interest dolphin

Bites costume is so pretty! Especially excited for Okchun

scout: the team might be at their happiest when they realize scout's back on the scene, but scout's got some things he's forced to do before he actually gets to enjoy the short period of time in which the team actually wants to talk to him. scout is one of the few mercs that actually talks about what he's told to do. he's learned to update pauling before he begins to enter the base. and oddly enough, spy meets him at every entrance, it is quite literally impossible for him to enter the base undetected. it'd be nice if it was anyone but spy. and the moment he's intercepted, he is taken to the infirmary. and as the team watches the two-man parade, scout is bragging about his dozen-plus kill count. crazy part is, he's probably telling the truth. issue is, he's missing an arm and his jaw is hanging by strands. makes it hard to believe.

soldier: it is with a loud announcement that the team is notified of soldier's return to the base, and they greet him accordingly. unlike scout, soldier willingly has a post-contract routine. the first stop is to the mess hall. regardless of his physical condition, he needs a meal and he needs one now. once he has eaten, he will then make his way to the showers, where he will spend no more than five minutes before walking to the infirmary for all wounds to be treated. after that, he needs a beer. he's started to keep those in medic's fridge for convenience.

pyro: the team gets genuinely nervous when pyro is sent out on a solo contract. and they almost really wish that administration would stop signing them up to leave this base without a member of the team present. but pyro does their job, and the team quite literally forgets that pyro is actually quite adept on their own. so when they come back, especially when they've been gone for a while, the team is borderline ecstatic to see them. and pyro is always happy to see them too! it's nice to know they always have somewhere to go back to.

demo: it's always a party when tavish is back! everyone hates when tavish is gone because he's a personality hire. tavish does a lot of morale boosting naturally, it's his natural effervescence! it's noticeable when he's not in the base. you could genuinely assume the base is empty. and max, i hear you say, max, the entirety of the offense classes are still in there, and while you're correct, the team actually just likes to be around tavish in general, everyone overtly likes tavish. that is a privilege the offensive classes lack. if he's not out there, there's just no point. there is bound to be a fight and nobody willing to break it up.

heavy: it's such a sad state of affairs, the base without misha in it. it's cold in there. it's not empty, but it's hollow. voices echo. it gets past rambunctious into volatile. the team gets tense and they aren't sure what's changed until he's back. and the exhale that is let out of the base... the diffusion of a bomb. hell, misha doesn't even realize the effect he has on the base, because every time he enters the base after extended periods of time he's actually in higher spirits than when he left. he's ready to wreak some havoc.

engineer: the team swears up and down that they have said good morning to dell each and every morning since they moved onto the teufort base. and that's correct! they have, every single morning, said good morning to at least a dell. ceasefires are very conveniently timed, and they're done that way for dell's sake. and whenever either one is sent off, the other makes trips to the base to make up the absence. at the end of the day, nobody knows when dell is on the base. but there's always a dell at both bases at some point of the day. it's a power grip they hold.

medic: they don't notice he's off the base, they distinctly notice when he's off the field. and they will greet him almost coldly when he makes his reappearance. it's humorous, almost, but it doesn't bother him. the contracts are timed well, he is not particularly sent on overtly violent situations... he can make them that way, though. and he doesn't speak about his contracts, and the team likes it that way. they are much warmer to him back on the base, and he resettles back into his routines quickly.

sniper: the team has learned to not give the man a heart attack when he first enters the base. everyone has began to settle for a good "oh, it's mick!" "miiick, bud!" and maybe a full meal for dinner, depending on what time he finally shows himself to the base after a solo contract. and he's become even more appreciative of those than something big, or nothing at all. he honestly did not think this was a team capable of that much nuance to know what a healthy middle was.

453 anonymous

scout: look, he's not going to beg, but what he will do is become one of the most annoying supervillains you've ever encountered. and he's never going to beg. but he'll do some real unecessary shit to you, then come casually ask if you liked that. even when you look at him and go "no, you fucking moron, why would you think i would appreciate you beating the shit out of my neighbor because he parked in a space that i like to call mine even though i know it's not mine, he had just as much of a right to park there as i do" he chuckles and goes "yeah... i thought you'd like that..." this is a delusion of epic proportions. matched only by one other man on the team.

soldier: it is a rare occasion that soldier is seen as one of the more subdued men on the team, but in this occasion, he is! this man is always desperate enough to ask. and he wouldn't say it this way, but you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. so he will always be direct in his endeavors for you. though, whether or not you reciprocate will always be met with the same thing: an aw, damn! and a quick shovel to the back of the head. but don't worry, it's not enough to decapitate you. it's hardly enough to disfigure you! you'll wake up dazed, but fine. and in a room you can't recognize.

pyro: again, it's shocking when the offensive class is, in any way, described as the more subdued members of the team. but with pyro, it's a little different. pyro is already known to be somewhat of a clingy... needy... prissy little thing. a high maintenance friend, a higher maintenance lover, and a real treat to anyone willing to put in the work. and the red team knows that pyro doesn't really give people— a choice in being involved with them. and pyro is very— insistent, about their needs... the team just looks the other way. it's how pyro is, it's how pyro will always be. and they like pyro that way.

demo: if tavish has decided he wants you, he's going to do whatever it takes. whatever. this could be filling your cubicle at work with your favorite flowers. this could be just kidnapping you off the street when he sees you're having a rough time in life. the beauty of it is that tavish is a safe man to be around! he's not going to kill you, everything he does is always geared towards bettering you, it just comes in unconventional ways. it's hard to not love him back, really! until you start hearing how he's got your plans for the future. if they don't truly align with what you have going on... you might already be in far too deep.

