Happy 13th Birthday, to the best 9 Lads-stuck-in-the-middle-of-the-desert-in-an-endless-war!!!

(October 10th, 2007)

aprofessionalwithoutstandards:

heavyautismguy:

i think sniper should be taller than heavy but weigh half as much. for fun

Stretch that boy out like taffy

crying screaming

An (in)comprehensive guide on how to write Heavy’s speech patterns, based on my perception of the character and my expertise as someone who teaches English to Russian students.

A disclaimer to quickly mention that this is very subjective advice that you are free to debate, ignore, or use however you see fit. Long post under the cut.

Anyway, aside from a few specific exceptions, I really like how Valve handled Heavy’s English. It really feels like a character, not just a caricature or collective image of everything Russian the West considers funny.

The important thing to remember here is that you are writing a smart man. A man who speaks two languages and has a Ph.D. in literature. A man who already has the idea ready in his head when he voices it, and that’s important to remember when writing pretty much any foreigner, but Heavy especially. Miscommunication is fun and all, but just compare:

- Someone like Scout, who might stumble over words because he didn’t think them through, then add more words, get off track, and end up over-explaining none of whatever he had in mind in the first place.

- And someone like Heavy, who has one concise idea per a chance to speak up (because non-native speakers tend to stay quiet until they’re absolutely sure of what to say), and is going to get this idea throughno matter what. He’s way less likely to add “fill-in” words or get off track, and far more likely to go quiet in the middle of the sentence because there’s one particular word he can’t remember.

These two would stumble in different places and would pace their sentences differently, and it’s a good contrast to always keep in mind. Again, you are not writing a stereotypical dum-dum for comedic relief. You are writing a grown adult with higher education.

Now, with that said, some general don’ts and some dos for the common mistakes I’ve noticed.

• DON’T randomly use simple Russian words instead of equally simple English words. (“да”/“da” instead of “yes”, “хорошо”/“harasho” instead of “good”, “нет”/“nyet” instead of “no”). People generally don’t do that, even when they are struggling with the language. Easy words stick easily. Most of my students start using “yes”, “no”, “good” and the like before they can form actual sentences. (As a side-note, they’re particularly fond of “of course” for some reason, and I headcanon Heavy to be the same way. Nobody likes “sure” though, probably because it’s a bit of a bother to pronounce.)
• Instead, DO try to precede complicated English words with their translated counterparts.
  “This chair is very…. *snaps fingers* Uh, удобный. *snaps fingers* Ah, comfortable! Comfortable chair.”
  “Pass me the uhhh…. Сольницу. Солонку. Соль. *indiscernible angry mumbling* Salt! Thank you.”
  It’s innovative, it’s hilarious, and you can play with the character’s reaction to his own mistake instead of just having him randomly say something in his native language to remind everyone he has one.
• DON’T avoid swearing. English swearing doesn’t count :)
  It’s a psychological effect I don’t remember the name of, but basically, unless you’ve learned the language at a very young age, you don’t have the unconditional reflex to tell you it’s wrong to say “fuck”. So let Heavy say “fuck”. Petition to let Heavy say “fuck”.
• DO have him swear in English in the context where swearing would be unacceptable. DO have him mix up the severity of various swear words because he doesn’t know the exact context of a phrase. DO have him misuse everything because he picked it from someone else.
  (What if he picked “c*unt” from Sniper the Australian and then used it when talking to Engineer the Texan oh mY GOD)
• Also, DO have him swear in Russian when it’s an actually serious situation. Russian swearing is very powerful and aggressive, I catch myself switching to it when enraged as well. But if you do use it, either go with one word or consult a native speaker. Seriously. Fuckin. Text me and I’ll help you. Google will not. Google knows nothing.
• DON’T avoid shortened grammar constructs (“I’ll” instead of “I will”, “don’t” instead of “do not”). I’ve seen people write him speak like a robot for whatever reason, it just sounds ridiculous.
• DON’T have him speak about himself in third person because why the fuck would he?
• DON’T have him make mistakes in well-established and frequently used phrases (“be right back”, “on my way”, “up and at ‘em”, there’s literally a ton of those). Think of how you would probably never make a grammar mistake in “c'est la vie” because you’ve heard that phrase a million times. Words that often go together, stay together in your memory. Heavy has been around English-speaking people long enough to not make such mistakes.
• DON’T have him make sentences without a subject. The Russian language doesn’t work that way. That’s one thing Valve also gets wrong. (Note: a subject is the person or the thing that’s performing the action in a sentence.)
• If you absolutely need or want to drop something, drop the verb. Especially “to be” in the Present tense, second or third person (“I am” is pretty much mechanical for any non-native and never gets messed up).
• Also, consider completely dropping “it is” at the beginning of a sentence. Instead of “It’s cold outside!” write “Cold outside.” Instead of “It’s terrible!” write “Terrible.”
  I’m not saying all Russian speakers bend grammar like this, but it does sound more natural than this:

