When I Think About How Wheatley Had A Cut Line Where He Was Supposed To Tell Chell That ‘a Man In A

my piece for the “At Ease, Soldier” zine, a tribute to Rick May. 

Check out everyone’s work here ! The zine is free to view and download. You may also opt to donate, with all proceeds made by April 30 going to charity.

This is admittedly a very selfish post, as I’ve made various teams of various different colors

!!! COMMISSION OPEN !!! 3 SLOTS  write me in dm

Are the requests open? 👉🏻👈🏻

Indeed! I’m finishing up one or two, sorry for the delay! I’ve got a couple in my inbox already but due to my constantly shifting interests and motivations, they’re likely to be done out of order ;^-^

Basically, absolutely! Requests are always open unless I state otherwise B)

Oh absolutely! Sniper would have been my first pick tbh, since he’s definitely one to know exactly what to do in a situation like that. Engineer, while smart and chill (I agree you’d spend a lot of time around the campfire!), might not fare well in the survival department since he’s more of a metal-working guy. 

,,but imagine an s/o cuddling against the merc of choice in the wilderness against a tree or in a makeshift shelter in the cold-- hhh

✈️ tf2? 😳

I dunno the idea of being trapped on an island with ANY merc seems like absolute hell but yknow which would be the least?

✈ - character I'd rather be stuck on an island with -

If I had to pick one I'd probably pick Engineer. He's good company, probably really likes campfires, and after a day or so would probably have built a working plane out of twigs and seaweed to get us the hell outta there.

Sniper's also a good choice due to his wilderness survival skills.

Could I perhaps get engineer, sniper and demoman with an autistic S/O who got really overstimulated and Is Not Okay? I need,,, for purposes.

Yes, yes you can!!!

Demo, Engineer, and Sniper with an overstimulated autistic S/O:

Demo:

Demo recognizes that his S/O is overstimulated pretty quickly. The base is always messy regardless of any attempts to clean it, there’s a lot of noise, especially chatter and gunfire during the day and even moreso at night during complaining or celebrating with the entire team.

“Ye alright? Ach, who am I kidding, ye look right terrible at the moment, love. No offense.”

He takes his S/O to somewhere quieter, probably his room as there’s at least some sense of familiarity and homeliness there for he and his S/O.

As someone who needs quiet to focus on tinkering without blowing something up, he’s got some ways of keeping the room from just being the equivalent of another hallway thanks to the paper thin walls.

If it still doesn’t help, he sticks by his S/O’s side and refuses to move away for the others until they’re able to process things more clearly again.

If they’re stimming to try and release the tension and overwhelming energy of the situation, he’ll literally just start mirroring them and stimming as well.

If they need something to focus on that isn’t their surroundings, he’s got a large amount of folklore and myths he can talk for hours about instead of whatever jabbering caused them to be overwhelmed in the first place.

Engineer:

Once he figures out what’s going on, he quickly tries to diffuse things and get his S/O to a place where they feel more comfortable.

Engineer commands a lot of respect, and most of the mercs know not to challenge him when he puts on a genuine serious face and asks for things to be done.

Quiet down, hush now fellas, can one of ya’ll get S/O a blanket? Hm? Yeah, they said somethin’ to hold would do.

Does his best to balance their current needs with social interaction; since he’s aware that taking them out of it entirely might cause them to break down further.

Instead, he lassos in the conversation and quiets things down as much as possible, then reduces the amount of stimuli by sending a glare to anyone making more noise than necessary.

As for sensations, he’ll hold his S/O’s hand if it helps, usually with his normal hand unless they prefer the feeling of metal, wiring, and electric circuitry to focus on. Warm or cold, his hand envelops theirs and acts as an anchor.

If anyone dares pipe up about it or anything else related to the situation, he’ll keep his cool. That is, until next time they need his help on the battlefield.

Sniper:

While he doesn’t necessarily understand a lot about it, Sniper is still very familiar with needing and wanting his space, where things are just how he wants them. Regardless of if he consciously realizes it or not, he might actually be the best person to go to about it when his S/O is having a rough time and is overstimulated.

At first, he’ll probably try things that help him calm down, but if a lukewarm cup of coffee and a polishing kit don’t assist—or taking a hike into the nearest area empty of people—then he’ll start quietly asking questions while internally panicking.

He doesn’t want to overwhelm his S/O further, but he also wants to fix or make the situation a bit better for them. Afraid that he’ll make it worse, he kind of ends up awkwardly throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks.

