voidshrubsquared

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A detective tied up bondage style from the red strings on his cork board

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FLAME EMERGES FROM THE TIP OF MY PEN. THE BLU TEAM AS LYRICS FROM SONGS I WROTE BUT THERE'S NOWHERE FOR YOU TO LISTEN TO THEM YET TO GET ANY CONTEXT.

scout: "it's too easy, baby problems" okay, i know this line written down doesn't look particularly interesting as a line. it's cocky, it's almost flat, there's nothing particularly interesting about the wording. and frankly, it just sounds like something scout would say! shit's easy. baby problems. which is why the context of this song is... phenomenal. fucking transcendent. same way a good scout player deserves head every day. i love good scout players. i love how they function in the team. mmm... scouts. i love scouts. i love good scouts. i love following scouts into battle. they make it so easy.

soldier: "smoking pot at the walmart, market gardening" obviously, aside from the very obvious reference that only tf2 fans would actually catch and an otherwise somewhat confusing lyric in an odd extended gardening metaphor, i actually think this is a very funny pun. and i think if soldier understood that gardening is a modern day term for smoking marijuana, i think jane himself would find this lyric hilarious. and i do make another reference at the end of the verse to shovels, once again solidifying it as a soldier reference. so of course, he's got to get this lyric. i'd be stupid to give him anything else. this is literally one of eight lines referencing soldier directly.

pyro: "is there a way i could be meaner / in a way i could be madder" the lobotomy changed pyro. changed them fundamentally. chilled them out, one could even use. to the point where pyro does what they do out of force of habit more often than it is anything else. they do it because they know there was a time this made them feel really good. and it still does, almost. sometimes. usually. and they end up asking themselves where it is they're faltering. why doesn't it feel the way it used to? what are they missing? they're not sure. they just know they're missing something. and maybe one day they'll find it. but they're not really sure.

demo: "they say the world's my oyster / yet i am only livestock / just placed higher in the ladder" this is an unfinished song because it is one written and worked upon in states of anger and delusion. this is the ramblings of a mad man. and while i don't think the blu demo is as afflicted as the red demo magically, i think that serves its own point. everyone is a slave to something. and his counterpart can't convince him hard enough that he is better off without the eyelander. because he has to contend with an entirely different issue. the fact that he is simply a genetic copy of the man in red. not a man of his own. though, at the very least, his counterpart encourages him to try. he doesn't know whether he should appreciate it or not.

heavy: "it's not new to me, it's a dream i'm living in" this lyric is so... delicious to me. it's delirious. it's delusional. it's deranged. it's unnecessarily sweet and it sticks to your teeth. and honestly, it's something i really wish i could hammer home more with the blu heavy is how utterly delusional he is. delusional to the point that he is almost always happy. he is in ideal conditions here. he can never die. he is aware there is something wrong with that. he is aware that he shouldn't feel so fuzzy. he knows it because he watches his counterpart. and his life feels like a dream. he can't remember... anything. it was like he woke up one day and was here. in teufort. and his counterpart tells him nothing. he is simply choosing to believe there is nothing wrong. a life was lived somewhere. this life isn't new to him. but it feels like a dream. and the lyric before this is equally tasty, and a very aggressive tone setter. but i won't share it.

engineer: "i'll tell ya godhood's lonely" another absolutely delicious line, sometimes i can't comprehend how i'm actually coming up with these sometimes. this is not a particularly original line, either. it's just one that feels so poignant. and feels very southern! there is something about the statement "i'll tell ya"; it's a cry to the choir. a beg for a moment of sympathy. but who knows anything about godhood? dell does. and this is a very dell oriented sentiment. this man has succeeded and exceeded most everything put before him. at this point, what more is there to do? what more can he do? he's done... damn near everything. he's bored. he's lonely.

medic: "i feel deranged at worst; and strange at best / but i never really feel like me." i actually had just finished watching emesis blue when i wrote this line. i had the doctor on the mind when i wrote this line. and i love thinking about the blu medic. because (and again if you know my lore then you know and you'll get where i'm coming from) he had to be one of the first clones made. and i don't think the red doctor is a very particularly.... great parent. i think herbert was very upfront with fritz about his exact purpose on this plane of existence. it's to fight, and die. and he can't escape the shadow of his creator. he's right there. he can never get that sense of completion. he'll never feel like himself. and who can he tell, really?