heavy: misha will kill you and it be an honest to god accident. he doesn't mean to have so much cuteness aggression. and he's truly trying to keep himself contained in a manner that ensures your safetty, but he will not do well. especially is you are less than half his size. the team, his family, they are hearty people. they can take some aggression, they can take misha at face value! even if that comes along with suffocating physical affection, however rare that may be for him. and if you're tenacious enough, he may completely forget that you aren't... built for his strength.

engineer: dell will kill you on purpose. he doesn't like how you make him feel. you're a distraction, an irritant, and an annoyance, and he's done with that. he is very quickly getting over you. he's over the daydreams. the fuzzy feeling is more akin to static. closer to an electric shock. and he's getting increasingly angry about what you're stirring out of him. and he doesn't want you. but he doesn't want you to want anyone else. so he'd truly rather you just— not exist anymore. he'd rather you be dead. he hates you. that's a lie. he doesn't hate you. he hates how you make him feel. if you don't exist, then you can't cause that feeling anymore. that's the theory. something's stopping him from testing it.

medic: he doesn't know what is wrong with dell, he's so desperate to keep you alive it's a ship of theseus as to when you stop being yourself and when you become another piece of property the doctor got much too attached to. it's almost pathetic. the way he smiles at you. so nervous, and much too enthusiastic. he wants you so badly he'd kill himself before he actually let you cross into the realm of the dead. you'd meet the devil himself before there was a hair harmed on your head... that he did not harm himself. property was the word used for a reason.

sniper: oooh, you know, you could almost believe that mick really does like you until you realize that that's just how mick is. mick wouldn't call himself a dreamer, he wouldn't even consider himself a particularly thoughtful guy. his mom said he's got a "rich inner life", his dad usually called him "distracted", and call him a pussy, but he prefers his mom's word for it. he just casually thinks about a lot of hypotheticals, and then he gets a little too involved in those hypotheticals. but he usually is able to pull himself out of these little spirals before they become something he can't handle.

this was not a good thing for misha. war destroyed their bodies.

he enjoyed retirement for the most part, let it be known. days and nights of he and his doctor, rising, musing, committing an occasional crime here and there (the doctor was never able to truly rid himself of the... evil bones in his body, no pun intended.), and... aging.

it broke misha, in a way, when the doctor lost the use of his legs as his age climbed.

he loved getting to push him around in the wheelchair, though. the doctor seemed to enjoy it too.

it made it worse as the doctor's mind left him.

of course, misha knew this would happen. this is what age does.

hell, misha was finding it harder to get up, himself. found his bones screaming at him when he stood still for longer than an hour, or sat for longer than two. he felt better in constant motion. it made grocery stops enjoyable, for the both of them, even as herbert's careful calculations of their food budgets (not that it was something that needed to be done, they had plenty of money, it just gave him something to do that wasn't criminal) became absentminded musings on the nature of a wafer. how he prefers the plain vanilla ones. how he felt the strawberry ones were laughing at him.

this was still such a blessing to misha. it was a gift from god to watch him grow senile. even if it did hurt him to hear the love of his life go from sesquipedalian monologues to the humming of simple melodies. from waking him to watch him dress himself, to jolting awake to the sound of his body hitting the floor, and the quiet grunts of his struggle to live as he once did. it broke his heart how his doctor cried, begged for answers as to what was wrong with him. when did he change? who was he, anymore?

misha would help him into his wheelchair, whispering apologies and wiping his eyes. push him to the bathroom, and gently set him into the tub as he carefully washed the man. took stock of the new bruises, recorded any bedsores, counted the pepper in his hair, since he had silvered further, at this point, and the dimming stars in his eyes. insisted he was still the man he loved, as the doctor screamed in moments of lucidity. begged for death to take him, and by noon was quietly humming, flipping through the same five pages of the book he had been stuck on for decades.

and misha would joke on how the lenses of his glasses keep getting thicker.

and herbert, forgetting the joke that misha had recited for years to him, laughed. and the tantrums of the morning were entirely forgotten until they occurred again the next morning.

something needed to be done when herbert just... quit waking up.

he woke up long enough to drink water, and eat, and maintained consciousness for a bath every couple of days, but it exhausted him. and misha felt alone. alone in a house, with a corpse in his bed.

this was no way to live.

knobbed fingers dialed a number he memorized years ago, and a too-youthful voice picked up at the end of the third ring.

"misha! long time no talk, bud, how ya been?"

"dell... i have an— experiment i need to try."

"oh?"

within the month, misha quietly loaded the love of his life, his wheelchair, and a walking stick into their shared vehicle.

and herbert found it hard to sleep as the roads constantly shifted underneath the wheels, so he just stared out of the window.

watched the trees turn to mountains, turn to plains, turn to dust.

"misha... where are we going?" he asked, absent as he lost himself in the orange of the dirt whirling around him. this all seemed familiar. like he dreamt it once.

"we're going to visit a friend."

"a friend? your friend? my friend? a mutual acquaintance?"

"a friend, my love."

