Crimson Blitz

**Crimson Blitz** (originally **Crimson Lombax**, usually just **Crimson**) is a heavily seasoned Generation 1 Tagger on TF2Tags, having been a presence on the site from the Anonymous days up until its eventual demise. Often looked to as TF2Tags's own cop and/or mediator, Crimson was for a time well-known for stepping in on conflicts and giving his (usually neutral and fair) takes on whatever major site events were happening at the time. Nowadays, people largely look to Crimson as a semi-retired veteran who sits back and watches things play out from his porch. Overall, he is a polite and highly respected member of the TF2Tags community.

## History

### New Recruit

Crimson Lombax discovered TF2Tags in December of 2014. Curious to find a good name for his TF2 items, he searched Google for "TF2 name tag ideas" and stumbled upon the quaint little site. To him, TF2Tags was a fantastic idea that often left him reeling with laughter, mostly from tags submitted by Sqwid (then Squidward Testicles). He submitted his first tag anonymously on December 21st, 2014, which was a reference to a joke made by Star\_. Having received a good bit of crits on this tag, he decided to go all the way and make a second tag, the first under his Steam account, 16 hours later, to around the same success.

Crimson would quickly start to familiarize himself with the various names that were around the site at that point in time, to the point where he felt comfortable enough to post a set in his name and wishing the site "happy holidays" and saying "you guys rock" just five days after his discovery of TF2Tags. Following this he would continue to regularly tag into the new year, reaching his 100-point milestone in just a couple of weeks. He quickly established himself with a style revolving around puns and being an all-around friendly guy.

On February 8th, Crimson would make a set responding to one made by Blast. Both sets involved representing Pokémon moves with TF2 items. Blast quickly and enthusiastically responded to this set, and the two would grow to be fast friends, playing games on Steam with each other regularly. A few days later, an unusual event occurred in which TF2Tags.com temporarily redirected to a gay rights website for unknown reasons. Crimson made a joke related to TVTropes on the situation when the site was restored to normal, and went about his business.

Later, on the 23rd Crimson would go on to make his first address in response to site happenings. Though it is unknown what specifically this was about, it appeared that someone got mad at their posts getting missed and taggers heckling them in the comments for their poor tag quality, as Crimson's comments appear to be directed towards someone complaining about the toxicity of TF2Tags and its users. Crimson professed his love for TF2Tags and the people who frequented it, but understood some felt different. He admitted that people can feel anyway they want about the site, but wanted to make perfectly clear the mischaracterizations being made about the taggers. Crimson stated that taggers are not spiteful assholes and jerks trying to criticize everyone at every opportunity. On the contrary, most are quite friendly, and any dislike of tags was not a statement of dislike against the person submitting them. He encouraged the unknown complainer to keep trying and eventually his time on TF2Tags would be better. This received a mostly-positive response, with taggers like Blast and Sensible Haircut commenting on the situation with enthusiasm and sarcasm, respectively. Crimson himself says he was considerably naïve when he made this post looking back, but remains proud of it and considers it the start of his career as a shitstorm policeman.

March would be quite successful for Crimson. As of March 3rd, 2015, he had shot up to 628 crits on his profile. By the end of March, he would post his hundredth tag, a set where he wondered what exactly he should do to celebrate the occasion. He thanked everyone who ever upvoted him and liked his sense of humor. Specifically, he thanked Dr. Dos for moderating the website, Sqwid for inspiring him to make tags in the first place, Blast for being a good pal, and Sensible Haircut for "keeping his (Crimson's) masculinity in check". He finished this set with a statement that he was far from done tagging.

April would be quite calm through the first half, with Crimson continuing on his merry way making tags that were well-received. On the 14th, he would make a melodramatic post about being absent from the site due to having a large amount of university work to do, but he would later delete this post and make another apologizing for being overdramatic and that he just needed a good meal, a good talk with a friend, and an organized schedule. On April 21st, he would once again address new users complaining about the site and its community due to their bad tags being missed, once again criticizing them for generalizing the community as a bunch of jerks. In the comments, he angrily elaborated how he hated being labeled an asshole when he did his best to always remain civil. He told them to reflect on their tags and perhaps realize that their stuff isn't as good as they believe it to be. Sensible Haircut echoed this sentiment, and expressed his own frustrations about how hyper-sensitive younger people tended to be at the time, and personally admitted to acting extremely jerkish whenever people took his constructive criticism as nothing but hatred. Blast also agreed with Crimson.

At some point in April, Crimson would reach his 1000-crit milestone.

### Officer Crimson, on the Case!

*Main article: Racist Anon Incident*

Crimson's activity would dip a bit in late April and early May due to his final exams occurring during that time, but he would soon be roped into the biggest shitstorm TF2Tags had seen in years. On May 1st, an influx of poor submissions flooded into the site through anonymous posting. Crimson would comment on a few of these anonymous tags and claim that they were not getting a reaction out of him. Blast would go on and blow up at the Anon in anger and outrage at the trash he was posting before simmering down after Sqwid grew worried, apologizing for the outburst but making the point that the Anon needed therapy, to which Crimson wholeheartedly agreed.

