His ma’s friend fell ill, lung cancer I think, bad smoking habit. He never had any real connection with his ma’s friend, he thought he was just another man that his mom would bring home with her from the bar. He was nice, but they never talked or nothin'. That was just his ma and her friend.
One time when he was a kid, they went to the aquarium together. That was fun. There were lots of fish.
He remembers years later, his mother would bring him to the hospital. He remembers standing in the room staring at his shoes while the adults talked.
He visited the hospital without his mother as an adult. He couldn’t bear to go in the room by himself so he just looked inside and he looked back. He left scared. And his ma’s friend died the next week.
He took a vacation off work and flew to Santa Monica. There was an octopus on the beach, and he carried it back to the motel with him. It looked so dried and emaciated, he didn’t know how long it had been there and he didn’t want to see it die. He put it in the bathtub and he went to get a drink from the vending machine because he didn’t want to see it die.
It’s still alive. Now the water in the tub’s turned black and when he turns the faucet on the water is black too, and the walls are leaking dark water, and he should really call management about the plumbing here. It must be getting hungry. He doesn’t know how to take care of it. He’s not sure what to feed it. He got some goldfish flakes from the corner store but that’s not working, he’s going to try a pound of his own flesh next when he figures out where its mouth is. He’s very sorry for trapping the octopus in here with him.
This is a love story.
Thesis
This is a doujinshi/comic I've been planning for a while. It's a gloomy unrequited love story, about the romance between a young man and a dead man he never knew. It will be 18+ (adults only) because there will be death and sex.
I love gloomy unrequited love stories, and found a dire lack of love stories involving a submissive older man as the "beloved", so I wanted to write my own. The working title is "PROZAC DREAM", after a misheard Cure lyric. The visuals and story are inspired by my own dreams, night terrors, and experiences. There are horror elements to the story because of my focus on physical fragility, but it is first and foremost a story about desire.
This is based on the Scout x Tentaspy dynamic that originated from the decade old annals of TF2chan, but I've warped it into something so completely different that I hesitate to tag this as a TF2 ScoutSpy doujinshi. You don't need to know anything about the game characters. They're completely different in their forms of Ollie and Scylla.
I love the idea of twisting something so inherently silly from my childhood into my own pretentious adult angst vehicle. The "Tentaspy" concept originated as a Little Mermaid AU on TF2chan, in 2008, between a few members (Engineer, Jones. Khorosho, Mog, Dr.Tanner, and Kilomonster). It was initially formed as a concept for the sea witch Spy to use his tentacles on little mermaid Scout, but it became a greater community meme beyond the pornography. There are Tentaspy models on the TF2 Workshop, endless fanart and fanfic, ranging from comedy to tragedy, many of which were created without knowing of the origins of this suit-wearing octopus man.
I'd like this doujinshi to stand alone as its own fucked up love story, for the few people who appreciate old man ukes. And also provide some historical context for this niche internet character! It's incredible how concepts and characters spread through the internet and garner their own modern folklore and individual spins. So this is my personal fairy tale.
Ollie
Oliver, known as Ollie, is a young man of little consequence. His state ID says he's Asian, in his 20's, with brown hair and brown eyes. There is little to distinguish him from the 8 billion other humans on this earth. He's on vacation near the beach to figure stuff out. He mostly stays in his motel room and wanders the beach, and calls his mom every night. For no real reason, he decided to skip a couple days of his SSRIs.
Scylla
It's not real and he knows it.
FAUX BIOLOGY:
The “mask” and “gloves” are actually just gangernous flesh. Same slippery soft squishy fleshy material as the tentacles. The head is a lure, the real mouth is down inside the beak. Its beak is retractable, and is filled with human teeth.
Unfortunately, its anatomy is malformed because whoever manifested it didn't think out the internal plumbing very well. The mouth doesn't lead to any digestive tracts. It's just a mouth that vomits whatever it chews back up. Ite can't eat, and it can't digest, so it will inevitably die from starvation. It has no functioning internal organs besides a rotten brain, still heart, and shriveled lungs. There is definitely no room for intestines in its emaciated form.
You can't have sex with its beak. It'll bite whatever enters it off. So don't try anything.
Interview with Lakida
interview conducted March 29th, 2020.
scumsuck: About Tentaspy. I was on TF2chan in the pre-2009 days, and I recall it being part of a little mermaid AU? With Scout as the little mermaid and Spy as Ursula? Is my recollection true?
Lakidaa: Ah yes. Yes! I was Engineer [on TF2chan]. It was because we were on a kick of watching Disney movie songs in their native language & Beauty And The Beast is a French story.
scumsuck: So Tentaspy started as a SpyScout thing, then it got into Teufort monster territory.
Lakidaa: Right.
scumsuck: When you say 'we were on a kick of watching disney', you mean you and other people on the chan?
Lakidaa: Yes! There was a steam chat we hung out in.
scumsuck: Do you remember who else was there on the disney movie thing?
Lakidaa: Uhhh me? Jones. Khorosho, the mod who was an Aussie, Dr.Tanner, oh! Yeah uhh Kilomonster. Idk the exacts because it was 10 years ago.
scumsuck: The vagues are fine too! 10 years dang...
