#i don’t necessarily disagree with more villainous horror-esque content with him. i just don’t personally enjoy the genre

[thetriggeredhappy]

Was wondering, over here -- what's your favorite type of Scout characterization(s)? I've been in this fandom for almost a decade, and (imo) everyone's got a slightly different spin on him, ranging from "category 5 annoyance, cartoonishly egocentric" to "earnest but afflicted with Early 20s Brain" to anything anywhere in between or beyond that. Got any specific hallmarks you're fond of? Stuff you tend to disregard?

hrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

alright so naturally i’m always the type to drift towards characters who, even as you’re reading them, you can kinda see the lenticular way they can be interpreted. you can tell by the author’s tone how the character interprets themselves, and how they’re interpreted by the viewer, and how they’re interpreted by whoever they’re talking to—three-dimensional, in shortform. with grey areas. sort of taking them outside of their trope and giving them the leeway of, at times, even assuming that the media itself is biased regarding them.

which is how i approach tf2, as well—the medium they exist in is, by virtue of being an absurdist comedy, an unreliable narrator.

so when you posit the stances “scout is like if gaston was wicked annoying and 150 pounds max but didn’t notice” vs “earnest, flawed early 20s dude without a ton of perspective on his life”, as if they’re two ends of the spectrum, my answer is, they don’t have to be.

i’m not a huge stickler on interpretations of characters, to be honest, but i do have a few icks with some interpretations of scout. any interpretation that implies he’s one of those dudes who says things for shock value or for a reaction really irritate me, mostly because there’s nothing in the text of canon that would even remotely imply that. scout wouldn’t say some weird shit about a girl going to make him a sandwich or whatever, he’d draw a picture of spy getting hit by a car and then hand it to spy because they don’t get along. giving scout these weird greasy traits just because at a glance you might characterize him that way in the netflix live-action remake, it just comes across as like. like maybe you don’t know what you’re talking about actually. like, the cheapest easiest possible characterization. the wish dot com characterization.

and i know it might seem a little bit like the pot and kettle on this one since i do take such heavy liberties with the characters, but here’s the thing—my argument isn’t that changing the characters in your fanwork is Bad. that’s all fanwork. that’s all interpretation. my argument is that making tf2 characters weirdly bigoted and filling in weird shock value stuff for no reason is fuckin’ lazy.

it’s much harder, and much more vulnerable, and takes way more time and effort, to try to write these characters with good jokes, or with human personalities, or with actual motivations and thought into their behavior, etc etc. and going “scout says [insert alphabetical list of homophobic slurs], because it’s the 70s lol they hate gay ppl” just tells me you’re not capable of writing well.

that’s not to say i even want scout to necessarily be a good person. i think it’s actually kind of funny that he decided to like, learn manners and etiquette and put on a prom for miss pauling, because having a dude who kills people for money do some cute shit like that is weirdly sweet, in a roundabout way. i think the canon of the text would imply that scout tf2 is kind of a sweet dude. but like, y’know. obviously nobody on the team is mentally or emotionally well. mentally and emotionally sound people don’t die and murder for money. writing scout as particularly egocentric, overly concerned with his own life (either in an anxious way or a narcissistic way), loud mouthed, temperamental, a sore loser, unsportsmanlike, those are all takes i’ve seen that have been really interesting spins of his character.

my favorite traits in him are probably things like him being a hugely impulsive talker, way exaggerative of positive emotions (like whenever he or someone else does some cool shit), maybe a little overdramatic and whiny about the small things, him being dude who will see his friend punch someone across the bar and will sprint over to punch them too, a real ride-or-die guy, kinda stubborn. maybe a little catty sometimes, earnest in a weirdly brave sort of way, clumsy or bad luck or both. dude with a weirdly nonexistent sense of shame or embarrassment except about, like, if he finds out he was wearing his shirt backwards when talking to Miss Pauling or something silly like that. and not even necessarily all of these at once! i just like these characterizations in general, and scout tends to get these ones.

this went on longer than i meant it to, sorry. anyways. scout teamfortress my beloathed

#shut up me #everybody talks #i don’t necessarily disagree with more villainous horror-esque content with him. i just don’t personally enjoy the genre