Shortly after Blast's tirade, however, the Anon would become noticeably more insidious, making their tags more and more edgy and inflammatory. The sheer number of racial slurs used by this Anon saw them henceforth dubbed as the Racist Anon, and Crimson would quickly launch defensive measures. Crimson was on the front lines through most of the Racist Anon Incident, reporting every tag the Anon posted as he saw them. It is most likely thanks to him that the majority of the Racist Anon's submissions were deleted, though some slipped through the cracks. Crimson called the Racist Anon a coward too scared to make an actual site account and said he actively preferred A Fucking Idiot's tags (whom Crimson was not a fan of at the time) to theirs.

Crimson would attempt to stop giving the Anon so much attention after the first few days, both because he had finals to focus on and because it was likely what the Anon wanted. When Blast would not stop calling out the Anon, Crimson admonished his friend to slow down and stop taking things so far, stating he (Crimson) had already reported the Anon so there was no use feeding him anymore. Blast relented, and the report seemingly worked as the Anon did not make any further appearances for a decent while. However, Crimson would soon be brought back in to the active drama after the revelation of an unjust banning of Blast's IRL friend Timberwoof, who was (allegedly) banned for making a post mocking the Racist Anon, where he pretended to be him but "forgot to sign out". When Blast requested Dos address this banning, Crimson backed him up. He declared that the Anon took Timberwoof from the community, and that meant war. Blast and Crimson would proceed to go on a long campaign to raise awareness for Timber and eventually get him unbanned. During this time, the Anon returned, which only furthered the advocates' outspoken pleas. Crimson presumably also went back to reporting all of these tags. He would also on occasion insult the Anon for what happened to Timber and their lack of even trying to be cleverly inflammatory anymore. He also began to wonder if there was more than one Racist Anon running amok.

With the Anon still posting freely and Timber still banned, Crimson began to question the site's leadership for continuing to do nothing. When Legownz, who had also jumped on the Timberwoof support bandwagon, made a post complaining about Dos's lack of response, Crimson expressed his frustration that it felt like they were intentionally being ignored, comparing Dos to a stubborn parent who felt they were right because they said so. However, Dos would later comment on that very Legownz tag, and soon enough Timber would be unbanned on May 10th, a full week after his initial banning on the 3rd. While everyone else vocally celebrated, Crimson himself was remarkably silent, most likely due to focusing on combatting the Anon, the problem that still needed to be fixed.

In fact, Crimson's presence during the remainder of the shitstorm would be remarkably silent in general, though he would make a comment or two on a relevant tag every now and then. Racist Anon tags continued to be reported and deleted, and it is unknown if Crimson himself kept reporting or not. He certainly was still invested in repelling the assailant, as he admitted the site was going to hell. Paranoia was also starting to set in, as he felt like he was unable to trust any anonymous users anymore, including the good-willed anons giving advice to the rest of the community, such as to not feed the Racist Anon attention they didn't deserve. This mindset was shared by many. After awhile, Crimson would only comment on some tags with "..." for unknown reasons. These tags in particular include one by Flam who was sitting back and just enjoying the good tags being made and one by Legownz who suggested that the anonymous function be disabled, as well as a post where Blast blew up yet again at the Anon and a post addressing the mass exodus of taggers leaving over the Anon's continued presence. The next time Crimson would speak in a comment was on a tag from Beelzebuzz trying to raise morale for the community, where he weakly stated that yes, the taggers must continue to fight.

Crimson would eventually return to full vigor when Timberwoof himself stated that he would be part of the ongoing exodus and leave the site himself. Crimson would later cite this and Beelzebuzz's words of encouragment as the primary reasons for getting him out of his depressed funk related to the situation. He would then vocally join the growing movement of taggers advocating a complete ignoring campaign against the Anon, expressing that he was done overreacting and just wanted to get back to making normal tags. He would snap Blast out of his own funk and convince him to stop paying the Anon any mind.

And then, a miracle finally came. Dr. Dos finally decided to get off his mighty chair and disable Anonymous submissions entirely, defeating the Racist Anon once and for all. Crimson would become energized and celebrate the taggers' final victory against the Racist Anon and rejoicing with all the others. He would also praise Legownz's efforts to try and help teach the newly nonymous taggers some tricks to help improve their score.

The Racist Anon Incident would be a major milestone in Crimson's career as a tagger. His outspoken efforts to get Timberwoof unbanned and silent efforts of reporting the offender's tags propelled him upwards in the community, earning him the informal classification of Major Tagger. From henceforth, Crimson would become a well-established name in the community.

During this time, he also partook in a site meme using sets to make jokes related to the "Roses are red" poem, and partook in Sensible Haircut's contest.

### Commissioner Blitz, Peacekeeper

Following the end of the Racist Anon Incident, Crimson would return to normal tagging fully. From May 30th to June 2nd, Crimson would make a trio of sets called "Pyro Philosophy". This would inspire him to host his own contest, one specifically related to philosophy-based tags. This contest ended on June 14th, where Crimson revealed the winners. Beelzebuzz got third, Ulysses got second, and Relk\_Cehi got first. Crimson was unable to immediately deliver the key prizes, however, due to buying them last minute and thus needing to go through the waiting period for trading. The remainder of June continued on as normal, with Crimson taking part in various fads that occurred within the community.

At some point between May 2nd and December 6th, 2015, Crimson would change his username from the original Crimson Lombax to the more well-known and permanent Crimson Blitz. Crimson Blitz would remain as his official full username for the remainder of his time on TF2Tags, even after he changed his name multiple times thereafter for various jokes and awareness campaigns, often axing the Blitz and going by just "Crimson". It is unknown when specifically Crimson made the change, but it may have been on June 30th, 2015, when Legownz commented on one of Crimson's tags showcasing another tagger using Lombax in their username, with Crimson replying "Well, well, well... time for another name change, then." This may have been an unrelated event, however, as there is some evidence that he was still using Lombax as of August 28th, so it's in a largely gray area.