(No disrespect to how gay this is btw)

• While on the subject of gay and because everyone likes to write romance every now and then, here’s a point about Russians using pet names: we usually DON’T. That’s the short story. The long story is that we do, but in a different way than what Google will tell you. Firstly, it’s rare. Like, you have no idea how rare. I’ve seen and been in a fair share of couples in my life, and the closest things to pet names I can remember people using were:
  - Neighbor
  - Small wheel
  - Different variations of the person’s nickname (!)
  - Demon
  - Little hippopotamus
  Stuff like “babe”, “dear”, “love”, etc. is reserved either for pretentious teenagers or rare exceptions which I don’t believe Heavy to be a part of. And nothing wrong with being a pretentious teenager, obviously, but Heavy isn’t one of those either.
  Now, as for the (!), I’ve seen people do their research, find out that the general rule for getting Russian nicknames is to add “-шка”/“-чка” (“-shka”/“-chka”), and then try to pull that off with western names. Which… is a mixed bag. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it works but gives the wrong undertone. Sometimes there are many ways to do it. Hell, take Heavy’s name - “Миша”/“Misha”. You can do, like, “Мишка”/“Mishka”, and that’s something his sister might call him (though she strikes me more as a “Мишаня”/“Mishanya” or “Миха”/“Miha” type of person). You can do “Мишенька”/“Mishen'ka” (using the ’ to show a soft sound from now on because I can’t transit properly), and that’s one soft as heck, something his mom or a romantic interest might use.
  And I really hate to be the guy that makes a huge argument only to say “ask a native speaker” in the end, but do ask a native speaker if you come up with something. Try to get someone to read it and let you know how it sounds, because some things just don’t work the way you want them to, and there’s no way to know unless you feel it, the native speaker’s way.

With this advice in mind, you should be able to write a Heavy that doesn’t offend anyone and is overall nice and in character. If, however, you are writing something dialogue-heavy (haha “heavy”) or are just more in-depth curious about this, I’m going to go over every grammar topic I can remember and remember the most typical mistakes and verbal quirks that the Russian speakers I know all share, and that might make Heavy’s speech more unique. So buckle your seatbelts, fellas, and let’s dive right into it.

Word order:

• Generally, the first thing that the non-natives mess up. Manifests in questions that are phrased like statements.
  “This is good?”
  “You are okay?”
  “Why you are here?”
  Heavy has, however, used complex question structure (the first example that comes to mind being “Should I be awake for this?” in Meet the Medic, which has both a modal verb and an instance of Passive Voice), so if he does mess up the order, I imagine it’s only in rare/stressful occasions, or when he doesn’t mind his speech much.
• Wrong order of adjectives.
  “This is a powerful big weapon.” (Instead of “big powerful weapon”)
  Love this one because it’s not something native speakers immediately catch on to, but it has a foreign ring to it.
• Wrong order of the complement part of the sentence.
  “I told about this to him.” (Instead of “I told him about this.”)
  This one’s a bit more jarring, use at your own risk.

Plurals:

• “Mens” and “womens”, “one people” instead of “one person” (all my students have a strange aversion to “person” and often say “human” instead, which is funny).
• “Advices”. All the advices :)
• “Childrens”, oh my god. I hear that one more often than my own name.

Possessive case:

• Generally using “of” more often than “-’s”.
  “Weapon of my teammate” (instead of “my teammate’s weapon”)

Much/many/few/little/none:

• Using “much” and “many” interchangeably. The only exception, in this case, is the phrases that are used often enough to remember the right word, like “very much” - it’s always “very much”, never “very many”, so it’s unlikely to get messed up.
• Using “little” all the time, forgetting “few” exists.
• Confusing “few” and “a few”, “little” and “a little”.
• DOUBLE NEGATIONS.
  “I don’t like nothing about this plan.” (instead of “I don’t like anything about this plan.”)
  This one gets beaten outta any student’s head early on, so nobody would mess it up all the time. But on occasion? Everyone. Even the best of us.
• Also, either confusing “some” and “any” or just straight up not using them.
  “Would you like coffee?” (instead of “Would you like some coffee?”)
  “Do you have some ice?” (instead of “Do you have any ice?”)

Pronouns:

• The Russian language is heavily gendered. It’s not unusual for us to mistakenly use “he” or “she” when referring to an inanimate object.
  “This is my gun. Don’t touch her*.” (instead of “don’t touch it”)
  “Eat a sandwich. He’s tasty.”
  “That map? I hate her.”
  * - a “gun” in Russian is an “it”, a “minigun” is a “he”. Heavy’s gun being a “she” makes little sense linguistically, but I like it because it’s still very in character for him. (Also, I share a name with her, which is cool.)