"oh... okay." herbert had realized how silly explanations had become to him. it was fine enough to just be along for the ride beside his partner. misha had never done something to put the man in danger. misha had never so much as spoken an unkind word to him.

he really liked this man. he made a good choice to keep this one around.

he looked down at the book in his lap, and his brow furrowed at the rust spots on the edges of the pages. somewhere between the second and third quarter of the book. he flipped to the page, and his brows furrowed harder as the rust had splattered across the spread. he brought the book closer to his eyes, and attempted to read it, his eyes closing quickly as he slumped against the window.

misha was thankful for each deep breath he took in his slumber.

he turned off the road, and slowed down as he drove into the desert they found themselves in. he prayed he remembered the way right.

and eventually, he rolled to a stop in front of a place they both used to call home.

it was dilapidated. tattered and hardly able to stand on its own. in the dawn's early light, he could see various rodents skittering from the beam of his headlights.

he exited the car, and shifted, his body crying from holding the position. he hissed, and shuffled to the trunk, removing the wheelchair, and grabbing the walking stick.

he shuffled to the passenger door, and slowly opened it, catching the doctor as he slumped over, still peacefully asleep. he gently moved him into the chair, and began a slow trek into the ruins of the red base.

the slow pace was what woke the doctor up, and the confusion was immediate.

"misha? misha??"

"i'm behind you, my love. try not to move."

"okay, okay... where are we?"

"we're visiting a friend."

the stairs leading down had been damn near paved over, making an efficient, though steep ramp as he peered down into the dark. he looked at the doctor, and his brows furrowed in concern.

he wasn't sure how he was going to accomplish this.

"did you bring me here to kill me?" he could hear his lover's voice begin to rise to panic. "where does this even lead? misha, have you lost your mind?"

"herbert... don't make this hard. hold onto the chair, please."

the doctor's face scrunched, and he clutched to the handlebars of the chair, as they began a slow, cautious descent down into the depths.

"misha..." it was a groan. a wary look of concern, his head remained on a swivel as they began to pick up speed. but misha held firm. he ignored the pain in his knuckles as he clutched the wheelchair, shuffling steadily.

"i will not let you fall."

they painstakingly reach the bottom as herbert's protests grew louder, before it suddenly silenced, the view before him stunning.

there, carefully maintained, was a sight they both used to call home.

the infirmary stood, the familiar fluorescent lights beaming through the small windows of the doors, and one young dell conagher stepped out of the adjacent workshop.

he hadn't aged a day.

"well, don't you two look like shit!"

misha couldn't help the smile. "we feel like shit. you look good for an eighty year old man." the texan laughed. hearty, and loud, and bright.

herbert was not convinced.

"do we... know him?"

"of course we do, this is dell. remember dell?"

"no i do not."

"that's alright, doc. we fuckin' hated each other, more often than not."

"you seem like the type of person i would hate. where are you from, oklahoma?"

dell laughed again, gently patting the man's shoulder.

"i'd be mad, but it feels fucked up to be mad at a cripple. misha, the infirmary is ready, i always tried to keep it maintained, so i'm glad it's seeing some use past me. funny to think it was gonna be you, though." misha smiled sadly.

"it's for the best."

with that he continued into the infirmary.

"doctor." it was soft. "do you remember how we met?"

"god, that was... decades ago."

"we met in war."

"right... heavy artillery, if i'm not mistaken. you've always had the build for it." he mused. "i was a doctor, once."

"one of the best."

"you think so?"

"i know so."

"this infirmary... it used to be mine, wasn't it? i could've retired before i took this job."

misha laughed.

"no, you couldn't. you lived for this job. i had to fight for you to retire by your sixties."

"i did, didn't i? god, i loved this job. i loved it because you were here, you know. well, and the cadavers. the free cadavers were pretty great. the benefits weren't too bad, either."

"we didn't have any benefits, love."

"i was not talking about health insurance." the smirk on the doctor's aged face gained a look of exasperation, before he fixed his face, turning away and beginning to dig through the drawers.

he knows he kept it somewhere...

ah, there they are.

he pulled out two handguns. one much larger than the other, but that was on purpose.

this was always a plan, if nothing else worked.

"doctor. do you remember the experiments you used to do? the ones you succeeded in?"

"of course i do! some of my best work was done on you!"

"we have one more. you wanted to wait until this moment to do so."

"oh?"

"yes... we wanted to see whether the machine still worked, with distance and time. you saw dell, yes?"

"yes! not sure how we worked with him, he seems so... young."

"there's a reason for that. we're going to see if we can take it the step further."

"what do you mean?" he gently set the larger handgun down in the doctor's lap.

"i wouldn't make you do anything you haven't done before. this should be easy enough for both of us." he kneeled down in front of the wheelchair, and gently reached out a hand, cupping his cheek, rubbing small circles with his thumb. "we've always wanted to do this."

and, at that moment, something within the doctor clicked. he blinked. blinked a couple of times. looked around again.

"oh... so it's time, then."

"there's a real chance this could work. i have faith in this. i need you to have faith in this, too."

herbert stared at the handgun, and leaned into the palm caressing his face. his eyes slipped shut, and for a moment, he remembered. he remembered the war. and the laughter. and that touch, so soft, but he knew those fingers have crushed him to pieces before. they also dressed him, and fed him when he didn't have the strength. those same hands slid a wedding ring across the side table that separated them both as they read. those same hands have torn shirts from his body as he bled out. those same hands have wiped his tears. held him tightly, pulled at his hair and gently pushed him further into the mattress.

his hands, now frail, were the same ones who put the gun in his hand, and helped him steady it against his temple.

"misha, when's the last time i told you you were beautiful?"

misha paused as he placed his gun against the doctor's skull.

"...it's been a while."

"i hope you never forgot."

"of course i didn't. on three."

"one."