Whatever ends up appearing to work first is what he doubles down on, before trying to branch out from there. If his S/O manages to calm down a little, he thinks, then they can help him help them a little more too.

It’s a very slow but sure process, and he gets there eventually. By the time he figures out what works, it’s probably far past when they were too overstimulated to function. After that point he’ll know what to do and is much quicker and more confident about lending a helping hand.

If they’re getting overstimulated and it’s just the two of them, he’ll do his weird too-long-legs thing and hug them to him in a way where they’re closed off and safe in his arms. He’ll end up a bit flustered about it later, but they calm down a lot more quickly that way since he’s able to just shut them off and ground their brain to the hug instead of what’s bothering them. It’s not foolproof, but it’s shocking how often it works.

This was a lot of fun to write! I hope I got this right and did well with the prompt, haha. Personally going with what would be nice when I’m overstimulated, though I don’t believe I’ve shut down fully because of it. That must suck a lot when it happens :(

The last one about Sniper is a personal tidbit I think would work really well on me, because I imagine what he does is like a really comfortable tight hug where noises are kinda shut out and the pressure would kinda keep you from moving y’know?

It’s like the ultimate “calm the FU—“ move and I love it but it also looks like it’d be really comfortable ;—;

Oh I am in LOVE with these headcanons! I found the mention of wondering how much of his personality at the base is an act as well an incredibly intriguing idea, and a fun one at that.

That, and the description near the end of him being “the friendly face on the other side of the street” or “the guy you run into at the grocery store that turns towards you and tells a bunch of jokes in a row and it’s so weirdly pathetic and charming at the same time you can’t help but laugh” puts him in such a familiar but different light that I had never really thought of him in, but that makes PERFECT sense to his character.

While in the comics he’s portrayed as a bit of an annoying loudmouth before getting a more genuine characterization near the end (or the issue before the end, anyway), the characterization you wrote sort of fits that more developed personality in the later comics alongside him in the games.

I just. Hgh. The idea of him being that good at manipulating people in his most comfortable environment (or is it even manipulating people? More-so himself) is SUPER cool and fitting to me, and also fits the autism headcanon where he’s just learned to mask incredibly well while remaining unfazed by deeper attempts to fit in with his peers since he’s just not interested in it—keeping him genuine and earnest, if that makes sense?

Having written that, it gave me the idea that maybe the longer he spends with the mercs as their unusual mercenary found family, the easier it becomes for him to manipulate on the field.

Thinking about how that’d translate, I imagine that he’s learned how to speak to enemy team members the same way he’s been spoken to for months or even years. He’ll ask questions with a more cutting tone towards the enemy Engineer using vocabulary he picked up from his own. He doesn’t always get it right, but more often than not he can waltz into enemy territory and as long as he’s not posing a threat during an active battle, he can end up making (tense) conversation with the opposite team.

Additionally, my initial idea was that the other mercenaries notice that he’s a little more careful in the enemy base, knowing better what turf is closest guarded, especially since he’s a predominantly flanking class.

Will reblog with more ideas about the above topic.

Scout has incredible street smarts! While it seems irrelevant in the base dropped in the middle of nowhere, he is invaluable during contract missions located within urban areas.

He can notice an undercover cop in a second, distinguish accents, recognize a scam happening, pinpoint a drug dealer who looks like a sweet old granny and see the signs of some group's terf markings. The team is looking for some local hotshot and they have no leads? Scout runs to the downtown and locates the first bodega/laundromat/bar/gas station/pizza parlor, blends in and befriends some entry-position-apprentice who gives him all the info he needs.

South Boston is the top school in the world for the street-smarts and Scout graduated it with honors.

yep! while scout has resigned himself to the position of “the stupid one” alongside a crowd of extremely talented, socially awkward PhD owners, once somebody finally has the idea that he seems good at talking and drags him along on a mission they figure out pretty quick that holy shit this kid is good at talking.

