the Scout since he was the only person who wouldn’t actively chase him off.

But that last one has been acting strange lately. It’s been a few days since the last mission, which generally makes him pretty antsy, but this is a different sort. He’s been staring at Sniper a lot, eyes sharp from underneath the shade of the brim of his hat, like a wild cat hiding in the brush.

Dangerous, is the word he’s looking for.

2. His name is Mickey "Mick” Mundy, and he’s thirty-one years old, and he’s been bitten by more exotic animals than most people have even seen with the scars to prove it. He’s tall by American standards and short by Australian, and his parents don’t pick up the phone for him anymore for some reason, and his favorite season is the fall because it’s got his favorite holiday stuck smack dab in the middle.

Not a single one of those details would ever be important, out here in the desert far from everywhere, fighting and killing.

The missions start and stop abruptly with little warning, sometimes heralded by the sound of a little motorcycle carrying a girl who’s worth a hundred times her weight in danger, but generally not. He always goes with, even when he’s not so terribly needed, because he’s told to and he gets paid if he does. He hasn’t checked his back account balance in quite some time. He knows it’s probably giving some poor Swiss intern a stress ulcer just looking at it. Rarely does something memorable happen, at most one of his teammates getting taken out and needing to be retrieved from Respawn, but usually not much of anything at all. The missions are important though, apparently. That’s how he’s getting so much money.

His teammates are as remarkable as they are unremarkable—so oddly human despite being absolute freakshows, much like himself. He’d argue with the Spy, avoid the Medic, try and keep the Pyro in his line of sight, and tended to get pestered by the Scout since he was the only person who wouldn’t actively chase him off.

But that last one has been acting strange lately. It’s been a few days since the last mission, which generally makes him pretty antsy, but this is a different sort. He’s been staring at Sniper a lot, eyes sharp from underneath the shade of the brim of his hat, like someone who knows exactly who he is and exactly what he’s been hired to do and is just making sure he only takes out the intended targets, or else.

Dangerous, is the word he’s looking for.

[[every time Sniper dies and gets reset, change tiny little details about the paragraph above, like a game of telephone, deleting more and more information along the way. have sniper remember details about scout that he shouldn’t know, or circumvent earlier problems without thinking about it—ex. scout has an allergic reaction to something sniper cooks and later sniper cooks a different meal even though previous conversation is borderline identical. have one or two times where scout and sniper get in an argument because one of them died but the other didnt and they don’t remember each other correctly]]

[[final chapter scene, scout shows up frazzled, some conversation, deviating an awful lot from previous scripts]]

“Remember Woodstock?” Scout asked, tilting his head. “Remember when that was a thing that happened, and it was a big fuckin’ deal, all sorts of magazines talkin’ about it, it was on TV and everything?”

“Yeah,” Sniper agreed, nodding.

“But do you remember what year that was?”

“Well,” Sniper said, “I,” Sniper said, “I, well, obviously it was fairly recent.”

“Uh-huh,” Scout said, and it wasn’t encouraging.

“Had to be, what, three or four years ago?”

“Weird, because, uh, because the Doc—I asked him about it, right?—he said it had to have been a few months ago. And Spy said it had to have been almost a decade ago. And Mumbles didn’t know what I was talkin’ about.”

There was silence for a few long seconds.

“Because—because the thing is—“ Scout scrubbed at his hair underneath his hat. “—I, I had that written down. I wrote that down, I, I scratched it a good quarter-inch into solid wood planks. Y’know those planks, on the underside of a bedframe? Right where a mattress goes? I uh, I was cleaning under my bed for once, and I’d apparently scratched it under there. Just—just four words. ‘Ask Spy About Woodstock’. That’s it. And—and he started talkin’ about it like it had to have happened, like, before I would’ve even known what that was, when I was a kid or somethin’. And I’m just wondering—I—“ Scout was finally starting to really stumble, and his gaze kept drifting, snapping back, disorientation settling into the furrow between his eyebrows like rain on cracked desert earth. “I’m just wondering how the hell I don’t remember doin’ that.”

He swallowed hard, and it took several seconds to sink in, the weight of his words. “You…” Sniper started to say, and couldn’t find the last part of the thought.

“Me?” Scout prompted, almost desperately, and how long had Sniper been standing there, jaw gaping?

“Snipes?” Scout prompted from through what sounded like a glass of water, snapping his fingers in front of Sniper’s nose a few times, jolting him back to—

“Snipes!” Scout said far too loudly, and Sniper flinched, and resurfaced with a thought.

“Why,” Sniper asked, “did you write it down somewhere so hidden? Who were you worried would find it before you?”

“And did I write it down somewhere else, and it *did* get found, and that’s why it’s so hard to think about?” Scout finished.

Silence for a few seconds.

“Did… you write anything else?” Sniper asked, voice thin.

“That’s the thing,” Scout said, voice thin from a slightly different direction. “Because, see, I did write somethin’ else, but I didn’t need to find that writing to have known somethin’ was up. Because—“

There was silence for a few seconds, a few more.