On July 6th, Crimson would reach both 2000 points on his profile and 200 total tags. He would go on to partake in the Team Legownz drama that occurred later that month, being one of the only two taggers who have been confirmed to have changed his name to a combination of his own and Legownz to show support for Legownz, whom he had become good friends with over the previous months. Originally neutral during the P1P2 and Legownz argument, Crimson felt compelled to side with Legownz after P1P2 changed his name, stating that he went too far. Any tags he may have made regarding the incident have since been deleted. At some point after this, he expressed a desire to take a temporary leave from the site, but found himself unable to due to the many tag ideas he would come up with at random. On the 29th, he made a simple set giving advice to new taggers, advising them to put quality over quantity.

August came, and with it came a fair share of additional problems in the community. On the 11th, a small conflict occurred between Ulysses and the new tagger Tagattack (later known as Fancytag). Tagattack posted a tag that enflamed Ulysses's unrivaled saltiness and then made a tag joking about how new taggers are trying way too hard to be funny as a way to be ironic, given how he had not been on the site for a month yet. This invoked Ulysses's anger and after bullying Tagattack for a bit, he eventually deleted the original tag. Crimson later came on and complained that there seemed to be a new spat between users every time he took a day off from TF2Tags. AFI told him to stay in order to prevent it. A few days later on the 15th, more drama occurred, this time between the new tagger Makin' Bacon and veteran tagger BananaSquid. To summarize, people were making fun of BananaSquid for various reasons, and after one that Makin' made in particular, he decided to leave the site. Crimson, not having any stake in this conflict and not particularly caring for BananaSquid, made a pun on the situation. BananaSquid later returned.

Later the next day, the site would experience the infamous Mobile-Friendly Update, which brought the removal of the miss button and downvotes as a concept. While the site went into an uproar over the decision, Crimson largely laid low. While he took part in the previous major shitstorm, this one revolved around a decision made by the site's administration and the people who disagreed with it, and thus did not feel compelled to intervene. What minimal involvement Crimson had was the following: He was messaged by Ulysses on Steam and agreed with the argument he sent to him by Sensible about why Misses should not be removed. On the 18th, two days after misses were removed, he made a tag referencing how he was ready to sit back and watch the chaos continue. Misses were restored later that same day.

August was not done with drama yet, however, as shortly after the misses were restored a sitewide conflict between AFI and CP occurred, wherein CP reported AFI for shitposting (his entire point) and got him banned because of it. This led to an angry mob forming against CP for getting a beloved member of the site community banned, a mob led by AFI himself when he convinced Dos to revoke the ban that same day through email. Early on, Crimson wanted to stay out of the drama, making a tag mocking CP's infamous "I deserve credit" line and commenting "I've seen some dumb shenanigans on this site, but this easily takes the cake. If you're all going to point fingers like a bunch of immature school children, kindly leave me out of it." However, Crimson would later feel compelled to take a side. He would change his name during this drama, reflecting his worry regarding the state of TF2Tags. As the hatewagon against CP continued, Crimson got increasingly annoyed with the aggressors and believed things would only get worse before getting better. After Ulysses made his umpteenth anti-CP tag, Crimson angrily asked if this petty nonsense would end already. When Legownz threatened to leave over the treatment of his friend, Crimson felt the same way. Eventually, Crimson felt compelled to outspokenly side with CP on the issue, the only tagger other than Legownz to do so. He would soon after make a set expressing his frustrations:

> "Ok, Screw The Formalities. I'm not biting my tongue anymore.
> This Whole CP Debacle Is Shameful. An absolutely pathetic display from everyone involved. Let Me Appeal To Your Common Sense. Is all this fighting and name-calling going to get us anywhere?!
> CP, You Made A Bad Assumption. You didn't see it coming, and now you're paying the price. That Being Said, What this has escalated into has actually made me sick to the stomach.
> It's Harassment Is What It Is. You know what harassment can lead to? Suicide. I've heard it happen before.
> I Don't Give A Flying F\*\*K About The Ban When all I see is a bunch of taggers reaching levels of cyberbullying. And Yet Not One Of Them Thought "Hmm, maybe this is going too far. Maybe this guy has feelings, too."
> I Recently Chatted With Legownz. He and CP are real-life friends, and I'm friends with him on Steam. He Said CP Was Gone For A Month And no one ever bothered to tell him about AFI. I Know That CP Is A Nice Guy So I feel it was an honest mistake at first before he dug himself deeper.
> But That Apparently Doesn't Matter Considering all the slanderous comments I've seen. And Before You Accuse Me Of Defending CP, The only reason I'm standing my ground is because I can't stand bullies.
> And Let's Not Forget, This was the community's second meltdown this week. And I'm Noticing A Scary Trend: It's happening more often. As Stated Before I Love This Site. I love the humor, and I love the community. But If This Is The New Norm, I'm seriously considering severing my ties with this site. I Said So To Both [Ulysses] And Legownz, And they both seemed to have a mutual understanding of where I'm coming from.
> I'm Really Disappointed Right Now, And I feel it's getting worse. Prove me wrong. Do It For Your Old Pal Crimson. I think we're done here."
>
>

