Pensive Pyro
Jun. 27th, 2012 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gryphonseggOkay . . . I think I've pulled myself back together after my Pyrosplosion. I'm ready to get meta. I don't plan to link to or explicitly describe anything gory this time, but I'll use a cut anyway because it's going to get long.
So, Meet the Pyro rose to a new level of Bloody Hilarious. The majority of the reaction posts today are firmly based on an understanding that the Hilarious is just as much a part of TF2 as the Bloody. But I have run across posts about how the new video supposedly proves or disproves some fan theory or conflicts with something that was shown or implied in some other official material. I really think those posts are missing the point. TF2 is a violent game but also a somewhat cartoony one in which in-game deaths don't matter even in the in-game world. The in-game economy is dependent on hats, for the Administrator's sake! Hats that have no effects on the wearer's abilities and are often silly-looking too! The comics, the ads, and even the blog posts rely more on humor than on anything else to promote the game. Valve has other games that have more serious designs, in-game plots, and promotional materials, but when it comes to TF2, the Rule of Funny comes before defining a consistent continuity.
Now, I've gotten pretty upset about continuity errors in other fandoms myself. Not very long ago, I broke up with one of my old nostalgia fandoms because it became clear that the primary creator just did not care about her own universe anymore. But the creators of TF2 don't seem to have ever tried to give it consistent worldbuilding or character histories in the first place. There's not even any official explanation for why RED and BLU have identical teams of mercenaries. Fan theories range from "They're not really identical, they just look alike from a distance because mercenaries with the same general body type will naturally choose similar fighting styles, weapons, and team roles" to "They're all clones of the same nine people" to "In a world where Abraham Lincoln invented stairs and Australia has a king selected for his kangaroo-boxing prowess, that's not on anybody's top ten list of things that need explanations." All those ideas have been used well in fan fic. All of them have been used badly too, but hey-- not every random drop can be the hat of your dreams.
The way I see it, the TF2 classes are more like archetypes than characters. There's supposed to be a lot of flexibility in each one. I think it's good for the fandom, especially those parts of it that have a tendency to get picky about continuity and defining what is "in character" versus "out of character" in fan fic (and I have that inclination myself, having been a continuity snob in most of the other fandoms I've ever cared about, so I know whereof I speak!), to keep in mind that the teams in Team Fortress 2 are made up of classes rather than characters. Valve never promised us character development or fleshed-out backstories, not with this game.
So no, your fic that portrays Pyro as simply a pyromaniac and not completely delusional doesn't need to be scrapped. You don't need to hunt for a real world disorder that matches Pyro's symptoms either. The inconsistent gender pronouns in the captioned version are there to amuse fans who have fun speculating about who and what might be under the mask, not to confuse you or to disrespect any camp in the debate over Pyro's gender (which is itself missing the point by being a debate at all-- part of the fun of Pyro is that nobody has to commit to a specific sex or race if they don't want to). We've been through this before. I remember the reactions to Meet the Medic, including the complaints about how in-game lines portray the Medic as a prissy martinet but his video portrays him as an easygoing mad scientist, and complaints about how the original short bio said he lacked formal medical training but the video told us that he used to have a medical license and lost it for unethical experimentation. There were similar complaints about last year's Halloween comic, in which the Demo Man was revealed to have lost his eye in a bizarre incident involving a wizard and talking book, whereas and earlier comic implied that he injured himself on the job and even earlier material said he lost the eye fighting the Loch Ness Monster. You can pick your favorite interpretation or make up your own. (Personally, my headcanon is that Demo tells a different story about that eye every time.)
Basically, I think of TF2 more in the way I think of superhero comics and fairytales than the way I think of other sources. The source material is too varied to be confined to a single coherent "real story" without losing something. I don't want to be stuck with a world in which Demo definitely wasn't terribly wounded while pursuing his soon-to-be-legendary rivalry with Nessie or a world in which his friends have never been attacked by his possessed eyeball. I don't want to be stuck with a world in which Pyro could never be a girl or a world in which Pyro could never be a boy. And I don't want to be stuck in a world where fans become unable to enjoy the official product or each others' fic and art and other fan works because we cling too tightly to a certain definition of what constitutes canon.