Here’s a tutorial on how to find out a word’s gender in Russian. Going to use the word “base” bc TF2-related or whatever:

1. Google translate it

2. Copy it to google search and add “это” in the end, the dictionary cut-out should pop up

3. Grab the words from the red rectangle and copy them into the translator again

Done! A base is a she :)) We love her.

Tenses:

• Tenses are the most difficult part of the English language for most, if not all of the people I interact with, students or not. So I’m going to try and go over the most used tenses and how they get messed up specifically.
• Present Simple (does): the “-s” at the end of verbs gets dropped, “doesn’t” is changed to “don’t”.
  “Medic like his doves and his books, but don’t like loud noise and stupid people.”
  It’s a simple mistake, and in most cases, I’d say Heavy wouldn’t make it. But if you feel like including it, go ahead, just don’t overdo it.
• Past Simple (did): irregular verbs mistaken for regular ones.
  “His corpse flied all the way over there!” (instead of “flew”)
  Note that the more often used the irregular verb is, the less likely it is to get mistaken for a regular one.
• Future Simple (will do): literally the easiest tense in the English language, never causes any issues.
• Present Continuous (is doing): if I got a penny every time I heard “they are” instead of “they are”, I’d have A LOT of pennies. But, once again, it’s a simple mistake, so judge for yourself.
  Also, not sure if that’s of any use to you, but we typically pronounce “-ing” completely. Like, you can hear the “-g”. Most of the mercs have the opposite in their accents - workin’, doin’, speakin’. Heavy would never.
• Past Continuous (was doing): YOU WAS. All. The. Time. I feel like Heavy would say it too, especially in singular.
  “You was great asset to team today. Good work!”
• Future Continuous (will be doing): literally never used. Ignored. Completely and utterly disrespected. “I will be going-” NO. “I’ll go.” None of that fancy.
• Present Perfect (has done): substituted by Past Simple where it shouldn’t be, because that’s what we learn first, typically.
  “I already saw this film.” (instead of “I’ve already seen this movie”, and yeah some of us like to say “film”, I feel like Heavy would too).
  Also, irregular verbs mistaken for regular, but I’ve covered that already.
• Past Perfect (had done): IGNORED. We call it “sequence of tenses” and we hate it.
  “Engineer said that he invented a new model for teleporter.” (instead of “had invented”, though to be fair Americans ignore it too, and you can even play funny and have Heavy be the only one who says it correctly).
• While on the subject of the sequence of tenses, it gets ignored in Present and Future as well.
  “Medic said he needs help. He asked me if I will help him.” (Instead of “Medic said he needed help. He asked me if I would help him.”)
  Again, complicated. I didn’t drop the “-s” in the first sentence, because when you start piling mistakes up, you’re once again left with a caricature and not a person. Better less than too much.
• Finally, random tense mishaps. He’s speaking about something in the past and consistently using the present tense or vice versa. Using the wrong tense correctly. It’s kind of endearing, if anything.

Articles:

• Look, articles are hard. So you have a few options.
• The easy option: drop them all. Just. Don’t use them.
  “Some people think they can outsmart me. Maybe. Maybe. I’ve yet to meet one that can outsmart bullet.” (instead of “the bullet”, and I love that little detail, it’s very natural. Also notice how he still uses complex language and comes off as intelligent, despite the mistake. That’s what you should aim for. ALSO ALSO notice the use of “that” instead of “who”, v typical, do it all the time, amazing writing there.)
  Also, the signature “I am Heavy Weapons guy!” without the “the”. Valve did a good job here.
• The more difficult option: consider why an article is used. If it’s a common expression (“by the way”, “just a [something]”, “like a [something]”), it wouldn’t be dropped. But if it’s just a noun, with no popular phrase attached, then drop it. Do it in the same sentence, go whack.
  “I always have gun at the ready.” (Note: “at the ready” - a common expression, but not “the gun” since it’s just a lonely noun.)
• Also also, wrong articles!
  “Take the shower.”
  “Get in a car.”
  “You are the idiot.” (fav)

Prepositions:

• Mistaking “at” for “in” or “on” is very common. Also very easy to write. Picture the location you’d normally describe as “at”, then try to figure out if it’s closer to “in” or “on”, and put that.
• Confusing “between” and “among”.
  “There’s Spy between us!”
• Confusing “like” and “as”.