This impassioned rant was met with a few responses in the comments. Firstly, Legownz wholeheartedly agreed, and shared some more words about how this could have been handled better. Expand, who had recently grown big because of this incident due to his debuting of the TF2Tags Nightly News Network, pretty much put his hands up and said "don't shoot the messenger". Player 1 + Player 2, on the other hand, disregarded everything Crimson said and argued with points both Crimson and Legownz made. However, luckily for Crimson, people largely responded to his set in his favor, with many taggers like Sqwid coming out shortly after and denouncing the actions taken against CP. Soon after, AFI and CP both formally apologized to each other and the taggers at large for their respective parts in the drama they had perpetuated and caused, respectively. Crimson was just glad to see it was all finally over.

Of course, drama was never truly over in TF2Tags, and the life of a de facto community police officer was never done. Before the next shitstorm hit, however, the normal things Crimson did in between shall be addressed. While the drama surrounding the Banning of AFI was going on, Crimson wished Relk a happy birthday. The day after things ended, L'Étranger went about trying to do another gimmick to make him stand out in TF2Tags, much to most of the site's annoyance. While everyone was making sets complaining about Tranger, Crimson made a set trying to distract people from the drama. In this set, Crimson first stated that he had already reported Tranger to Dos (to ultimately no avail) and did a face reveal. In the comments of this same set, Tranger promised to stop shitposting, at least until his daily submissions reset.

On September 8th, another banning occurred, this time against Sensible Haircut for making a joke about Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner. The ban, initiated by Dos after receiving a report by a long-forgotten returning tagger Yuurg, was met with *extreme* backlash by the vast majority of the site, Crimson included, especially after, unlike AFI, Sensible's appeal was denied. In the immediate aftermath of Ulysses relaying that Sensible was gone for good, many taggers decided that they would leave TF2Tags in protest. In total, nine taggers would decide to leave, and Crimson was one of them. However, of those nine, three came back very quickly. Crimson was also one of them. Crimson's exact reasons for leaving are unknown, as he ashamedly deleted his tag stating he was leaving shortly after returning. However, multiple comments on tags during the debacle confirm that he did at one point leave the site and he did vehemently disagree with the ban. For the remainder of the drama, Crimson would once again take on his role of community peacekeeper alongside Blast. A now infamous argument occurred that day between Ulysses, who was against the ban, and Relk, who was for the ban. Largely seen as the two most influential taggers on the site at the time, the fight they had and the irreparable damage to their friendship sent shockwaves throughout the community. Most taggers sided with Ulysses, as the majority believed the ban to be unjust. Crimson and Blast, however, went about trying to settle the drama and return the site to a state of normalcy. Eventually, for whatever reason (many tags from this incident were later deleted), the community would eventually calm down and move on with a grudge against Dos in their hearts.

Following the aftermath of Sensible's ban, Crimson would celebrate his 20th birthday on the site. On the 23rd, he made a set about Taggers being Super Smash Bros, which people largely enjoyed, with many comments being made on this set. On the 28th, Crimson would enter another round of intense work and testing in his university, which increased his stress levels on the site and diminished his overall activity for a month. During this time, he would comment on the Ulyssesstorm by making 5 puns on the fun little event a handful of taggers performed earlier in the day.

Come November, Crimson would tag as normal. On the 8th, he made a time travelling joke, saying that his present self was about to say something stupid, only for him to post a tag directly after named "something stupid". This kickstarted a massive site trend over the next couple of days where taggers made time travelling jokes of various kinds. Of all taggers, CP made the most, to the point where many believed that CP himself was the one who started the trend. This was popularized in a later set by Mr. Copycat, though it was in fact Crimson who started this trend. A few days later, while the fad was still going, the site experienced the first of three events known as Taggenings, wherein the daily submission limits did not reset at the conclusion of the day as they were supposed to, freezing everyone's submissions where they were, with everyone only being able to make as many tags as they had left in the previous day's limit. Crimson playfully "took responsibility" for the Taggening, explaining how his time travelling led others to doing the same and messing with space-time continuum. He warned everyone to stop time travelling until he worked out the bugs. Crimson would take a conservative approach during the Taggenings, not posting much through the month until the 24th, where he would return to normal activity.

By December, Crimson had attained 3600 points and made over 320 tags. Now looked upon as a seasoned and respected member of the community, many would continue to view Crimson as a good friend and consistently level-headed mediator to most conflicts. Crimson would have an eventless December and finished off 2015 with high spirits.

### Retired from the Force

2016 would see Crimson take a less active role on the community-related drama side of TF2Tags, though he would of course still remain present in comment sections and would make standard, joke-related tags often. However, he would generally post about once a day from here on out. In January, Crimson would attempt to take a back seat regarding any of the drama that occurred, but the behavior of many taggers during the New Tagger Riots would see him almost take action like in years' past. See, the riots were started out of the community's rejection of a massive influx of new taggers that came from Dr. Dos's fixing of a log in bug and, more apparent, Bonkspenser advertising the site on Reddit. Crimson was against the rioting itself, as he believed that the new taggers made the site more populated and thus more popular, which meant the site would only continue to grow. However, he wasn't an outspoken source of opposition and let the idiots act like idiots. However, as anger and aggression towards Bonkspenser increased over the riot's duration, he began to see parallels to the way CP was treated during the Banning of AFI back in August. Crimson was on the way of making another impassioned speech against the community's behavior, but the riots quickly died after his fears grew thanks to the Great Comment Crash on the 11th, where he began to take a back seat in terms of community shitstorms. This stayed true during the advent of the first Colorless Time that began in late January. The only other tag of significant community note that Crimson made in January 2016 was when he followed a trend of taggers making parodies of the *Meet the Team* videos, with Crimson making a set parodying "Meet the Sniper" titled "Meet the Crimson". By the end of the month, Crimson would also achieve 4000 points.

