#thetriggeredhappy

I love when characters that are usually in their own unique situation (like the mercs fighting everyday and such), are put into normal, everyday situations that we go through irl. Like a holiday trip to see your bf’s family!! It’s cute!! It makes me sob from how cute it is!! And the angst just hits so much harder! I hope this makes sense. Sorry idk how to put it honestly.

the part of the fic where scout reflects on the dogtags, how they were passed down to him, has some of the most powerful phrases that give me a lot of Thoughts (take everything i say with a grain of salt, i might be all wrong about this)

jack’s death “because the war was anything but clean.”

henry’s death “for a war that even Henry didn’t support.”

tony’s warning “don’t be the third O’Connell boy to die and leave us those dog tags”

and scout’s final reflection on it that he “didn’t know if he’d technically broken those instructions now, but as far as he could tell, he hadn’t sent them back the dog tags”

end of chapter “ he went to sleep and dreamed of war.”

scout’s dogtags is a popular topic in tf2 fic. dogtags are a possession, something personal. scout is the only character to have them. there’s an aire of mystery around them, since dogtags usually have a name on them, a meaning. what does it mean to scout? different for every writer, but the use of them in this fic is really interesting to me for some reason.

the motif of war, and the symbol of the dogtags, are really well written in running blind. war is what scarred scout’s family, war is what scarred his eyes, and war is what is bringing him to a better future, to love. it runs in his blood. the dogtags represent the tearing of this branch of his family tree, limb by limb, dangerously close to him; what he struggles to let go of and he can’t seem to move on from.