Protowilson's Bits

ask-tentapyro Asks:

Hey there! i'm working on a blu pyro cosplay and I'm wondering what the best materials would be for making a detonator and backscratcher prop. also something to cover the neck and such since the gp5 doesnt.

protowilson Said:

I use a neoprene diver’s hood to cover my neck while wearing the gas mask. The downside is that it’s yet another layer to wear so things get pretty sweaty!

With regards to the materials, this is going to depend on your prop making skill level and the range of tools you have, how much time and money you have or are willing to spend on the construction, as well as factoring how much potential crush-and-knock the props’ll get. We don’t travel anywhere interstate so our props aren’t deconstructable but they are pretty sturdy. And with sturdiness does come weight!

Looking at the Backscratcher and the Detonator, these are my prop-making partner’s thoughts:

disfiguredstick:

Dear god Mael. I think you owe me a story now!

Someone hose Mael down before he ignites.

xombiedirge:

TF2 Illustrations by Rob Laro

A jolly good artist.

(via artisticallyinsaneblog)

I followed your conversation with blondedumonde and I feel compelled to throw in, that the Medic’s German isn’t the best either. Though I do give them credit for digging up the word “Schweinehund”, I’d never thought English speakers would even know that one.
But the grammar Medic uses is so English, I always feel sad for it.
Especially since many fans use Medic’s language and spread the use of english grammar in german language *sadpanda*
(to illustrate what I mean, we don’t just throw an “s” at the end of a word to make it plural - it’s neither “Fräuleins” nor “Schweinhunds”, the plural of the former is simply “Fräulein” and the latter “Schweinehunde”)
Of course I can’t say anything about the other languages, and I do like the fact TF2 uses different languages at all.
And of course only the natives might hear the errors, after all.
Sniper sounds pretty convincing to me xD

— no-one3

It must be the equivalent of hearing Dick Van Dyke doing a cockney accent for you to hear Medic!

The singulars and plurals in German are done with the definite article, aren’t they? Like Der, Das, Die etc? I can’t recall from my 1 year of German in high school!

I guess as a whole with TF2 we are dealing with a lot of stereotyping, and I can understand why to a certain extent. It’s effectively a type of shorthand to give background to a character. Whether that shorthand is appropriate, or PC or culturally correct is another hornet’s nest.

I’m posting a lot of exchange regarding these issues not to point fingers, but as a genuine discussion that raises some interesting points that I hadn’t either considered, or consciously been aware of. And the last thing I want to do is dismiss a person’s genuine concerns or upsets by saying “It’s just a game, it’s supposed to be fun”. As fans, we do have the chance to do MORE with the material, so I don’t think we should shy away from adding texture as long as it resonates with the canon universe. Hrmmmm.

blondedumonde Asks:

One time I was watching the "Meet the Sniper" video on YouTube and my boyfriend overheard (he's from Qld and lives in WA)... he was like, "is that supposed to be an Australian guy?" and looked at me as if to say, "do you think I talk like that?!" He wtf'ed pretty hard. It was funny.

protowilson Said:

Hahaha, yeah the Sniper’s accent is pretty ham salad!

blondedumonde Asks:

I don't think the accents/dialects of the characters were really that big a concern to the developers so I guess it doesn't matter if someone writes their speech as being a bit cheesy or stereotypical... I mean, look at Sniper. He sounds like Michael Caine.

protowilson Said:

Haha! Well, yes I see your point. I could say that generally Sniper’s accent is decent in comparison to a lot of non-Aus voice actors doing an Australian accent. Lowry does tip a wee bit into cockney in some spots, but considering white Australia’s cultural heritage, that can sorta be excused. And when I listen to Aussie accents from the 60s and 70s, they are pretty heavy on the Strine and occasionally sound ludicrous by today’s standards.

“Gawd save the Queen” is one of those Sniper lines that makes me cringe. No one says that in Australia but I do realise he’s probably referencing TF2 universe’s Australian Queen which seems to be different to the commonwealth’s current monarch.

cosmictuesdays Asks:

It bothers me a great deal that people latch onto Demo's drinking when - as you pointed out - he spends a good deal of time lucid and aware, and even pretty sober, as evidenced by his morning off with his mother. As for accent and dialect, I wonder why people don't do what I do, which is read novels set in the place I want to write about and do the cultural research that way.

protowilson Said:

There you go, fanficcers!

writingcyan:

Who is the most popular TF2 character?

Off the top of my head I would think Medic is the most popular. His personality is very dynamic, ranging from canon Meet the Medic’s cheerful ‘hahaha isn’t surgery just fun?’ attitude over fanon traumatised/cuddly!Medic to the guro mad doctor, which makes him pairable with most other characters—Heavy/Medic is arguably the most popular pairing in the fandom, Medic/Scout is a guro stable, but recently Medic has been appearing more consistently in other pairings as well; Medic/Sniper, Medic/Engineer, and Medic/Soldier seem to be on the fast-track to popularity, and he has also been paired with fem!Pyro and Miss Pauling on occasion.

However, I decided to look into the actual statistics where available and easy to collect—the exact counts are listed under the Read More link at the bottom of the page.

(Please note that numbers and percentages add up to more than 100% because art/stories may have more than one focus character, e.g. a Heavy/Medic story is counted once each for both Heavy and Medic. Disclaimer: This is a rough estimate with significant reporting and research biases, do not use for actual science and/or gloating.)

It seems my initial gut feeling about Medic’s popularity was wrong (which is why modern science is based on empirical evidence—get your vaccines, kids!). Even so, I’m not surprised; the results no doubt reflect the age demographic of each website: FF.net and DA are frequented by the youngest fans who tend to prefer Scout (and the perverts on Paheal fem!Scout) whereas TF2chan and AO3 are frequented by a much smaller and slightly older population group which favours the Sniper/Spy and Heavy/Medic pairings. If I had ventured into TF2chan.net/fanfic or backtracked more than a year on /afanfic I assume I would have found enough Heavy/Medic stories to shift their weighted average upwards. Feel free to grind the numbers yourselves.

What I find most disheartening, though, are the numbers for Demoman. I wonder if anything can be done to make him more appealing to the fandom?

First, thanks for going into such detail with your response… I wasn’t expecting that, and admittedly, it wouldn’t have occurred to me that such stats were actually available.

I’m sorry I can’t put this under a cut, but it doesn’t seem available as an option and I’m crap with html, so if someone can let me know if what I’ve done hasn’t worked and how I can fix it that’d be great