"two."

their vision went red first. then black.

their lives were relived through flashes.

the soft arms of their mothers. the laughter of children around them. the screaming of their lives turning upside down. the cat eye frames of pauling, staring at them as she slid the employment paperwork over. their first meetings. their first fight. then their first argument.

and misha found himself in that dark hallway once again.

in a lot less pain. he was thankful for that.

age really destroyed him.

he took slow steps, eyes fixated on those doors he hadn't seen in years.

then he broke into a run as he heard it.

the whispers.

misha...

miiisha...

his eyes shot open, and he took a deep gasp.

“hi, you.”

the doctor stood before him. he stood. hair only just beginning to grey. eyes gleaming. wrinkles… slightly less prominent.

okay, much less prominent. he can keep that thought to himself, though.

he drank in the oxygen around him like he was just suffocated.

he looked around. looked back down at his hands.

strong. and hearty. and capable.

it was like they had never left.

at first, he couldn’t speak.

all he could do was wheeze.

and then he began to laugh.

he stood up, scooping the doctor in his arms. and the doctor clung back to him, the laughter infectious as they basked in each other, back in the primes of their lives.

they never thought they would call these years the prime of their lives. but they wouldn’t know any other way to think of it. they wouldn’t imagine calling these anything other than the best years of their lives.

and now, they get to do it again.

dell gave them the honor of a knock on the infirmary doors before peeking his head in.

“everything go as planned in— yiiikes…”

they burst out of the respawn room, victorious. and dell lit up, opening his arms to accept their embrace as they collided into him, the joy infecting him, too.

“oh, thank christ!”

“dell, you son of a bitch, i could kiss you! i’m not, but i damn near could!”

“i don’t want it, doc, save it for your husband!” he laughed out.

“i’ll do it.” misha clutched dell’s cheeks, forcibly puckering them up and slapping a kiss on his lips, eliciting a screech from the doctor as he grabbed misha in return and kissed him.

all dell could do was laugh.

“now y’all go have your happy ending. the right way, this time!”

herbert stared at misha and smiled softly.

“what do you say?”

misha leaned into the touch, and grabbed his lover’s free hand in his own.

scout: starting this post off with a bang and a word that scout couldn't pronounce if you gave him a thousand dollars and a blowjob, scout receives the literary device ekphrasis. this, in simpler terms, is a piece of media that is almost a "spinoff", though the more accurate term would be a direct reference, of another piece of work. now, whether you want to argue which came first, jerma, vince offer, or scout, it's pretty easy regarless to find that scout is the merc with the most references to outside media. down to the fact that they made his first name jeremy, due to his uncanny similarities with the previously named streamer! these are also known as direct allusions, of which allusions alone we discuss later in this post.

soldier: soldier isn't a man we know much about, and he's not really a man who've i found people really attempt to explore his background in depth, except for in teen fortress and kid fortress aus. for this, i find myself assigning soldier the literary trope in media res. this just means to start a story from the middle. and i think this is best for jane! jane is a man who lives in the present, and we don't see a lot of reflection or introspection about how we got here, and i'd argue that this is best for characters like jane, especially in the common time, where men like soldier (known violent and insensitive, borderline offensive) don't really "deserve" the grace of an explanation. men like jane are best to take as they approach you, whether that is in his finer moments where one'd be willing to consider him a friend, or at the worse end of the spectrum, where he would be a literal domestic terrorist. nobody wants to know why he's like that. they just want to enjoy him as he comes.

pyro: anthropomorphism, also known as personification, is going directly to pyro. i gave the passing consideration to give this to soldier, and then i realized that would've been stupid. pyro is the one who actively has hallucinations and delusions, and pyrovision is something of which garners pyro such favor through the fandom, alone. this feeds perfectly into pyro having this widely used literary device that is meant to elicit sympathy within the reader for something that, for all intents and purposes, should not get any form of sympathy whatsoever. pyro is a murderer. pyro canonically frightens and terrifies the team of which they're a part of. but we can't help but love them. they're just a baby, they're just a kid, they're just misunderstood, you can tell in the way the lenses of their gas mask glints at praise! just, ignore the body count, and the flamethrower...

demo: one of my least favorite literary devices to attempt to read, but the one everyone feels determined to make it make sense with demo, tavish gets the literary device of syncope. syncope is a tool for when the author attempts to force a word to fit a rhythm, usually by contracting it. these are things like e'er (ever), 'tis (it is), and ev'ry (every). i assign this to tavish so i can make this incredibly loud statement, this should not be used to attempt to write an accent. it is okay to write a legible sentence for demo. it is okay to use words like "slurred" and "mumbled incoherently", it is okay to simply say "the scot couldn't get a comprehensible sentence out through his drunken stupor". because you don't have to give your audience a brain aneurysm attempting to register what you're trying to say in an attempt to make him feel "in character". save it. please god, just save it. please write this man legibly, or just don't write him. it's okay for tavish to make sense. the scottish accent is beautiful, and it's not that hard to understand. best advice i can give, go read scottish people's tweets. hilarious people, and understandable in the written word.

heavy: if i don't assign misha the general concept of symbolism it's just not me. i didn't write it. i think misha believes in omens. i think he finds them everywhere. i think this absolutely loses any form of gravity when he brings it up to anyone that isn't demo. this man reads tea leaves in his free time. this man interprets dreams, and this man absolutely must get the concept of symbolism. hell, it's in his name, given to him lovingly by the fandom. misha, or mikhail. a colloquialism for "bear". what's a bear do, y'all? they protect. they are violent to protect their families. they are seen as regal, solitary creatures. they are connected to the concept of motherhood, of which can be connected further to misha's close relationship with his family! bears are seen as a symbol of power, and resilience, and the cycle of renewal thorugh the process of hibernation. he's just a walking symbol, and i love to express that through misha, specifically.