February would see activity pick up on some days with a couple tags being posted on some days, as well as more interaction with site events. On February 13th, after Blast decided to join Walumancer's Wahfia faction following the appearance of a new tagger named Krazy Weegee, Crimson, alongside many others, would choose to follow and become a Wahfioso himself, becoming the 11th person to join the Wahfia, and the first to join after the initial wave that Blast kicked off. A week later, the site would be subject to a type of shitstorm not seen since the Racist Anon Incident.

On the 20th, an anonymous user bombarded the site with multiple fake accounts emulating (or "cloning") other taggers in what is now known as the Attack of the Clones. Crimson, like most, did not take the incident too seriously, however. All Crimson would do during this "attack" would be to make a tag joking about the situation and a comment on said tag that he might be a clone himself due to not being able to use his unusual effect on account of the second Colorless Time, to which Blast would lament that they got Crimson too. However, when Dos was called to step in, he made his infamous "Good Morning" speech and unloaded his frustrations about the site and its community. While this sent shockwaves through the community, Crimson did not directly respond to the rant. However, he did leave comments on others' posts regarding the situation. On Ulysses's set about how to stop the site from getting pulled (which included advice such as "do not shitpost", "do not complain", "never talk to Dos about *anything*" and "ignore everything that goes wrong"), Crimson agreed with his advice, stating that he was only on the site to make people laugh anyway, and didn't care what direction it took so long as that fact remained constant. On a later tag by Ulysses, Crimson concurred with a point made by TheOnlyGuyEver, specifically that this was not "the beginning of the end", rather it was the beginning of people learning to actually get along with each other. On a set by Makin' Bacon following the sentiments of Ulysses's set, Crimson stated that he looked forward to the future of the site, specifically the erasure of all shitposting. Finally, on a post Digi made following his Leave And Never Come Back, Crimson mockingly stated that he didn't even stay away for the three days he expected. Overall, Crimson seemed quite sympathetic for Dos's situation, and favored mass community reform. For a time, that happened.

That time lasted exactly 9 days. On March 1st, the first post-Attack of the Clones drama occurred in the form of Meta Breakers's "Edge Incident". Though Crimson did not comment on this drama on-site, Ulysses would approach him through Steam and ask his opinion on Meta, to which he firmly believed Meta to be in the wrong. Specifically, he stated that Meta had "reached that stage... where he has enough experience on the site to think he has a sense of entitlement, when in all actuality he ends up sounding like a spoiled brat." March would see, however, another uptick in Crimson's on-site activity, where he would return to his 2015 rate of tagging. He wished Acquiesce a happy birthday on the 16th, using the opportunity to flaunt unusual effects that were recently returned to the site following the end of the Colorless Times. On the leadup to April Fools' Week 2016 and the community's grand idea to become their NTF2Tags personas, Crimson realized he did not have one for himself, and thus unveiled Cobalt Bastion, his NTag self who makes bad references and yells at others. He would use this persona throughout the first day of the festivities like most everyone else, and returned to his normal self the day after.

In April, Crimson would continue the trend of ignoring site drama (such as the Endiome incident which had finally come to a head on April 8th and 9th). At this point, he could largely be seen as retired from his role as TF2Tags's peacekeeper. Instead, April 8th would see Crimson reach another major point milestone, with Le Tryhard Hunter critting him into hitting 5000 points, hitting the rank of Epic. Crimson was, of course, grateful. On the 16th, he made a set showcasing a concept for his boss fight in the TF2Tags video game a group of taggers had started to develop, though this was naturally far from his role intended by the team.

May 2016 would largely be uneventful for Crimson, the only tag of note that he posted being a set reiterating that he was not on TF2Tags to spite people or write his personal blog, but to tell bad jokes in hopes people get a kick out of them. June was largely the same, not paying much mind to the new string of Generation 3 taggers that were coming in to the site. When Floro Sapiens was banned by Dos for making a joke on Feminism, he reached out to Crimson for help in making his rant video about Dos's hypocrisy in the reasoning for his ban. In July, responding to the Meet Your Match update, Crimson decided to stay neutral in the Heavy vs. Pyro competition, deciding to side with both. Summer of 2016 would conclude with an equally uneventful August.

On September 11th, shockwaves were sent through the TF2Tags community when Ulysses carpetbombed the site in an attempt to get the site shut down, resulting in his permanent ban. Crimson, appropriately, made a bucket joke about the situation on the 13th, but in the comments of said joke admitted that a large part of him would miss that "maniac," and noted that Ulysses often said a lot of things Crimson wanted to say but didn't have the courage to speak. That same day, Crimson turned 21, where he drank for the first time. He decidedly does not like drinking.