Engie’s usually the negotiator if they need one at all, mostly because he knows how to say please and thank you when it seems necessary, but he still has sort of a… distrustful aura around him. the accent’s disarming, sure, and does a great job pushing through a crowd of white middle-aged church moms, but it turns out there are a lot of parts where a moderately-wealthy-looking fourty-year-old white man with a little bit of a weird glint in his eyes ain’t really that welcome. so they might send scout in, since he really, really wants to go in and they’re all out of options (unless they want to send sniper, and he’d probably leave the building having bitten at least four people on reflex)—and when he comes back out he’s got everything they need to know, plus some free snacks, plus an invite to some teenage boy’s birthday party.

it turns out that little air of authenticity goes a long way—and the team watches him flip from polite upstanding church-boy cashier to poor sad orphan boy on the streets to egregiously annoying emotional armor-shredding “class clown” in what seems like seconds, and I guess it should occur to someone at some point that he’s spent his entire life figuring out how to blend in places like that and get what he wants.

(everybody would joke he got the ‘good actor’ gene from spy, if it didn’t just make them sad. also, a few people see him effortlessly skating his way person-to-person, molding his conversational targets like putty, and wonder exactly how much of an act he might be putting on back at the base, too.)

addendum: of all the characters he is able to axt in, “suave” or “ladykiller” or anything along those lines is not one of them. please don’t get me wrong. he’s the friendly face you see on the other end of the sidewalk, or the guy you run into at the grocery store that turns towards you and awkwardly tells a whole bunch of jokes in a row and it’s so weirdly pathetic and charming at the same time you can’t help but laugh, but he’s still terrible at romance, and as a matter of fact most things Involving charisma in general. he just takes advantage of that sad wet kitten energy, you know? it works out

Alright, I'm doing it.

Today at 3PM EST on this freshly made Discord server I'll be going through Heavy's voicelines, reading them with my thickest Russian accent, talking about Russian phonetics, and answering any questions you guys might have.

DON'T MISS IT! Here's the DIscord server link again! Join, chat, tell your friends! If a decent number of people shows up, I might make it a regular thing.

...that your audience won't hate.

This is a method I started using when NFTs were on the rise - thieves would have to put actual work into getting rid of the mark - and one that I am now grateful for with the arrival of AI. Why? Because anyone who tries to train an AI on my work will end up with random, disruptive color blobs.

I can't say for sure it'll stop theft entirely, but it WILL make your images annoying for databases to incorporate, and add an extra layer of inconvenience for thieves. So as far as I'm concerned, that's a win/win.

I'll be showing the steps in CSP, but it should all be pretty easy to replicate in Photoshop.

Now: let's use the above image as our new signature file. I set mine to be 2500 x 1000 pixels when I'm just starting out.

Note that your text should not have a lot of anti-aliasing, so using a paint brush to start isn't going to work well with this method. Just use the standard G-Pen if you're doing this by hand, or, just use the text tool and whichever font you prefer.

Once that's done, take your magic wand tool, and select all the black. Here are the magic wand settings I'm using to make the selections:

All selected?

Good.

Now, find a brush with a scattering/tone scraping effect. I use one like this.

You can theoretically use any colors you want for this next part, but I'd recommend pastels as they tend to blend better.

Either way, let's add some color to the text.

Once that's finished,

You're going to want to go to Layer Property, and Border Effect

You'll be given an option of choosing color and thickness. Choose black, and go for at least a 5 in thickness. Adjust per your own preferences.

Now create a layer beneath your sig layer, and merge the sig down onto the blank layer.

This effectively 'locks in' the border effect, which is exactly what we want.

Hooray, you've finished your watermark!

Now let's place that bad boy into your finished piece.

You'll get the best mileage out of a mark if you can place it over a spot that isn't black of white, since you'll get better blending options that way. My preference is for Overlay.

From here, I'll adjust the opacity to around 20-25, depending on the image.

If you don't have a spot to use overlay, however, there's a couple other options. For white, there's Linear Burn, which imho doesn't look as good, but it still works in a pinch.

And for lots of black, you have Linear Light

Either way, you're in business!

EDIT since this has escaped my usual circles, and folks aren't as familiar with my personal usage:

An example of one of my own finished pieces, with watermark, so you can see what I mean about 'relatively unobtrusive'-- I try to at least use them as framing devices, or let them work with the image somehow (or, at the very least, not actively against it).

I know it's a bummer for some people to "ruin" their work with watermarks, which is part of the reason I developed this mark in particular. Its disruption is about as minimal as I can make it while still letting it serve its intended purpose.

There's other methods, too, of course! But this is the one I use, and the one I can speak on. Hope it helps some of you!

OOHOOO OP THIS IS SO GOOD!!!

Not Over Yet

for @writingdispenser based on their amazing fic, I’m Gonna Like the Way You Fight

ao3 link here

Sometimes the best laid plans are disrupted.

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