Mark "The Winglet" Palmer is an Australian YouTuber and animator popular for his animations created with Source Filmmaker featuring characters from Team Fortress 2. Some of his most popular videos and series include The Fedora Chronicles, Overwatch vs. TF2, and Burning Through Space.
His channel was created November 19, 2013 and has since amassed over a million subscribers. He's also won 3 awards creating videos for Valve's annual Saxxy Awards and has contributed custom taunts to TF2 proper. He's even collaborated with creators that have worked on TF2, including Nathan Vetterlein, the voice of the Scout.
Works by the Winglet
- The Fedora Chronicles:
- Operation 2Fort
- The Bolted Behemoth
- Live and Let Spy
- The Red, the Blu, and the Ugly
- Burning Through Space (spin-off)
- Operation 2Fort
- Meet the Items
- Hit Detection
- An Australian Christmas Bloody Miracle
- Micro-Mann (Saxxy Awards 2015: Best Action Winner)
- Taunt Fortress 2
- Timeless Thief (Saxxy Awards 2016: Best Overall Winner)
- The Art of Spychecking
- Overwatch Vs. TF2
- Mind Games (ft. Nathan Vetterlein)
- Demoman's Dilemma
- Spy Reacts - Episode 278
Tropes common in the Winglet's work
- Affectionate Parody: Many of his videos poke fun at contemporary works, as well as elements of TF2's gameplay and community.
- Hit Detection is all about TF2's server interpolation (basically what to do if you or other players have bad internet). The RED team in the video pulls off some completely inconceivable kills like shooting enemies from behind a corner, the bullets magically redirecting themselves to hit, and cutting off an enemy's head from several meters away with a sword.
- Micro-Mann is basically Ant-Man but with the Spy. It ends with him being crushed under the weight of a enlarged Soldier.
- Overwatch Vs. TF2 is an absurd comedy that pits characters from both games against each other, and makes several gags around the memes and conventions from both communities. Examples include a battle between Widowmaker and the Sniper that goes nowhere because neither of them can aim for jack-squat, or the absurd amount of Crowd Control in Overwatch that completely negates all of the TF2 mercenaries' mobility.
- An Australian Christmas Bloody Miracle (if that title wasn't enough of a giveaway) is the Winglet making fun of his home country of Australia, basically reducing it to a Mad Max-esque landscape inhabited only by Snipers. They also drive heavily weaponized trucks, drink beer that apparently tastes like ass, and even attack the Demoman with a crocodile at one point.
- Steamed Toast is a Whole-Plot Reference of the "Steamed Hams" meme, with Skinner and Chalmers replaced by Heavy and Spy and Krusty Burger being replaced by a Scout-themed riff on Subway.
- Demoman's Dilemma has a parody of Civilization VI's iconic war declaration cutscenes, featuring Demoman posing dramatically with the Eyelander...All while wearing a party hat and speaking drunken gibberish.
- Art Evolution: The quality of the videos' production and animation has increased significantly ever since its beginnings in 2013. The evolution is most apparent throughout The Fedora Chronicles, as its installments all released years apart.
- Author Avatar: His videos often feature a BLU Demoman with a party hat, based on his in-game loadout from TF2. In more action-oriented videos, this Demoman almost always ends up biting it in humiliating fashion. This Demoman eventually got a short of his own, Demoman's Dilemma. Fittingly, he gets absolutely humiliated there too.
- Bloodier and Gorier: His videos have ramped up the blood and gore factor over time. Special mention goes to The Art of Spychecking which has a very drawn out scene of the RED Soldier being shot to a bloody pulp and the RED Scout’s body being progressively and unintentionally desecrated, culminating in the RED Soldier back-kicking him into a wall.
- Creator Cameo: Winglet's Author Avatar frequently appears in his animations, usually as a background character or henchman.
- Creator Thumbprint: In nearly all of his videos, there's a RED Sniper waving in the background at some point. Meet The Jarate is the only time when it’s in the foreground.
- Montage:
- Taunt Fortress 2 is a collection of short animated segments that illustrate literal versions of all the mercs' taunts to each other to some hilarious and gruesome results.
- Burning Through Space 2 has the RED team constructing a spaceship to rescue their Pyro, who's lost in space.
- Stock Audio Clip: The "Overwatch vs. TF2" shorts are all voiced by clips from their respective games, as were many of his earlier videos. Later videos sometimes have regular voice acting, but other times the dialogue is created by mixing voice lines.
- Suddenly Voiced: Most of his older works are all scripted using recycled dialogue from TF2. Starting with Burning Through Space 2 though, the characters are now voiced by proper voice actors. "Mind Games" features Scout's original VA Nathan Vetterlein in the titular role, allowing Scout to say more than what would be limited to in-game lines. Soldier and Engie also speak quite a bit, though they still have different voice actors.
Tropes found in specific works:
The Fedora Chronicles has its own page.- Big Eater: In "Spy Reacts", Heavy serves as this, growing as he eats more and more things, from Sandviches and missiles to people like RED Pyro, BLU Spy and BLU Soldier. He's eventually stopped when RED Medic and RED Scout trick him into eating a bomb, though the real-life RED Heavy interrupts before Spy can react to what happens.
- Bowdlerize: An altered version of "Spy Reacts" was made for Spy's VA to dub over, with Spy's insult to Pyro being swapped from "Pyro! Eat my ass, you mush-mouthed fuck!" to "Pyro! Go to hell, you mush-mouthed freak!".
- Cluster Bleep-Bomb: The RED Soldier drops one on the Sniper in The Art of Spychecking:Soldier: Ha! You fight like a [BLEEEEEEP] son of a [BLEEEEEEP] fucking [BLEEEEEP] kangaroo-herding Canadian!
- Creator's Favorite: In-universe, in "Spy Reacts", Spy really likes seeing Spies in action in videos he reacts to. So much so, that when Heavy effortlessly gobbles up the BLU Spy in the video RED Spy is reacting to, he punches his keyboard in anger and goes mostly silent until RED Heavy interrupts.
- Felony Misdemeanor: When the BLU team get into an argument over various slights inflicted on each other in Demoman's Dilemma, the thing that finally sets them off entirely is Engineer accusing Soldier of liking his steak well-done.
- Groin Attack: In Taunt Fortress 2 one of the Spy's lines towards Demoman ("You did a fine job tossing your little balls around") ends up invoking this onto an unfortunate Demo.
- Hypocritical Humor: In "Spy Reacts," Spy gleefully tells his viewers to subscribe. When the maker of the video he's reacting to also tells the viewer to like and subscribe, he rudely says no.
- Impairment Shot: Combined with Through the Eyes of Madness at the beginning of Demoman's Dilemma: Demo, having run out of alcohol, stumbles off to find more and comes across a giant bottle of beer. He eagerly starts chugging...and then we cut to the team's Scout, who's just walked into spawn to see Demo and the team's Soldier messily making out. Surprisingly, Soldier wants more. Unsurprisingly, this display leaves Scout a horrified, blubbering mess.
- Literal-Minded: Taunt Fortress 2 takes the mercs' various taunts and applies them literally. For example:Sniper: "That helmet's gonna make a nice bowl for your brains!"
[Sniper eats the brains out of Soldier's helmet with a spoon like it's cereal.] - Random Events Plot: Demoman's Dilemma can be summed up as this, with a fairly nonsensical plot involving Demoman accidentally breaking Scout's heart in a fit of Alcohol-Induced Idiocy, then getting decapitated by his team in revenge, then possessing the Medic... yeah.
- A Truce While We Gawk: In "Meet the Jarate", the RED and BLU teams stop fighting to stare at a Sniper doing his business out in the open.