Some stuff I don’t know how to categorize:

• Reading dates as full numbers, not pairs of two. “One thousand nine hundred sixty-eight.” instead of “Nineteen sixty-eight.”
• Different names for chess pieces! He plays chess with Medic, doesn’t he? Well, Russian names for chess pieces are… odd. Knights are “horses”, bishops are “officers”, and rooks are… “boats”? “Barges”? I’m not sure, but it’s odd, anyhow. Imagine Heavy calling a knight a horse and someone having a revelation that it is, indeed, by design, a horse. Just sayin’.
• “Play on something” instead of “play something” (when talking about an instrument). Haven’t met a single Russian who hasn’t made that mistake.
• Confusing “do” and “make”. All. The. Time. Especially using “do” instead of “make” (since that’s the one you typically learn first).
• Mixing up “oven” and “stove” (I. I did that. Multiple times.)
• Complaining about not enough words for colors. Russian is a very rich language when it comes to adjectives, especially for colors. There’s never enough of them. I mean, blue? Which blue?!
• Saying “problems” instead of “problem”. “You got problems with that?”
• Saying “for example”, which is just. So very Soviet Russia, idk. Native speakers rarely ever say it, even “for instance” sounds better, and most people just go with “like”.
• False synonyms:
  - Using “normal” when you mean “alright”.
  - Using “accurate” when you mean “precise”.
  (These are just very intuitive, I’ll add more examples if I remember them)
• Mixing up “that”, “which”, and “who”. I think I mentioned it before. “That” is practically universal to us.
• Mixing up words in “-ing” and words in “-ed”.
  “I am boring.” (instead of “I am bored.”)

Finally, a collection of Russian sounds that we make in various situations so people can stop putting fucking da and nyet in his speech please for the love of god:

• “Ай!”/“Ai!” - sudden, unexpected pain, levels low to medium. The equivalent of “ouch”.
• “Эй!”/“Ei!” - a cry of displeasure at someone’s actions, or a call to “wait up”, a close equivalent of “oi”!
• “A?” - not hearing or not understanding a phrase, akin to “Eh?” or “What?”
• “Кс-кс”, “кис-кис”/“ks-ks”, “kis-kis” - calling a cat. Dunno why you’d need it, but it’s here.
• “Ага”/“aha” or “aga” - affirmative. The equivalent of “yeah”.
• “Кыш!”/“ksh” (un-translitable) - shoo, go away. At animals. When directed at people, comes off as derogatory.
• “Мда”/“Mda” - helpless disappointment.
• “Ну-ну”/“nu-nu” - a very polite equivalent of “try me, bitch”.
• “Ого”/“oho” or “ogo” - the expression of being surprised at the quantity of something. Often followed by “how much” or “how many” - “Oho, how many bullets!”
• “Тик-так”/“tik-tak” - the sound of a clock.

And that’s it! Hope this was at least somewhat useful, or at least an entertaining read! Also, would love to see similar posts on other mercs’ speech patterns because I really want a full collection. If you have any links and recommendations, send them my way!

Suggestions, questions, and critiques are welcome. Also, I spent way too many hours writing this, but I regret none of them.

maledicmanny:

somnolent-scout:

somnolent-scout:

You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid

Team Fortress 2

Woah i forgot i made this too

REBLOGGING CAUSE IT’S AWESOME

paraparaspectre:

Medic: Its locked, does anyone have a card?

Spy: *hands him his credit card*

Medic, pocketing it: Danke. Heavy, kick down the door.

I simply cannot with these two

Heavy Dog and Spy Cat

bleuteal:

Some ponies

Huge dump of various sketches

nunystuff:

Just some silly tf2 sketches. Might finish some during the holidays

I already finished Demo and Soldier. Which one of these sketches should I finish next?

Just some silly tf2 sketches. Might finish some during the holidays

Don’t crush your crush

Rare pair #4

I dedicate this one to @thewolfbroughtindoors because they are very kind and helped me a lot today.

Here we go! A new version of the supportive mercs is done!

For everyone who is having a hard time right now ❤

To be fair, she thought it was banter

They will forever be my nr 1 ship ❤️

when a fair passed by teufort, there was one of those “test your strength” machines you have to wack with a hammer and the big prize was a huge huge plushie of different models. heavy saw a huge teddy bear and fell in love with it so he paid to play and hit it with all his force and obviously won the jackpot granting him access to it. before he could claim it, he saw pyro in the same machine next to him with a sad face and a bunch of cheap keychains

“what is wrong?” the large man asked

pyro then pointed to the giant unicorn they had been trying to get all afternoon. heavy laughed.

“heavy will get it for you”

he asked the man in the booth to give him the unicorn which he then gifted to the little firebug. they nodded making grateful sounds and proceed to go away in the direction of the ferris wheel.

“another”

heavy said presenting a ticket to get another plushie

“im sorry man, one client one jackpot” the vendor said

he then left, visibly sad for loosing his chance on the teddy bear. he was happy to have given pyro the unicorn, but he just wished he could get the bear as well. defeated he sat on a bench eating cotton candy.

“vhat has you so down meun freund?”

“doktor?” heavy replied lifting his head

medic then presented him with a smaller version of the plushie he had been attempting to get.

“i am unfortunately not as strong, but i’ve veen told you wanted zhis”

medic then sat next to him.

it seems all worked out in the end