sniper: "regular guest to a bad plan." it's almost making me feel bad because in order to enjoy this post at all you need to know literally all of the other lore that i've built up for the past 200 posts. but i think snipes is a bullshit attractor. he can't go 50 feet without finding himself in nonsense. and frankly, i think that's true for both snipers. i think it's rare to find them both within 500 feet of anyone who has a tendency to cause a bad plan, because they always find themselves in the middle of straight up nonsense. and i think this lyric plays well with the lyric i gave mick in the red version of this post, of their keen situational awareness.

spy: "it gets tiresome being permanent odd man out" this song in particular isn't finished, because it is, what i would call, vulnerable. and i think that's very obvious from this line, alone. and honestly, when i think of this song, i do think of the blu team in general. at least, i think of the clones. and if you know my personal lore for spy, then you know and you see where i'm coming from. but also, this lyric is just very fitting for what it's like to be a bad spy player. when you are simply not good. and i don't know if you know, but i exclusively play medic. i played spy maybe once and got absolutely humiliated. and it does get tiresome being permanent odd man out.

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for anyone in the UK, needing to access discord and unable or unwilling to provide an ID:

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his hhands are so cu,te

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finally sitting down and fully playing through deltarune for the first time and while it's lost most of its bite in the intervening four years of constant memes i'm going to be honest with you if i was playing this completely blind when it dropped the terrible vibes of this entire encounter would have freaked the fuck out of me

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love languages are some pop psychology bullshit. hate languages, that’s real tho. mine is trapping people under pillars

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kris dreemurr shimeji but sometimes they will grab your mouse, shove it into some kind of crevice, pull out a knife, and then walk off screen for a few minutes, and then come back and pull the mouse back out of the crevice

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Apples! 🍏

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creepy medic is high-key gorgeous

(i never fully finished this piece of artwork)

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TF2 THINKPIECE— TAVISH FINNEGAN DEGROOT AND BEING BLACK BEFORE YOU ARE ANYTHING ELSE IN AMERICA

“a black, scottish cyclops”.

i want to talk about demoman, our belemoman for a minute.

i think this has been the biggest thing that has caused me to struggle with writing him.

in case you didn’t know, i am black. african american.

and the fact that demoman was not originally meant to be black is not something i have forgotten. he is quite literally the token character. they made him black because he didn’t stand out amongst the sea of white.

and it fundamentally changed his character.

and i don’t truly have the words to describe how it’s different. i’m not on the tf2 writing team, i’m not a professional author by any means, but i have spent the last almost 24 years being Black. and realizing how being Black came before any other facet of my personality.

being black came before being an artist.

being black came before being academically gifted.

being black came before being an extrovert.

being black came… pretty much hand in hand with being “weird”.

being black came hand in hand with being “off putting”.

being black came hand in hand with being loud, and aggressive, and, frankly, annoying.

and this is being brought up in the current era, right? where you weren’t likely to hear the n-word hard-r being thrown around willy nilly.

tavish did not get that.

i spend a lot of time wondering about tavish’s first experience with racism in america in the 60s. and this isn’t to say that scotland was any better, but i’m not from scotland. but i can understand having the idea, the thought that coming to america can better your life. i understand the propaganda peddled that you can be a man, as any other, in america. and i imagine what it was like for tavish, stepping into this country on the ass end of the civil rights movement. i wonder what it was like for him to hear the name emmett till for the first time. i wonder if he saw the photos.

because i already know he got the stares. and i know someone made an attempt on his life before mann co found him.

so i try to treat tavish gently.

tavish stands as a black man in a very concerning time period for black men in a universe where that wasn't even something taken into consideration because he wasn't meant to be there. tavish stands as a design choice, and not much more thought put into him past that.

but... is that almost better?

tavish unashamedly has the coolest fucking backstory known to man. tavish is magically afflicted, incredibly intelligent, known and generally beloved not only by his team but by the fandom! and he's black.

and that's... pretty fucking cool. to me.

so i like to treat tavish gently. i like to baby step him. because i don't think he really needs to be subjected to the horrors that await him outside of teufort and his home.

he can just enjoy himself. enjoy himself and make his money.

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Day 18

Kiss

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Made some scenes in SFM and printed them like polaroids

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It's not like I like you or anything! P-Pendejo!

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Wait mates, I'm on my way to page 7 of the closet episode. Here the proof

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Stunning.

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i feel like we don’t talk about things like this enough

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Sometimes when I'm sad I listen to right behind you and pretend that you're right behind me comforting me

Well, if that helps you. Normally I am one to judge, but sometimes we do need a little comfort.

A hum of a fridge helps me calm down, as sad as that is.