Welcome back to Waifu Wednesday, Niche Gamer’s column where we talk about characters, their appeal, and a little on their history.
It’s Waifu Wednesday! This week’s waifu is Miss Pauling from Team Fortress 2.
Team Fortress 2 used to be a pretty lore-sparse game, but throughout the 2010s that changed quickly as Valve began releasing comics and other lore drops beyond their “Meet the” series of videos.
Miss Pauling is the dutiful assistant of the enigmatic Administrator, the elderly woman whose voice you hear during every match of TF2. Pauling’s responsibilities are endless, including cleanup, bribery, employee management, and likely whatever secretarial duties the Administrator shoves off onto her.
In-game, she’s the voice that gives and explains “contracts” which are optional content that reward cosmetics for completing specific tasks or goals.
Miss Pauling is a young woman in her 20s or early 30s. She features heavily in the Team Fortress 2 animated short “Expiration Date” and has a brief relationship with Scout.
Later in the comics, the two split up at some point. This becomes a point of character growth for Scout who realizes he’d be better off finding a girl he doesn’t have to work so hard to impress. Miss Pauling, in casual fashion points out that there are statistically speaking, women way hotter than she is.
Her casual reaction and comment about other hot women has led to some speculation that Miss Pauling is a lesbian, this rumor was possibly confirmed in an now-deleted tweet allegedly from writer Jay Pinkerton. However other anecdotal sources say the tweet was meant in jest. Miss Pauling remains however, a popular character to headcanon as sapphic, and spicy slashfics of Team Fortress 2 are actually surprisingly common.
Despite the age of the game, Miss Pauling remains a relevant character and the game receives irregular content and balance patches to this day.
Team Fortress 2 is available for free on PC (via Steam), and technically Xbox 360 and PS3 if you want to buy an expensive used game and play an outdated version. But you do you.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