“Do I… know you from somewhere?” Scout asked.

He wasn’t even looking at Sniper, but his eyes were a shade of—

“Because it feels like just… the way you talk, the, the way *we* talk—“

It was dimly lit in the camper, but his hair shone in the light of the sunrise—the sunset—the—bonfire—sunset?—sun—rise?

“It just feels… familiar.”

He was soft—he was tense—he was soft—had he ever even touched Scout before?—he looked tense—he looked soft.

“It feels like I’ve met you somewhere before.”

He looked tense.

“Is it you?”

“What?” Sniper asked.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” His voice trembled. “It’s all your fault. You’re the one doing this. Why—why the hell else would I have scratched in your name?”

“What?” Sniper asked.

“But—but it can’t be you,” Scout started, talking himself back again. “It can’t be you because it’s—it’s not just ‘Sniper’ scratched down there. When did you tell me? Why did you tell me? Why’d I hide it?”

“What?” Sniper asked.

Scout looked at him, gaze hard enough, fragile enough, glass, sheets of ice, that he fought to find more words.

“What are you talking about? Is it… what did you find?”

Scout looked at him, gaze soft enough, firm enough, decades-old-mattress, rotting springs, that he didn’t dare say anything else.

“I’m gonna ask you a few questions here,” Scout said, voice wobbly.

Sniper nodded.

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

Sniper thought. “I ate a sandwich at the base before I walked over here,” he supplied.

“Before that.”

“Took a shower and all that, fresh off Respawn.”

“Before that.”

“Well, woke up in the Respawn room.”

“Before that.”

“Well, I… I died,” Sniper shrugged.

“How’d you die?”

Sniper was

Sniper

Sniper was

“How’d you die?” Scout asked again, almost exactly the same way.

“Well, I…” Sniper started to say. “…I don’t remember. Probably shot in the head. That happens a lot, I get shot in the head.”

“Let me ask another question,” Scout said. “I come bug you a lot, don’t I?”

“Yeah,” Sniper agreed.

“When’s the longest time I’ve hung out over here?”

“Well, that had to have been…” Sniper started to say. “Well, obviously it’s the time when we…” Sniper started to say.

“When we…?” Scout prompted.

“I…” Sniper said.

“I’ll ask something else,” Scout said, paced one way, then changed his mind and stepped back again. “We get sent to the other bases sometimes. Remember that?”

“Right. Right!” Sniper said, clinging to the scrap of clarity. “We go to a different base every few months until it gets destroyed.”

“And those places have names,” Scout supplied.

“Yes!”

“What were some of them?”

Sniper looked at him. “Well, there was… and… there was a cold one, with… or a…”

Scout looked at him.

“There—with the, with the buildings, and the…”

Scout looked at him.

Sniper looked around his immediate surroundings for clues. He spotted a picture tacked to his wall, blurry and faded and indistinct and damaged, and took a breath, and words wouldn’t come out of his mouth.

“You call your family often?” Scout supplied.

“I do.”

“When did you last call?”

Sniper’s head felt like the picture tacked to his wall.

“Just one more question.”

Sniper looked up at Scout.

“What’s your name?” Scout asked.

“M-Michael—“

No, that wasn’t right.

“Mitch, Mitchel—Mitch—“

No.

“Rich—?”

No, it was,

“Mike—“

No.

No.

Scout’s face was a one-way mirror. “It’s not any of those,” he said, as if Sniper didn’t know. “It’s somethin’ else.”

He was right.

“Your name’s Mickey,” he said, “Lawrence,” he said, “Mundy,” he said, “and I think we might be some of the only people alive on the planet.”

“And I think,” Scout said, “that we’re stuck here, repeating things over and over.”

“And I think,” Scout said, “that we’ve both been the same age as when we were hired for a long, long time, and we keep getting set back to that age.”

“And I think,” Scout said, “that you stuck me at this age on purpose.”

“Why,” Sniper asked, “would I… what, what’s special about it? Why would I pick this age for you? If I—what makes you think that I’m doing it, and that I would?”

“Because I think that every time I wake up after being shot in the head, a few days later, I realize I’m in love with you.”

“What makes you think that?” Sniper asked next.

“Because I realized it again when I saw your name, and it felt like déjà vu. And I’m lookin’ at your shoulders, and I remember exactly what they feel like when I wrap my arms up around them, and how your stubble feels, and what your laugh feels like when I’ve got a hand against your chest, even though I can’t remember ever having touched you in my goddamn life.”

Silence. Sniper felt his breath catching in his chest.

“That’s not possible,” Sniper said, and felt his mind shifting away into denial. “You’re delusional. I’m—there’s just something wrong with our heads.”

“Of course it’s impossible. *None* of this is possible,” Scout said, voice scorched. “It’s not possible to remember feeling things that I’ve never felt before. Just like it’s not possible to be brought back to life, after being shot in the head.”

-

and that's the end of what i have written for this. so there you go