So, Meet the Pyro rose to a new level of Bloody Hilarious. The majority of the reaction posts today are firmly based on an understanding that the Hilarious is just as much a part of TF2 as the Bloody. But I have run across posts about how the new video supposedly proves or disproves some fan theory or conflicts with something that was shown or implied in some other official material. I really think those posts are missing the point. TF2 is a violent game but also a somewhat cartoony one in which in-game deaths don't matter even in the in-game world. The in-game economy is dependent on hats, for the Administrator's sake! Hats that have no effects on the wearer's abilities and are often silly-looking too! The comics, the ads, and even the blog posts rely more on humor than on anything else to promote the game. Valve has other games that have more serious designs, in-game plots, and promotional materials, but when it comes to TF2, the Rule of Funny comes before defining a consistent continuity.
Now, I've gotten pretty upset about continuity errors in other fandoms myself. Not very long ago, I broke up with one of my old nostalgia fandoms because it became clear that the primary creator just did not care about her own universe anymore. But the creators of TF2 don't seem to have ever tried to give it consistent worldbuilding or character histories in the first place. There's not even any official explanation for why RED and BLU have identical teams of mercenaries. Fan theories range from "They're not really identical, they just look alike from a distance because mercenaries with the same general body type will naturally choose similar fighting styles, weapons, and team roles" to "They're all clones of the same nine people" to "In a world where Abraham Lincoln invented stairs and Australia has a king selected for his kangaroo-boxing prowess, that's not on anybody's top ten list of things that need explanations." All those ideas have been used well in fan fic. All of them have been used badly too, but hey-- not every random drop can be the hat of your dreams.
The way I see it, the TF2 classes are more like archetypes than characters. There's supposed to be a lot of flexibility in each one. I think it's good for the fandom, especially those parts of it that have a tendency to get picky about continuity and defining what is "in character" versus "out of character" in fan fic (and I have that inclination myself, having been a continuity snob in most of the other fandoms I've ever cared about, so I know whereof I speak!), to keep in mind that the teams in Team Fortress 2 are made up of classes rather than characters. Valve never promised us character development or fleshed-out backstories, not with this game.
So no, your fic that portrays Pyro as simply a pyromaniac and not completely delusional doesn't need to be scrapped. You don't need to hunt for a real world disorder that matches Pyro's symptoms either. The inconsistent gender pronouns in the captioned version are there to amuse fans who have fun speculating about who and what might be under the mask, not to confuse you or to disrespect any camp in the debate over Pyro's gender (which is itself missing the point by being a debate at all-- part of the fun of Pyro is that nobody has to commit to a specific sex or race if they don't want to). We've been through this before. I remember the reactions to Meet the Medic, including the complaints about how in-game lines portray the Medic as a prissy martinet but his video portrays him as an easygoing mad scientist, and complaints about how the original short bio said he lacked formal medical training but the video told us that he used to have a medical license and lost it for unethical experimentation. There were similar complaints about last year's Halloween comic, in which the Demo Man was revealed to have lost his eye in a bizarre incident involving a wizard and talking book, whereas and earlier comic implied that he injured himself on the job and even earlier material said he lost the eye fighting the Loch Ness Monster. You can pick your favorite interpretation or make up your own. (Personally, my headcanon is that Demo tells a different story about that eye every time.)
Basically, I think of TF2 more in the way I think of superhero comics and fairytales than the way I think of other sources. The source material is too varied to be confined to a single coherent "real story" without losing something. I don't want to be stuck with a world in which Demo definitely wasn't terribly wounded while pursuing his soon-to-be-legendary rivalry with Nessie or a world in which his friends have never been attacked by his possessed eyeball. I don't want to be stuck with a world in which Pyro could never be a girl or a world in which Pyro could never be a boy. And I don't want to be stuck in a world where fans become unable to enjoy the official product or each others' fic and art and other fan works because we cling too tightly to a certain definition of what constitutes canon.