October 2016 would be just another month for Crimson. By the end of October, or perhaps the beginning of November, Crimson would achieve 6000 points. December was also largely another run-of-the-mill month of just making funny tags, though near the end of the month he would unintentionally make a joke that started a trend which resulted in another trend that mocked said previous trend. Crimson would end 2016 with well over 6500 points.

### Getting Too Old For This Shit

January 2017 would actually be quite active for Crimson in the community. On January 15th, he made a tag mocking tags whose score was in the negatives and had 60+ comments, making a statement that he would just sit back and watch the show. However, things quickly grew violent as a shitposter named Edgelord (seriously, his name was Edgelord) went and missbombed several others the next day. Crimson decided to come out of retirement and report the user to Dos, and critbomb any victims back to their original score. This user would soon be banned, order would be restored, and Crimson went back to his chair. On the 17th, Crimson would reach the hellish 6666 point milestone, and he made a tag about it. Of course, Crimson would find himself compelled to come out and enforce law and order once again following a rapid string of negative occurrences on the site following the Edgelord incident, Kokogumi going on a shitposting spree that resulted in his permanent ban and Pepe the Boi controversially being banned for a month over a tag making a "triggered" joke. After some, like Kotov and Ass Ketchup, pondered if another such event was on the horizon, Crimson warned the community as a whole not to start anything, as he'd "seen too much shit on this site to just sit around and let that happen." After this he would immediately comment "I'm only going to say this once. I'm dead serious." Thankfully, people took heed of this warning and the remainder of January was quite positive.

Crimson would start February getting in on a new trend that some taggers including PyroDillon and Makin' Bacon were getting in on called "Life in the Taglands" where taggers would showcase a supposed snippet of their lives in the fictional country of the Taglands. Crimson's entry consisted of him waking up, opening up the window, seeing everyone screaming their heads off, shutting the window, and going back to sleep. On February 20th, Crimson would attempt to change his representative item to an unusual Aviator Assassin with the Sulphurous effect. Unfortunately, like most rep item changes, this was largely ignored and people continued to use the El Jefe, including Crimson himself.

On March 1st, Crimson would make a quick Tweet Tag venting about him going through a bit of depression, and that he had to get that fact off his chest. On March 22nd, Crimson would reach his 7000-point milestone, and noted how close he was coming to achieving Hale's Own, which was only 1500 points away. Crimson thanked everyone for helping him come so far, and noted that he would not have stuck around if it wasn't for the company he had. Blast would reveal on this celebratory post that he was the one that gave him a 500-point critbomb, and Crimson gladly decided to return the favor in kind. The next day, he attempted to highlight a particular tagger that appeared to be missbombing him, but a quick look at the vote logs showed this was not the case. DudeTheNinja noted that this tagger missed his own post about battling depression, to which Llux replied that such behavior was quite shitty. On the 24th, Crimson reminisced about his early days on the site, while he was still named Crimson Lombax. He missed those simpler times. That same day, he advertised a charity live stream his university's gaming club was doing on Twitch. By the end of March, Crimson's score would inflate up to 7500, just 1000 away from the coveted Hale's Own title.

When April Fools' Week 2017 commenced, Ulysses returned to active tagging for the first time since the beginning of March, and Crimson jokingly told everyone to "cancel the ritual". Whatever ritual he was referring to is unknown. In either case, Crimson would proceed to make several tags during the April Fools festivities. He would then tag normally for the rest of the month. May was another quiet month where nothing of major note occurred.

On June 8th, the site became accosted by a... positive anonymous user? So it would seem, as someone decided to create a bunch of dummy accounts, all using the name "Critbomber", and critnuke the site. Many people were up in arms about this supposed inflation to the TF2Tags economy, but Crimson pointed out that things could always be worse. The guy could have been named "Missbomber" after all! On June 10th, Crimson mourned the death of actor Adam West, who had died the previous day of leukemia.

July 2017 would prove to be the culmination of Crimson's career as a tagger. On July 7th, Crimson's old friend Legownz returned to TF2Tags and would remain until the end of September. Crimson was overjoyed at the news and avidly welcomed the veteran tagger back, quickly making a tag of the Co-Pilot titled "The Legend Returns." Legownz would then give Crimson a gift on the 13th in the form of critbombing him to Hale's Own. Finally, after two and a half years of hard work and dedication, Crimson had become the 14th tagger (15th if AFI is counted) to reach the coveted rank, all because of an old friend's kindness. While some, like Makin', were worried that Crimson would leave after this achievement, Crimson would continue to tag, quickly noting in the comments of one of his subsequent tags "Leaving? I'm just getting started."

August would be a typical quiet month for Crimson. In September, Crimson celebrated his 3rd birthday on TF2Tags, his 22nd, where he proudly stated: "Another Year Older... Another reminder that I'm getting too old for this shit." Many people wished him well in the comments. On September 22nd, Crimson would uncharacteristically make a discussion tag about what pissed people off in TF2. Personally, what pissed him off were Pyro mains that did nothing but W+M1 that think they're hot shit for getting killstreaks somehow.

From here, Crimson's on-site activity would start to slow a bit, though he was not by any means gone. However, instances where he would not tag for a couple weeks straight became more common. The remainder of 2017 would thus be uneventful for Crimson.

