this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2025
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chapotraphouse
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The Heavy is overall such a shame of character development tbh. He could have been (well, I say this, but as we all know, Gaben is a libertarian, but in a hypothetical alternate timeline) a Soviet uncle type character to the team, actually playing into his only hinted at communist sympathies. Like, he's potryaed as a "smart, well educated, yet silent and brooding bear". Instead, we have an anti-communist Russian guy who constantly gets called a "damn commie" by Soldier and Heavy can only respond by saying "I'm not communist, in fact, I'm so not communist that I'll cry about how my family were SLAUGHTERED by ebul bolsheviks!"
Like, they constantly redwash him, (new term, don't @ me) but in the comics, they feel the need to spell it out that he's not communist, but actively anti-communist and against the big bad Bolshevik menace.
I already had bad vibes when I saw someone mention that he's anti-Soviet. They made him an actual Tsarist sympathizer in the comics, too???
Tbh though, reading Saxton Hale beat up hippies felt viscerally uncomfortable the first time I went through the comics and to this day, after dropping it, I still can't tell if that was trying to make a dig at something or glorify real-world parallels of what Saxton did- and I'm not particularly interested in finishing it to find out. I'm not surprised to hear that it gets worse in terms of having gross shit
Maybe I was a bit too zealous in saying that, as I was just kinda going off memory. Sorry. I'm looking at several wikis, and they say his father was a "counter revolutionary" and was sentenced to a gulag in 1941. My bad for not investigating properly. It's still sus though.
A "counter revolutionary" in 1941 is sus as fuck
https://www.teamfortress.com/tf03_cold_day_in_hell/#f=62
it's alluded that Heavy's family killed and tortured communists, if I'm reading this panel right.
Also the achievement names and their respective criteria attempting at referencing USSR and communism are funny too:
https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/List_of_references_(Heavy)