Of Ponies and Mercs: The Magical Mercenary
The Magical Mercenary. It seems a shame that I’m adopting this article after so damn long after the hat’s effectiveness has worn off, but it’s something worth discussing. Something different that doesn’t match with the game at all, while at the same time somehow fitting in no problem and being regarded as pointless for most of the year. But that’s what Full Moon restricted hats are for, right?
The Magical Mercenary is clearly a parody of everyone’s favourite cartoon horse show. A pink pony hat. That’s paintable, so you can pretend to be the human mass murderer version of your favourite character. Unless you’re a lowly earth pony. No one wants to be an earth pony, they do all the work while the unicorns and pegasi and alicorns flutter around doing fuck all. Poor things are slaves to the higher castes, working to death to provide food and riches to their more powerful equine overlords.
Anyway, what was I on about? Oh yeah, how this hat was designed for both pony lovers and trolls alike. Fan service, if you like. It’s a blatant reference to a popular girl’s TV show about brightly coloured ponies with magical powers who spend too much time getting themselves into stupid situations instead of getting a job like everyone else. And weirdly, this show has been picked up by people outside its target audience. I can see why, it’s nicely animated and it’s reminiscent of shows like the Power Puff Girls and Dexter’s Laboratory.
But even more weird is how a single TV show or hat can split people. While the majority of people don’t give two fucks, there’s always extremists. On one side, you have the die-hard fans, who will slaughter whoever threatens their cartoon horses. On the other side, you have the haters, who will slaughter whoever happens to even slightly like the cartoon horses. Stupidity on both sides. Unfortunately, this opens up a couple of unusual TF2 scenarios:
Scenario the first: A ‘Brony’ sees you wearing the Magical Mercenary and assumes that you’re a big fan of the show. They will then go on, spouting all sorts of cartoon horse trivia while you try and go on about your business pushing tiny kart.
Scenario the second: A ‘Brony Hater’ spots you wearing a pony hat then goes on and on about how you’re an idiot who likes to masturbate to cartoon horse pornography while you try and go on about your business, pushing tiny kart.
Both scenarios are stupid, and they 100% deserve you switching loadouts, equipping the Schadenfreude taunt and targeting them repeatedly until they leave the server.
But nine times out of ten, neither of the above scenarios will happen. People will just ignore you and continue helping you push that tiny kart, or trying to stop you pushing. Or whatever. Most people just wear the Magical Mercenary because it is a genuinely good hat.
Hey, don’t look at me like that! It IS a nice looking hat. It’s cartoony, it’s campy, it kinda matches the art style of TF2. The Magical Mercenary also has an awesome bunch of voice lines to keep us all entertained. Custom voice lines! Not every hat gets that sort of treatment. And you can paint it. The only downside (or upside, if you’re that way inclined) is that the Magical Mercenary is restricted to full moons and Halloween only. But that’s probably for the best, since it’s bright pink and very over-the-top.
Just don’t be an idiot and rage about it. Because people WILL target you, in all their pony-hatted glory.