### Crimson's still here

On January 10th, 2018, Crimson warned that he might have to take a break from tagging, has his final semester of college was quickly coming up and it would be quite tough on him. Then, a week later, the site's domain name expired, and the site went down. Crimson didn't make too much fuss about it, though was annoyed that he had an idea for a tag when the site went down and forgot it before it was restored. Then came the big announcement: TF2Tags only had one year left before it shut down permanently. As was typical of Crimson at this point, he did not make a tag addressing the situation, but did give his thoughts in the comments of some others' tags. In a tag by Proto Kirby, who was graciously thanking Dos for making the site in the first place, Crimson admitted that he had used TF2Tags as an emotional crutch at times. He said it would be nice to move on from it, but he would certainly miss it. Though he was often critical of Dr. Dos in the past, he believed that shutting down the site was the correct decision, as the quality of the site had substantially declined in recent months, becoming a shell of its former self. At the end of the day, taggers would find another place to post their memes anyway.

On January 28th, Bloo Kirby would return to the site for the first time since December, and it was not to address the impending Tagpocalypse. Instead, it was to let everyone know that her depression had not yet claimed her life. Crimson, who had struggled with depression himself and was extremely touched by this, let her know she had his full support, and even went as far as to make a tag the following day with a long comment chain consoling her and begging her to get some help, noting that Blast was worried sick about her, and offered to rally the community up to give her the emotional support she needed. In solidarity, he changed his username to add on #HugsForBloo.

On January 30th, Crimson made another tag, giving himself an ultimatum: that once he graduated college in May, he would leave TF2Tags for good. He admitted that part of the reason was the site shutting down, but stated that he had used TF2Tags as an emotional crutch for far too long. "I reached Hale's Own. I made some great friends. And I survived my fair share of shitstorms. There's nothing else new this site can offer me, so it's best I move on with my life sooner or later. Granted, that's still quite some time away, but we'll burn that bridge when we cross it."

Almost all tags after January 31st, 2018 are lost to history, but Crimson's actions can be somewhat traced. Through site archives, it is shown that he made 33 tags between February 1st and December 2nd. As he said, his on-site activity would start to drop off considerably as the months went on. People would stop hearing from him other than particularly close tagging friends like Blast. However, he would ultimately fail to adhere to his ultimatum. Perhaps he did leave after May, but he would not stay gone for good. He was definitely on the site in August, as he participated in Walumancer's TF2Tags Summer Sendoff. When the day of Tagpocalypse slowly approached in the new year, Crimson was visibly back. In the final days of the site, Crimson could be seen in comment sections of The Final Week series. On the final day, January 15th, 2019, Crimson would request Walumancer give him a link to the Wahfia's Discord server so that he may stay with the community after the site's death. Crimson would join the site's Discord community for the first time that day, and has remained there ever since. When TF2Tags shut down for good, Crimson ended with around 9700 points.

## Style

Crimson is most known for his puns, of which he made a very large amount over the years. Often enhanced by unusual effects, Crimson's pun tags were often very well-received and praised as quite clever. Crimson also had a knack for making visual humor jokes, especially across multiple tags (such as two items showing Scout falling in an endless loop seen in *Portal*. Crimson would also often comment on his own tags and make a second punchline to the joke told in the tag itself. Other recurring aspects of Crimson's style include tags related to *Punch-Out!* and hating the Gunslinger. Later in his career, Crimson would make less puns and shift more to current memes and trends, of which he would often contribute to with snark. Crimson himself attributes this shift in style to a lack of inspiration.

## Relationships

Other than the obviously hateable missbombers, trolls, and those taggers who have actively targeted and/or attacked the site or its community, Crimson gets along with everyone on TF2Tags across all four original generations.

### Blast

Crimson and Blast are the oldest tagging friends to each other. Both joined in late 2014 and would quickly get to talking and gaming together quite often. Both taggers came to prominence through their roles in the Racist Anon Incident, where they teamed up to fight the Racist Anon and try and get Timberwoof unbanned. Crimson considers Blast to be his policing partner and his overall best tagging friend. The two would remain good friends throughout the remainder of both their careers, which extended to the end of the original site's lifespan and into the Tags.tf era. They remain good friends to this day.

### Legownz

When Legownz joined TF2Tags, he quickly took a liking to many taggers as personal inspirations. Crimson was one of them. While they would have some minor disagreements early on, Legownz and Crimson would grow to be quite good friends over time. The two mostly found themselves in common roles when it came to site drama, trying to maintain order as much as possible and beating their heads against the walls when nobody would listen to them. Though Crimson was critical of Legownz early on due to his tendency to try to hard in solving site issues, by the time Legownz left the community, Crimson referred to him as his old friend, and a man he heavily respected. As testament to their friendship, one of Legownz's final major acts in the community was to critbomb Crimson to Hale's Own.

### Dr. Dos

While he never spoke to Dos personally, Crimson has his own thoughts on the original site's creator. Like many, Crimson has been very critical of the decisions made by Dr. Dos in the past. He, along with every other Tagger on the site, was outraged at the banning of Sensible Haircut. He was critical of Dos's rant against the Taggers following the first Attack of the Clones. He was also a very vocal supporter of adding moderators to the site, which Dos for the longest time refused to implement (until Generation 2 Tagger Fancytag was finally appointed to the position in early 2017). Despite these criticisms, however, Crimson respects Dr. Dos more than most on the site for everything he put up with for so long. Having similar feelings as Dos in regards to his time in university, Crimson admires the amount of willpower required to keep the site running. For this reason, he empathized with Dos's decision to shut down TF2Tags.