engineer: i would almost feel foolish to not assign this to engineer, and don't ask me why, because i'm going to attempt to explain it here, as i tell you that dell gets the literary device portmanteau. now, a portmanteau in layman's terms is taking two words and their meanings and smushing them together. smog (smoke/fog). vlog (video blog). bromance (brother/romance). i think dell is a man of efficiency before he is anything else. i think dell comes up with more words that theoretically shouldn't make sense but end up do making sense because he's got a lotta shit to say and teammates with the attention spans of gnats. and i think it's almost best used with dell, as his team would describe him as a brainiac, as opposed to the doctor, who they simply consider a madman. portmanteaus are simply interesting, standing alone. highly recommend just looking at a list and finding all of the words you would've never assumed are one, and then come back here, reread this, and then go back and read them all in engineer's voice.

medic: don't ask me why i've always assigned this specifc literary device to medic, but it's always been my personal favorite to use with the doctor specifically. i love love love using a climax, and its inverse moreso with medic. now, climax is not used here in the way you would think (get your head out of the gutter...), a "climax" in the literary sense is when a list is written in order of importance, for example: "medic finds that he's placing more thought into things. how he dresses himself, the way his paperwork is filed, the way he interacts with his teammates." there's a buildup until the end, where we shift from how he cares for himself in a vain way, up to his interpersonal relationships, and the inverse is even better when it comes to writing scenes of stress. "he just can't handle it. he can't handle the idea of being left alone, he can't handle the thought of ruining his friendship with misha, and he can't handle the sound of that god damn buzzing, anymore." it's just such a delicious device to me, and one i keep on my hip.

sniper: sniper gets irony. i think sniper lives an entire life of dramatic irony, specifically. the dramatic irony being, within the comics, the second we as the audience understood that all australians have been exposed to australium, most of us who had more free time on our hands than we should could make the connection that sniper isn't australian. what he actually was? who knew, but we knew he wasn't australian. that he was the only australian unaffected by australium would make no sense if he was born and raised in the australian outback. this is something that i don't even think the writing team put too much thought into until they put that little piece of lore in there. and i think it beautifully subverts what we now see as the present. sniper isn't australian, he's a new zealander, and all of us know this. but, he continues to proudly claim his australian heritage. it's where he was raised. it's where his parents are. he's an australian, whether they want him or not. and he's one of the best out there.

scout: scout puts people to shame on the dance floor. he’s got a minimum of five dance moves he’ll bust out anywhere. he does the jerk, he does the charleston, he’ll hit you with the cabbage patch, he knows how to moonwalk and his finisher is the worm. people scream about scout on a dance floor. dell is trying to teach him how to line dance, he’s good at it, it’s just not his favorite thing to do. but if dell asks, he does it. it’s a small thing he can do.

soldier: soldier actually has a hellishly good robot. and he’s taken quite well to a line dance. it’s nice when he is doing the exact same thing everyone else is and he can look to someone else and find his place if he loses it. he doesn’t mind a good swing, but most of the team doesn’t have the rhythm for that. dell eats it up, but dell is... a lot. jane loves it. he insists rhythm can be learned. he’s generally correct… kind of… he’s got more rhythm than he thinks he does! if he keeps it up with dell he'll be better than anyone realizes.

pyro: pyro freestyle dances but it’s not good. pyro like… shakes? and jiggles? and arguably crumps, and sometimes pyro can make some shit clap, no hands. but pyro is not a dancer and should not be trusted to put together choreography of any kind. that’s just not what they do. frankly, probably shouldn’t trust them to perform a simple 8 count either. they’re a mercenary, not a military kid. they did not have to know how to stay in time, and if that’s what you want from pyro… what pyro do you know? pyro learned the kazotsky kick because it was physically challenging. mannrobics was learned for a likewise reason, but it's easier. moreso cardio than a full leg workout.

demo: tavish can make some shit shake. tavish hits the tina belcher more often than not, and is a competent boot scootin’ boogier. tavish just doesn’t like to stay on anyone’s time or rhythm but his own. his mother very proudly calls him a man who “dances to the beat of his own drum” and this is true in the most literal sense. give him a one and three beat and he’s jamming to the 4-tee-te-ta and stock still for the rest of it. but he’s quite a lovey dancer!

heavy: do not get this man mistaken, because misha can bust a damn move. king of the old man dances, misha's two step is professional, damn near. he can get into it real quick with a nice succinct snap. but it's not the charleston; it's just a real tight two step. perfect for every occasion! and we don't even have to start on the hopak. man's sturdy on his feet. not quick with it, but sturdy! misha will gently lay his weapons down to dance on the point. he will also dance on a blu corpse. but they're funnier to laugh at.

engineer: engineer has the southern dance man starter pack. he's got the line dance. he's got swing, he can do both choreo and improv (get on a dance floor with that man, if you think you've got the stones, because that is a wild ride. if you don't have the stamina, dell will dance you into the ground. not even in a bad way. he's just crazy with it.) as war wears on him, his knees don't bend as well as they used to, so he's thankful for the team to indulge him in a good swing dance, or a line dance, and learning some of the team's own dance moves has been pretty fun!

