The Acoleyet's extermination included the backbone of the server.
The backbone of the server is what allows it to recover from past events by reestablishing authority.
By destroying the backbone...
Anarchy will decide its fate.
The Scratched Universe
is a Team Fortress 2 Machinima series created by Blackimus.
The story chronicles the adventures of multiple parties, all of them dealing with an encroaching alien threat in their own ways. The first party contains KIA and Heavy Guy, two mercenaries fighting against the aliens with Stands, spiritual embodiments of their personalities inspired by and named after the kinds found in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Not only are they improving their fighting skills, but they're also recruiting fellow Stand-Users along the way, so they can counter the aliens for good. The second party contains Fixer and Jumpsuit, two civilians who barely survived an alien attack and are trying to live comfortably while working through their trauma. Their first step into their new lives sees them become part of a cleanup crew. Meanwhile, the aliens themselves are small Walker robots capable of infecting mercenaries with the Distortion virus, which disfigures their faces—sometimes even their whole bodies—and turns them into monstrous drones in service of the Walkers' goals.
Intended as a loveletter to TF2 and its fanbase, this series takes place in a reinterpretation of the game's universe, in which the game's mechanics are foundational to its world's society, and the nine mercenary classes are now races. The world is a network of the game's servers housing the game's various maps, along with some original locations meant for civilian life. The different modes of play are categorized under Fragging Duty and Scrapping Duty jobs, respectively, and they are popular methods of earning cash. All of this is watched carefully by the Valiant Alliance Corporation (Or V.A.C.), a reinterpretation of TF2's anti-cheat program as a military and law-enforcement organization. Its members also observe the main characters' lives with great interest ever since their encounters with the Distorted, who are largely based on the TF2 Freak phenomenon, with a number of cited inspirations like the Vagineer or Painis Cupcake.
The series can be viewed here.
The Scratched Universe Provides examples of:
- Action Horror: The Scratched Universe blends elements of survival horror with Shonen anime. The primary antagonists are a group of aliens who can effortlessly mutate mercenaries into monsters called the Distorted. These mutations can grow quite grotesque, and every encounter with the Distorted and their progenitors is laced with tension and fright. However, the protagonists of the show are people who, in one way or another, are extremely well-equipped to handle the threat. KIA's party consists of people with Stands, these spiritual personifications of themselves who give them super powers on top of their innate strengths. Fixer's party consists of two mechanically-inclined Scouts who rely on their wits as much as their weaponry, along with a robot Scout who carries even stronger weaponry and fighting skill. And finally, the V.A.C. is a security team dedicated to quelling Distorted outbreaks. Throughout their encounters with the Distorted, each party grows stronger, as do their bonds with each other.
- Adapted Out: Certain comic-exclusive characters who are important to Team Fortress 2's story do not appear in The Scratched Universe. At most, they are mentioned, such as Gray Mann, who is still responsible for supplying the robots for Scrapping Duty. And as Foster worries in "Crossroads," Gray could come after Bonkbot and take away Fixer and Jumpsuit's strongest protection against the Distortion.
- Bilingual Bonus: Of a sort. Reversing the videos reveals that the Distorted speak in coherent sentences and are not just random sound-bites.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- The first four episodes of the series—ending with both parts of Episode 3—are split across three different points of view: KIA's, Heavy Guy's, and Fixer and Jumpsuit's, with the only unifying elements being the use of Stands and the presence of the Distortion. According to Blackimus in his first Q&A video, this storytelling format was the product of the initial vision for The Scratched Universe, that being an anthology piece with each episode having its own cast of characters. Past the aforementioned recurring elements, none of the characters would've been revisited. However, very early into the first episode's production, Blackimus determined that he'd rather create a continuous narrative with a constant cast and explicit continuity to follow. This decision was put into practice with "Crossroads," in which show unites the plot threads so far with an A-plot and B-plot format.
- The use of Text-To-Speech programs for character dialog wouldn't start seeing use until "Crossroads." Until then, the series relied exclusively on either Blackimus' voice acting or sentence-mixing expected from fan-made TF2 content in Gmod or SFM.
- Fighting Spirit: With JoJo's Bizarre Adventure being a strong influence over the series' magic, many heroes and antagonists alike have physical incarnations of their spiritual power called Stands. Mechanically, the concept isn't a one-to-one copy with its basis; Stands in TSU follow many of their own rules, to keep them distinct from their bases and balanced within the context of the story's conflict.
- Gameplay and Story Integration: Certain game mechanics that would normally make no sense from a story perspective are seamlessly integrated into the world.
- Servers and networks are treated in this world as physical locations and railway networks.
- Gameplay matches here are treated as actual aspects of their jobs, referred to as fragging duty (player v. player matches) and scrapping duty (Mann v. Machine matches). Many other jobs are built around the maintenance of these matches and the equivalent of in-game stores and services.
- In the real world, the V.A.C. is an anti-cheat software. In this series, it is contextualized in-universe as a military organization meant to protect servers and, if need be, contain and eliminate the Distorted.
- Our Zombies Are Different: The Distorted, those infected with Distortion, are functionally zombies, produced when an Alien Walker flashes a Mercenary in the eyes with their lights. There is no way to reverse the transformation, and their remains melt upon being killed, rendering any sort of recovery impossible. Their name comes from their horrifically distorted physical features; their faces are typically the only parts affected, but specialized variants exhibit other mutations across their bodies.
- Uncanny Valley: Distorted Pyros have a variant that appears completely normal, save for missing their goggles, letting people see their extremely unsettling eyes gaze upon them. The Distorted are aware of this effect and may hide it for stealth purposes.
