#australium

FIRST OF ALL, the Administrator's plan. What happened to "plan so disturbing that several US senators pardoned her for the Poopy Joe incident?" What even was her plan actually was it just to keep the fighting going forever? Then what was the point of Australiummaxxing after Redmond and Blutarch died?

What's up with Zepheniah’s hooked up corpse. Isn't his ghost still around? He certainly is by the seventh scream fortress comic, which takes place during MvM. His will says he won't rest until he's done being mad at the world idk how that relates to anything.

OH HORSEMANN MY HORSEMANN. Why is Zepheniah claiming to be an only child? And it's not a retcon bc later on Soldier pulls up the family photo WITH SILAS IN IT. Where did he even get that. Anyways. The only explanation is either 1) some in-universe attempt by Zepheniah to write Silas out of history (implied by the two copies of the quarterly concern, one seen in a hidden page in the classless update and the other in the background of the Engineer update), or 2) ...i was going to say Silas was actually his cousin or something but that wouldn't make sense if the siblings of Zepheniah’s dad all died young. Urgh. I hoped the Horsemann would return and put to rest the implications dragged up by scream fortress two but alas twas not to be.

What's with the 3 different covers of a young Administrator? My theory is they're supposed to represent three possible backstories the writers were cooking and wouldn't commit to. Who knows.

CHARLES DARLING. The triplets' birth certificate claimed that their mother was a Darling (save me Bette Mann etc etc), and that had me convinced Charles was going to be at least RELEVANT. Why else would he, a joke antagonist introduced in the War! Comic, show up at all? Looking for Australium, no less? I tell you that flashback of him and Maxton had me CONVINCED something would happen. Especially with the two of them lowkey treating him like shit.

So so so much Admin stuff left unexplained. Seeing her child self in the Australium. The census dated back to 1850 with "HELEN" on it. Telling Engie "your family has already done so much for me". By that she could have just meanth Radigan making an immortality machine for Redmond as well as Blutarch I guess, but ??? I liked the Emily reference tho that was something one of the artists reffered to her as for the Engie Update Comic by mistake and later took back so neat callback lmao.

SPEAKING OF RADIGAN. Nothing on who the third Australium machine went to. Presumably Admin I guess? Not explained, never will be probably.

Who was the person in the torn Mann Family portrait? My main theory was always either an earlier version/design of Grey or a Darling, but in the picture Soldier shows (SERIOUSLY WHERE DID HE GET THAT) we can't even see the outline of a person around his thumb. It almost looks like they just made a version of the picture without anyone in the middle and called it a day.

TFI having other mercenary groups came out of fucking nowhere, even in comic six. The T and F presumably stand for "Team Fortress", fuck you mean "Team Citadel", "Team Vanguard", giant fucking statue of random epic looking mercs??? What is happening. They did NOT explain that shit at all. Multiple, seemingly incredibly competent teams are NOT "eighteen perfect idiots". Did Poopy Joe die for nothing.

One of the top posts I've ever made is the one where I point out the date Spy and Scout got arrested on that newspaper: September 7th, 1972. This means the rest of the comics should take place 5½ months later i.e. February/March 1973. Ergo, 1979 could not be "seven years later". The comics seem to think themselves that they're set in 1972 already, there's a few lines about it but for the life of me I can't remember. Something something however many years since Zepheniah died blah blah year the triplets were born. Whatever. It's on my timeline probably.

Smaller thing, but embarrassing lack of a full name reveal for Heavy (I originally said And Medic here but. Herbert Ludwig was revealed). Spy also, but I wasn't really expecting that. Heavy shall remain Mikhail "Mischa" Weponzgy in my heart.

SO IN CONCLUSION: the writers went in with no clue how to end the story, something made evident by the possibility of the 4chan leaks being an early script and also entirely fucking different.

Still, there were a lot of lore unrelated things I did enjoy: the fact that the mercs actually got a happy ending, for one thing. Sniper stealing a plane, Scout maturing and moving on from Pauling, Pyro literally just being overjoyed to see Engie again, babies!!! The fact we even got a comic! How crazy is that? At least we didn't have to wait another seven years.