medic: i know that man got some motion in the hips and i know it’s all he’s got to his name. his best feature about him are those horse legs he’s got and the junk filling his trunk and i know it jiggles when he walks. a shock to dell, this man can boot scoot with the best of ‘em! quite talented footwork. he never quite knows what to do with his hands, so they flail, or do some odd pumping action. medic likes to dance! it is a nice expelling of energy without having to die for it.

sniper: sniper is in the same boat as pyro where sniper does a freestyle dance, and it's... definitely some movement. he's definitely doing some form of motion with his body to some kind of rhythm. sniper has two modes, sniper bounces in place, a little rubberhose type bounce, sometimes he throws his hands up in some form of faux jazz hand, or a cheeky snap, but it's very basic. classic, works in all settings. then, there's sniper's full body dance, which is a lot of hip gyrating, and slow arm motions making these borderline ominous pictures with his body, if he was naked around a campfire he wouldn't look out of place.

scout: scout swears he is a miku stan. that asshole's no miku stan. he likes kamui. he thinks kamui is smooth, and finds his design to be preferable over "the blue one", though he doesn't have many options when it came to male vocaloid voicebanks. kamui is not heavily used as a voicebank on his own, so there's not many songs for scout to listen to. he likes the tragedy of chateau cepage. it's creepy. he kinda likes it.

soldier: soldier doesn't mind miku. he knows that one pretty confidently. there's miku, and the drill-bit one, and the yellow one, and the other yellow ones... everything he knows about vocaloid he learned through pyro, he is hardly aware of what's going on. pyro holds soldier captive to talk about vocaloid. jane falls asleep with his eyes open. he's learning slowly but surely. it's better than nothing when he doesn't want to do it.

pyro: pyro is the vocaloid expert. pyro keeps the team stuck where they are, they're trying to hold the point and pyro is just going on and on about the various fanmade lore, and the team is almost bored to tears. they'd rather die, sometimes, than have to sit through pyro's fervent lore drops at any given time. the shit puts them to sleep on the field. and pyro loves miku. their favorite song is 50/50

demo: i saw a single tiktok that said demo and meiko would be friends and i never let that go. i hold that so closely to my heart now, because they absolutely would love each other, this middle aged woman who's trying to be a star... and she's an alcoholic tavish would just adore her. his favorite is evil food eater conchita, he just prefers how she's tuned in that song, but he has also come to really enjoy nostalogic.

heavy: to me, heavy very much seems like a luka guy. that just seems so much like him. he'd like her, and her long pink hair, and the fact that she was the first vocaloid to support both japanese and english. he'd like the general personality the fandom decided for her, at least he wouldn't care enough to go about disputing it online. and her crazier songs are so lovely, at least to him. his favorite is circus monster.

engineer: it's unsure who got it from who: whether dell got the vocaloid obsession from pyro, or if pyro is just the speaker for dell to funnel the obsession through. dell would remember the first time they programmed a computer to sing. dell would cry with delight at the concept of vocaloid. at the fact there's different ones. he would be stunned. he'd play with them himself. see if he can get them to maybe give his own little machines some voice prompts.

medic: medic swears up and down he doesn't know any of them. the truth is he really doesn't care about miku. the loves the kagamine twins with his entire heart and soul. past their weird, fucked up lovers-soulmates-twins-cousins bullshit to which he absolutely does plug his ears to, he loves the twins. and they're— fine, alone. he's got his favorites of their solo careers. rin's creepier songs are a hoot. len's... tolerable, on his own. but they're meant to be together.

sniper: sniper doesn't have a favorite vocaloid, but kikuo is his favorite producer. he wouldn't go out of his way to listen to vocaloid, but he wasn't totally tuning pyro out as they excitedly chirp about the songs they find themselves enjoying. and while sniper doesn't really mind the lore, doesn't feel one way or another about it, he's really come to enjoy kikuo as a producer, and miku as a voicebank. his favorite is mind brand. he likes the discordant sound.

scout: "wh— what the fuck are you talkin' about, red's not your fuckin' color? what, you'd rather be turnin' fuckin' blue or somethin'? red's not good enough for ya, huh? nahh, nahnahnahnahnah, because what the fuck are you talkin' about? sayin' red's not your fuckin' color, red's everyone's fuckin' color! yanno, if you look at it right, red's everyone's guaranteed color, red makes you look alive! red makes you look sexy! some say red's the new black, yanno. it's slimming. and what's a known sexy color? red. what's the most popular color of makeup? red. what color are the prettiest flowers? red. hell, if you squint hard enough, every color's red! brown? red with some orange and green in it. black? everything and some red in it. yellow? red minus the orange. you're laughin' cause i'm right! you fuckin' know i'm right!, look at your fuckin' face dude! you're red!"

soldier: there are three colors you do not get to disrespect in front of soldier. and that is red, white, and blue. his colors don't run. shit, his colors don't even walk. you can hear the horns proudly blare the star spangled banner as he stares at you, utterly offended at your words. firstly, how dare you say that to him. red is one of the best colors out there, you are quite literally spouting nonsense. if you insist it he just tells you to shut up. he can't believe his ears. how dare you even speak about one of the best colors in the world like that. red. the color of a crisp, ripe apple. the color of the changing leaves. hell, his team's color. he's almost brokenhearted. how could anyone disrespect the color red like that.

pyro: pyro is equally dumbfounded. they decide to take it the step further. they take your hands, they grab some car keys and they hand them over to you. you spend an enjoyable time figuring out where the keys go, and you are in a lovely mood as you begin to drive. you smile begins to falter as they lead you directly to the blu base. they pat your shoulder reassuringly, and enter the base. you are very familiar to the quiet whoosh and crackle of a fire starting. almost on autopilot, you bar every door. as you reach the final door, pyro steps through. you both stand, shoulder to shoulder, as the flames begin to climb and the growing noises of panic reached your ears, and your eyes flicked to a stray ember. maybe pyro's right. maybe's there's a certain beauty to red. in all its forms.