Lakidaa: A big problem was that the mod was Aussie and kinda oblivious to racism lmao. It’s why I quit.
scumsuck: oh boy I remember a LOT of casual racism on the chan. like the 'nickname' for demoman.
Lakidaa: Yyyyyeah. It’s why kilo bounced and why I eventually bounced.
scumsuck: bounced off the chan, or out the TF2 fandom in general?
Lakidaa: Both? I was an actual administrator; I had full powers on the Chan itself. And I got sick of Tanner’s racism and then Mog (that was her name)’s defense of it claiming the usual ‘oh we’re not Americans we do t Do that tee hee’ defending. And it was the fandom. This was before tumblr, really. I was doing LJrp at the time.
(Turns out I’ve got ADHD and TF2 hyper focused me away from my previous fandoms so I remember this part well)
So if you weren’t posting on the chan there wasn’t really anywhere to get your fix.
scumsuck: I guess there were a lot of people sick of the racism back then, but the chan culture was too much.
Lakidaa: Yeah. We hadn’t realized that it didn’t have to be that way :V
scumsuck: I think I remember that the chan was made cuz everyone else on 4chan's /v/ was sick of the 'ironic' gay porn posting?
Lakidaa: Right.
scumsuck: So besides TF2chan , there wasn't the mass exodus to Tumblr yet.
Lakidaa: Because [LiveJournal] didn’t suck enough yet.
scumsuck: Curiously I don't remember that much of a TF2 community on LiveJournal.
Lakidaa: There wasn’t.
scumsuck: I remember ones for other shows like Metalocalypse and Venture Bros and so forth, but I guess TF2 never stuck on LJ.
Lakidaa: I was very LJ at the time. Those shows were shows and like. I don’t think fandom had developed enough to take these characters which were, at the time, broad sketches, and do stuff with them. All the meet-the videos weren’t out by then.
scumsuck: Now we can take vague-as-hell characters, like the ones from Overwatch, and mash em into something workable. I wonder if the OW fandom could have thrived pre-tumblr.
Lakidaa: I don't think so. OW itself is the descendent of TF2’s character-based shooty. I also admittedly have no fucking clue what’s up with the gator Sniper. (in reference to me asking if they knew the origins of Tentaspy's counterpart, the gator Sniper.) That was way later when I was in 40k
scumsuck: I love this stuff, and I'm trying to get together more memories of the chan and it's culture. Do you remember Teratomarty?
Lakidaa: Yes! And makani! She famously did the administrator as a fan thing and got scooped by Valve.
scumsuck: Heck yeah! Makani what a legend. There were a lot of -isms and -phobias in TF2chan, as a part of the awful chan culture, but a lot of great art was made there too.
Lakidaa: Oh yeah. I still have some documents too.
scumsuck: Oooh what sorts of documents? I know the chan's been like... deleted and reformatted a couple times since I was on there so a lot was lost.
Lakidaa: Old fiction!
scumsuck: Do you recall who drew some of the first pieces of visual art for Tentaspy when it was created? And who did the first fics?
Lakidaa: Me for fics lmao. But for art I don’t remember. There used to be a pictochat. (a site for multiple people to draw on the same canvas at once)
scumsuck: Do you still have your Tentaspy fics?
Lakidaa: Maybe! I’m on phone and it’s all on the desktop lmao
scumsuck: They're important historical documents!
Lakidaa: Bro I read the post on tumblr about the 70s spirk fic in A&M
scumsuck: Ye Olde Yaoiz. This stuff is honestly important!!! I know I wouldn't have developed as an artist without all the slash I was reading back in my youth.
Lakidaa: Same.
scumsuck: Does Tentaspy predate 2010?
Lakidaa: I believe so. Aha 2008 stuff. I do have some [writing] that's Tentaspy, but it's chat; I'd have to find Jones and ask them if they're down
scumsuck: 12 years... Good timeframe though, that's when I was actively browsing the chan.
Lakidaa: It does have some nsfw on it which is double why I'm asking. This doesn't look like it's a chat chat tho it looks like our old DMs
scumsuck: Did Tentaspy originate as a NSFW concept from the getgo?
Lakidaa: For about 10 minutes it wasn't NSFW and was just us ragging about.
scumsuck: How do you feel about fanworks of tentaspy? I'm working on a doujin of Tentaspy, and this is one of the reasons I wanted to contact whoever created the concept. If I were to print comics of this concept you and your friends created, would they feel odd to you?
Lakidaa: Not really! It's perfectly fine. It's a concept that's left my hands. I'm not in TF2 anymore (Overwatch and 40k and my OCs honestly) so I'm like, 'at least someone's enjoying it'
scumsuck: Oh yeah, the fandom ghost that will never leave.
Lakidaa: yes :p
scumsuck: I haven't been into TF2 since like... 2009-2010, but I got back in the last couple years and have had a blast figuring out where the fandom went post-Tumblr. I love this like.. metacontextual historical stuff
Lakidaa: Yeah! I'm glad someone's on it.
scumsuck: I think that's all I have to ask you for now, I'll wait and see if Jones responds!
Lakidaa: (._.)7