### Others

In regards to others, Crimson has outspokenly expressed that his favorite tagger is Sqwid, and often cites him as his main tagging inspiration. He is also a big fan of Acquiesce. He is also friendly with the likes of Relk and Walumancer, despite the fact that they despise each other. Related to the latter, he is a member of the Wahfia and would attend Walumancer's TF2Tags Summer Sendoff event in August 2018. While Timberwoof was on TF2Tags, they got along very well, and Crimson would often play TF2 with him and Blast. He also has taken a liking to Shakkari and his legendary "Noice" comments, especially because Crimson feels his Tags attract the most "Noice"-s. Crimson and Fancytag both share a common interest in Geometry Dash. Crimson considers Makin' Bacon to be a friendly rival and "worthy opponent" of sorts, due to their similar tagging styles. Both Taggers have respect for the other. He defended CP during the Banning of AFI. Crimson has had disagreements with people like Ulysses, Player 1 + Player 2, and Floro Sapiens in the past. However, as time has gone on, Crimson has grown to respect each of them to an extent. After his banning Floro contacted Crimson for help with his rant video describing Dos's hypocrisy in his reasoning for banning him. He's given Ulysses life advice in the past, and after his permanent banning he admitted to admiring his courage to say what he thought, especially considering Crimson often felt like he shouldn't say his own opinions on several matters.

He is also friends with Propizio, Ashton Doovis, Proto Kirby, Le Tryhard Hunter, and Moura on Steam.

## Trivia

* Crimson wound up staying on TF2Tags for so long because he believed the community was, all in all, pretty cool (though he has since believed it has substantially declined in quality), and a good round of tagging was a good stress reliever to get him through college.
* At the time of their happenings, Crimson viewed the various shitstorms on TF2Tags to be pointless distractions (barring the Banning of Sensible Haircut). Looking back, he has since come to believe that they served create camaraderie between the Taggers who survived these events.
	+ Crimson has stated that his attempts at trying to quell both sides either made the shitstorms worse or outright caused them in the first place. He has gone on to say he feels slight regret for that now. This statement is largely not agreed upon in the community, who valued his peacekeeping efforts.
* Crimson chose the El Jefe as his representative item because he wanted his to be an item with the Scout's face present in the tag. He thought the El Jefe in particular was a cool item that no one else would choose.
* Crimson's dream unusual is the El Jefe with the Nuts and Bolts effect.
* Crimson's original name, Crimson Lombax, came from his love of the Ratchet and Clank series. He then changed his name to the more well-known Crimson Blitz because he thought it sounded cooler. He currently goes just by Crimson now due to the fact that the second part of both names was always omitted when others spoke of him.
	+ At one point, someone confused "Lombax" with "Lmaobox", the infamous cheating engine hackers use in TF2. It amused and offended him at the same time.
* Around July through September 2015, Crimson had a squirrel companion (via the Chucklenuts item) in his sets where he rambled to himself named Wilson. He acted as a sort of sidekick/straw-man to Crimson, though it never really took off.
* Ironically, Crimson's first tag was made under the anonymous name of Blutarch Mann.
* It took Crimson 153 tags to make his first sex joke. Considering this community, this is an impressive achievement.
* Crimson's Widowmaker in Team Fortress 2 is named after a tag by Ulysses.
* Crimson has a special hatred for the Gunslinger and the Phlogistinator. ESPECIALLY the Phlogistinator.
* Crimson has encountered a player in Team Fortress 2 who used a Scattergun that was identical to a tag that he himself has made. It was a stock Scattergun named / described "Pest Control / Ironically, the only pest is the one holding this gun."
	+ The player using this Scattergun claims to have received it as a gift. Nonetheless, it was evidence to Crimson that TF2Tags's influence was growing.
* Though originally a Scout main, Crimson's main class in Team Fortress 2 is up for debate. While Scout remains his most-played class, Demoman is now his favorite. He also has been playing a lot of Spy recently. This means his main class is now Scoumopy.
* Crimson can play the French horn and has dabbled in music theory.
* As of May 2018, Crimson has a bachelor's degree in Environmental Engineering.
	+ Ironically, Engineer is his least-played class, despite being an IRL engineer.
* Crimson, like many, would be seduced by Overwatch for a time. However, this phase would ultimately end and TF2 would reign supreme in his heart.
* Outside of TF2, Crimson's favorite games are Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal, Freedom Planet, and Crash Team Racing.
* Crimson's favorite video game character is Miles "Tails" Prower from the Sonic the Hedgehog series. He even had a profile picture of Tails early in his tagging days.
* Crimson has claimed Callie from *Splatoon* as his wife.
* Crimson is a fan of Pokémon. He usually picks the water starters, though has a soft spot for Rowlet.
* If Crimson were to die, he would want his body to be orbiting Earth in a flying kick position. It is his dream and legacy.
* Despite his on-site bravado, Crimson is actually quite shy in real life, having trouble with eye contact, initiating conversations, and being rather scatterbrained.
* He is a self-professed Adam Richman fanboy, and has even met him in person.
* His favorite YouTubers are SomeCallMeJohnny, rabbidluigi, Fawful’s Minion, Jerma, 8-BitRyan, and EricVanWilderman. He also watches Chuggaaconroy and ProtonJon.
	+ On one occasion, he found a comment by Walumancer on a Fawful's Minion video, and pointed it out on the site. On that day, the two of them (as well as Blast) bonded over their shared love of the YouTuber.