demo: tavish pauses for a moment. ponders over what you just said to him. no red? none at all? no vermillion? no carmine? candy apple red? well, damn... he shrugs. sometimes he supposes it happens that way. some people just have colors they prefer over others! he fancied himself more of a green man, himself. always thought it looked nicer against his skin... oh, speaking of which, he knows what color red you like. yeah, it's mahogany, right? he laughs at your awkward silence, at the sudden realization of the vast variety of reds. there's nothing wrong with being picky about a color. for what it's worth, mahogany looks beautiful on you. he likes it on your purses. he'll keep an eye out.

heavy: misha isn't going to argue with you about your aversion to the color red. he personally likes the color. one could even say it's one of his favorites. vivid, and beautiful, and bright. he thinks everyone looks good in red. he thinks red is an abundant natural color for a reason. he thinks it serves a purpose. misha is also fully aware of what it looks like for him to try to advocate for a good crimson. so he's not going to do that. one of the few men who will not attempt to put more red in your life than you already have, he may be somewhat disappointed if you resign yourself totally to the color, the same way he will be oddly satisfied at its appearance. it's like an old friend to him. and if someone else brings up their affinity for the color, he will chime in.

engineer: engineer also has a complicated relationship with the color red. but at the end of the day, this dell conagher looks better in red. he argues in the sense that it's the team color. but even dell doesn't quite believe that. aside from spy, and occasionally pyro, dell is the only team member who regularly wears blue to interact with the administrator. so when you start complaining of the color, he shrugs. it's unfortunate, but it is the team color. and the team can't have you bringing down morale by trying to stand out too much. besides, red looks good on everyone. eventually you'll find yours, too. but that shirt'll go well with some denim shorts. he'd start there, he muses.

medic: he snorts. as you turn to glance at him, his face returns to neutrality. he implores you to continue. you ramble on. he holds a hand out with a smile. a wordless request of your own hand. you think nothing of it. you should know better than to trust the doctor, as your casual placement of your hand in his causes his grip to tighten, and a blade to quickly be drawn across your wrist. you hiss involuntarily, you watch the blood begin to bead up. it wasn't deep. akin to a cat scratch. and he drags his thumb across it. smears it against your skin. smirks in satisfaction as he licks the residue off his thumb. "nonsense. it suits you beautifully."

sniper: can mick tell you a secret? red's not his favorite color either. but it's his team color. he sees it everywhere. sniper is aware that he feels a connection to the color red because he's contractually obligated to wear it every day unless he takes a day off. and with a second one of him running around, it does help if the two micks are color coded. he's the red one. and seeing red for so long, surrounded by it with his team, has made red a safe color. he feels support when he sees large splashes of red with bloodied accents. he knows the team is around him. and he doesn't quite feel safe if he doesn't see at least one red article of clothing on someone he trusts. so keep at least a shirt. for him.

scout: scout is a cocomelon baby in the sense that when scout is in the state where he would have to use one of my coping mechanisms, nicki minaj's pink friday is his lord and savior. now, i am not a barb. i was, however, a sentient tween/teen in the late aughts/early teens listening to slow jamz every sunday night on the pop radio wondering when it was my turn to be happy, so walk with me here. i can see it, it's a week out from the announcement of his mother's unfortunate passing. he's sitting in snipes' van, empty. genuinely considering suicide. snipes is sitting in the driver's seat. he slowly reaches for the stereo. he cuts it on. all you hear is "boobadooba doop doop doop— oh!" scout bursts out in tears. he's done. he can't go on. he's at his lowest, singing "shawty imma only tell you this once— you the illest—" he's blubbering.

soldier: this is a terrible coping mechanism. nobody should actually be doing this. but i do this. i stand in a public area and scream. top of my lungs. bloody murder. not for a long time, just enough to have everyone who could possibly be outside at that time be incredibly concerned about what that noise was. this is not an intelligent thing to do, by the way. this is something that actively makes everyone else's days worse. which is how i know that soldier does this. soldier just screams. not long, but at the top of his lungs. he blows his lid, he's unashamed to admit it. but once it's blown, he's cool. then he tells everyone else to get over it. everyone has their coping mechanisms. this one's his. he just screams at people. or he just shrieks in general. and then he's fine!

pyro: i actually pulled this one from pyro ten years ago. i regularly set things on fire. i got into the habit when i first got into tf2, i would draw, and i was bad at it, but i had brothers, and they would regularly take my drawings to my mom to make fun of me, and my mom didn't really... care, one way or another. she had bigger fish to fry. so i was getting embarrassed for no reason. so i just started burning my drawings after i was done with them. realized you couldn't recreate or piece together paper burned to ash, and i was trying to be super edgy, and then it became a surefire method of removal. a lot of things got burned that i just didn't want in that house anymore. nobody knows where they went, and that's fine. i do. i kept this habit. it was to a point i was destroying and burning books by the page. and still sometimes i get so mad and i realize i can't take myself out of the equation but i can take my work out of it. and that's so much worse. it hurts me so much more.

