Team Fortress 2

So there's this workshop creation called "Big Slappy" for Scout, which just gives him a comically fat ass. Over the last few weeks it has been banned and unbanned over 10 times. I don't think there are many things in the community that can beat this in terms of absurdity.

Everyone the legendary (un-themed) summer update is here, the website says a bunch of community maps were just added (but no new weapons), everyone get on PRONTO!

Notably, Versus Saxton Hale maps were included. Previously, that was a community map only mode.

I believe they're currently disabled because they broke immediately, but they'll be playable sooner or later.

The game just reached its highest concurrent player peak ever (over 200K I think), and everyone and their mother has their eyes on Sylvia the seal at the Selbyen map. Isn't she wonderful?

Bots are getting VAC banned a lot more now, too.

There was (probably) a stealth VAC update. They kinda have to hide those.

Huh, maybe I should find my mouse and hop back on. I bought a gaming PC for this bloody game and immediately noped out upon seeing all the problems and told I would be "found out" if I capped on 2fort.

To be fair, 2fort is essentially considered unofficial neutral ground by the community after all these years. Place to boot up and either endlessly train against one another, goof off, or both. Completing the objective and thereby ending the match is such a faux pas that I wouldn't be surprised if it got you suspected of being a bot, given the epidemic of them over the past few years lol

Also there's not much need of a big beef gaming PC for TF2; it's nearly a decade and a half old at this point. If your rig can handle games from the early-mid 2010s and your internet connection is solid then you can play it no problem. I know folks who run it on several year old laptops

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Jul 14th 2023 at 9:10:43 AM

My favorite 2fort memory is when I once grabbed the intelligence, found an ally on my team, and the two of us standed there facing each other mashing the "drop intelligence" button non-stop to make the Announcer freak out for several minutes straight.

"WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE- WE-"

The fact that the other person was wearing the full yeti costume, so I got to stare at that dopey face for the entire time, made it twice as funny.

2fort is the land of bits and tomfoolery, and it's great. You want an actual CTF match, play Doublecross.

CTF's in general are team deathmatch-positive, although the new Pelican Peak looks a bit too open for that. In general, it feels like most of the new maps are surprisingly spacious. Route 66 Phoenix comes to mind.

Otherwise, there's also 5 CP; those were the days when Powerhouse didn't have a timer...

People actually play on 2Fort sometimes. Just not often. If youre trying too hard, people are more likely to get angry.

I used to love turtling in the sewers to give my team significant flanking power. Then one day the enemy Heavy barged in with his buddies and smashed my stuff. I forgot he could say what he said next, but it really put me on the spot.

"I hear someone building diaper changing station!"

Also, as hard as it is to play 2Fort legitimately, try getting the contracts on High Tower. People will hate you if you try to interrupt their infinite deathmatch for even a second.

You'd think these people would realize 24/7 2Fort and Hightower community servers exist where they don't have to worry about capping, but yet here they are.

The obligatory seal post.

The VSH maps are now working in casual. Huzzah.

So... I've been on the periphery of the TF2 fandom for over a decade, with little to no interest in the game itself but considerable curiosity about the lore and fan community-made content. That said, this has faded considerably since the first few years, and the IP has been stuck in the low rungs of priority among my wide range of interests.

Then on November 7th, late at night, while randomly browsing YouTube's main page, I noticed that one of the recommendations was a certain fan animation titled Creation of Mimi-Sentry, on account of it being on my Watch Later list; it reminded me that I saw the video in my recommendations for some reason many months ago and added it to that playlist for later watching, mainly because either around that time or some short time before hand, I had seen a few recently made fan arts of this "Mimi-Sentry" in my Twitter notifications from one of the numerous artists that I follow. The art pieces in question, while not bad, weren't anything spectacular, so it only minimally piqued my interest.

Having nothing better to do at the time, I played it to see if there's anything interesting about this obviously fan-made character.

I expected from the title and what I remembered of the fan arts to see the resident gadgeteer genius build a plucky robot girl out of the remains of his sentry gun; the subsequent ass-kicking was similarly unsurprising, but the sheer quality of the animation and the choreography of the action scenes easily made up for that.

What I didn't expect was for it to end on a heartwarming note of the same Engineer building a cute little robot sibling (whom I later discovered was the male robot Dell-Spenser rather than a smaller version of Mimi-Sentry) for the now "grown-up" Mimi. Nor did I expect that my subsequent dive through YouTube for more Mimi-Sentry videos that I ended up watching earlier today to actually reignite the fires of interest in TF2, even if it was only focused on the "family" of moe-anthroed machine characters that emerged around Mimi-Sentry.

So yeah, I blame TheHypedScoot, Scorpion_SFM, Izumi Ch., DiamondNella, A-006, and a few other fan artists for me feeling the urge to write down notes for fanfics/fan comics (I aspire to begin a digital art career) that revolves around a cute anthropomorphized Sentry Gun and her seemingly growing "family". It's far from the strangest, most "out there" thing I've ever dabbled in, but it's still amazing when you consider that I had practically zero interest in reading or making TF2 fanfics up until yesterday.

Edited by MarqFJA on Nov 8th 2023 at 2:42:44 PM

Huh. TF2 thread.

Renamed my Boston Basher.

Name: "Life Ender"

Description: "Zote's Precepts Number Fifty-Eight: Random crits ARE funny and balanced."

Life is good.

Did someone say funny youtube sketch with actual honest-to-god non-AI TF 2 voice actors?

Because we got exactly that.

"*vote f1*" XD

I'll admit, I didn't see that ending with Spy coming.

Edited by ZuggaluggalocoroG on Dec 17th 2023 at 6:26:09 AM

I named my Boston Basher something too vulgar and disturbing to post here.

Edited by TheLivingDrawing on Dec 19th 2023 at 12:05:13 PM

I feel like I know what it is in my head, and I don't blame you I probably would've as well

I'm quite partial to "Dildon't", but also any name/desc that's just the Scout's pained noises makes me giggle every time.

"Wave goodbye to MY kneecaps, chucklehead! Ooh! Aagh! Ugh! Rrrgh! AAAAAAAAH!"

I named my Huntsman "Snail Mail."

Edited by Karxrida on Dec 24th 2023 at 5:18:16 AM