From Anomaly Diversion For The Upcoming Chapter 4.

tysm for the mediscout I owe you my life

Ok

🤲 ← Please put your life in here.

Scout and the strange dream door

I can't believe Anomi just straight up ripped off Badwatervideos2009 with the living ragdolls and even scout entering the white door smhh couldn't even come up with anything original nyeah. shaking my head.

also THERE'S 70 PEOPLE ON THE DISCORD VC SHUTT THE FUCK UPPP

02/25/2025: Okay uh after the recent Discord finds... This scene feels VERY differently now, holy shit, Eida you sick bastard....

Every time you post art 20 years gets added to my lifespan it’s so good !

Oh my that's a lotta years I'm sorry you're trapped in this flesh for so long because of me

"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.)

Oh yes actually about Scout's self-conscious character. Classic but gold.

Just imagine how much misunderstanding and humiliation this guy went through his life, always being forced to be better-stronger-faster-smarter, whatever. Like, always being stopped and corrected at certain behaviours because its girly, chicken and gay or whatever, being mocked for being the youngest child, not the strongest, definitely not the smartest at school... He overcompensates with his speed and this is why his taunts are twice as toxic. This guy's core confidence is as fragile as fine china.

Some people portray him as an asshole for some reason, as if he was a heartless fuckboy. Totally wrong, it's pretty evident that he's a very kind guy. Even with Ms.Pauling, he doesn't just want to fuck her, he's genuinely faithfully in love, faithful even if there's no pressure for him to be.

He's kind to his friends. He's the one of the friendliest of them. This shameful gentleness is what made me fall in love with him. Seeing his facade cracking, revealing this more or less innocent soul (not counting the killings) is what ironically would give him all the love in return for his heart overwhelmed with his own love.

If he was a little bit more mature and nit scared of people's opinions and more genuine, I believe his smile would brighten up the whole world when the sun in no more.

has anyone done this already

Rubber Touch

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!

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 ;)

Paper books are cool again because they don't have ads!!!!

References for Anomaly Diversion!!!

Official!! finally!!

I wanted to make their design stand out, so I created them from scratch; they're not loadouts you can find in-game. Plus a little bit of character description because I'm dying to talk about them and their roles in the story (*wearing a shirt that says "please talk to me about my fic"*).

Now I can finally draw them often!!

Somewhat goofy clothing sheets under the cut↓↓↓

I tried to design them the way their silhouettes and colors stay recognisable, as if they were meant to be used in-game later, to not to break the gameplay rules. I also wanted them to look as tf2-like as possible, I studied the hell out of the 3d models and on the last three I guess it started to turn out decent. Drawing Spy is still pain though.

Or maybe it's just that I'm not attracted to the majority of the mercs visually?? That's why they don't look satisfying?? Lmao. Need to adjust them to my tastes later.

I'm not sure I can exactly explain my design choices with these... How exactly they correlate to their characters. There is something, but I went for it fully intuitively.

//

For BLU scout I went for the softer, rounder oversized clothing to accent his insecurity and the need to shield himself for comfort. It still needed to shape his torso (game rules) but his hood and sleeves do the deed. There is also a strict rule in how to draw his freckles: they look more like moles and there's 7 or 8 of them. You won't believe me if I say this is lore relevant.

For RED Scout, I went with the more aggressive military style. I think I literally took this jacket design from a real military one. There should be an accent on his heavy relations with the army. His clothes are tight because he still likes himself.

RED Sniper is giving hunter vibes, forest type. BLU Sniper looks more like a fisher or a winter hunter. Not sure what deeper meaning I could assign to this except that BLU Sniper was heavily referenced on Ogata Hyakunosuke.

BLU Spy should radiate tiredness. His look is quite unkept for his standards but at this point it doesn't matter anymore. The turtleneck and the boots are special requests from @/gentlesurgeryenjoyer (xoxo)

BLU Medic just looks so freaking cool in a black shirt. It was a vision. I'm not sure if black and white accents mean anything in terms of which side those characters are on. I also wanted to separate him from another famous horror witnessing Medic.

And Miss Pauling was the most satisfying to draw, it was a gift to draw her last... I gave her pants because it's getting cold outside at the time when the story takes place. I also find it very impractical to go killing job in a pencil skirt, I'm sorry. She probably also wears snickers underneath.

And also thanks to @nightly-headache for helping out and assistance!