demo: now i'm a legal adult, so i can say this, and also give the stark reminder that these are god-awful coping mechanisms and that title isn't a joke. but i also stole this from tavish, i drink damn near every day. the beautiful part of it is i'm a lightweight, so i get about half a glass of wine in and i'm good. the issue is recently i've taken to bypassing the glass entirely. i just carry the bottle. and this is fine when it's cute things, like shooters of liquor, or a bottle of soju. i'm currently drinking sayuri sake, comes in a small rose tinted bottle, it's kawaii. the issue comes in when i'm carrying an entire bottle of sauvignon room to room. i look like i have a problem when my fridge has nothing but a brita, liquor, bread, milk eggs and condiments. i look like i'm going through a midlife crisis. the pocket medic i spawn on my shoulder has a heart attack every time we look at my fridge.

heavy: misha i'm so sorry. walk with me on this, it's sweet at the end. misha is plagued. it twists his stomach. he finds himself unable to eat. he knows he should, he wants to, even, but he looks at the plates and they just... turn his stomach. because it's not just the fact that he wants to eat, it's the sense of delayed gratification. but this freaks the team out. they start just offering him small items throughout the day. a sleeve of crackers. a fruit smoothie. milk. a spare sandwich. not as well-made as his, but something. anything. because the longer misha doesn't eat, the angrier he gets. eventually the team is begging him. something. anything. anything he wants, they will go to the ends of the earth, please god, what can they get for him so he can eat. and he pauses. tries to parse through the hunger. quietly states he wouldn't mind some mashed potato pancakes. it's small, but it's a start. and the team leaps at the opportunity to please him. it's a foot in the door.

engineer: i think this is so funny. and i hate this about myself, but i think it's so funny with dell. because i know it's accurate. dell abandons shit out of the sheer spite of it not being received how he expected it to. he's making a food copier that can translate the genetic material of any food possible and redistribute it in a convenient capsule. all the flavor, all the caloric intake, none of the hassle! oh— oh, it's just... it's just "fine". okay. no, no, it's fine. it's "fine". well, since you obviously thought that idea was utter dogshit. he's got another! not as serious this time, he was thinking about painting his workshop— oh. okay, nevermind. you will never hear about these things again. he'll never work on it again, and then, when people ask him what is happening to these prototypes, he shrugs. just lost the passion for it. leave him alone.

medic: my personal favorite, and everyone's most hated thing about me, which means i have to assign it to the doctor. i know he makes suicide jokes. especially when he's so mad he can't see straight. the team, and they don't know why they do this to him, but if they ask him how it's going on a particularly bad day— if he doesn't just tell them to shut the fuck up— he turns to them and says "i'm doing great! this is the best day of my life! i'm having such a good time— i'm going to fucking kill myself tomorrow!" and the team groans. it's a bad joke. it's not funny to them. sometimes they tell him to do it. sometimes he does. but he just keeps coming back, it loses the spark. why kill yourself, doctor, just wait until tomorrow. he also tells the team to kill themselves. says it with a shrug. they just come back, so should he really feel bad?

sniper: back when i owned a vehicle, this was one of the better of my worse coping mechanisms. sniper is a man who is no stranger to being behind the wheel. he knows he's getting bad when he's just not going anywhere. he'll drive around the same roundabout in teufort until he's burned all of his gas, then he has to stop for more. and he still doesn't go anywhere. he just drives. sometimes, when it's dark enough, and the moon is nowhere to be seen, he finds himself getting lost. turning off the road and just driving through the desert. hoping he doesn't hit anything that could potentially take them both out of commission. but he always goes back to the base before the sunrise. sometimes he just doesn't know how he gets there. and there have been times he's had to abandon the van to get back to the base in time for battle. he's worse those days than he was the day before them.

-there is no shame in being introduced to mytholgy from something like percy jackson, epic the musical or anything like that, but keep in mind that actual myths are going to be VERY different from modern retellings

-the myth of medusa you probably know (her being a victim of poseidon and being cursed by athena) isn't 100% accurate to GREEK mythology (look up ovid)

-there is no version of persephone's abduction in which persephone willingly stays with hades, that's a tumblr invention (look up homeric hymn to demeter)

-as much as i would like it, no, cerberus' name does not mean "spot" (probably a misunderstanding from this wikipedia article)

-zeus isn't the only god who does terrible things to women, your fav male god probably has done the same

-on that note, your fav greek hero has probably done some heinous shit as well

-gods are more complicated than simply being "god of [insert thing]", many titles overlap between gods and some may even change depending on where they were worshipped

-also, apollo and artemis being the gods of the sun and the moon isn't 100% accurate, their main aspects as deities originally were music and the hunt

-titans and gods aren't two wholly different concepts, titan is just the word used to decribe the generation of gods before the olympians

-hector isn't the villain some people make him out to be

-hephaestus WAS married to aphrodite. they divorced. yes, divorce was a thing in ancient greece. hephaestus' wife is aglaia

-ancient greek society didn't have the same concepts of sexuality that we have now, it's incorrect to describe virgin goddesses like artemis and athena as lesbians, BUT it's also not wholly accurate to describe them as aromantic/asexual, it's more complex than that

-you can never fully understand certain myths if you don't understand the societal context in which they were told

-myths have lots and lots of retellings, there isn't one singular "canon", but we can try to distinguish between older and newer versions and bewteen greek and roman versions

-most of what you know about sparta is probably incorrect

-reading/waching retellings is not a substitute to reading the original myths, read the iliad! read the odyssey! i know they may seem intimidating, but they're much more entertaining than you may think

Not only he has accomplished something truly mesmerizing, he has done it with so much integrity and dedication for his craft.

We can feel how much he loves this project, how much he has dedicated to it, how much he has poured into it and it payed off.