Ulysses

> "My Best Adventures Begin with 2 Words: Fuck it."
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> ~ Ulysses, summing up his history on TF2Tags.
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**Jesse**. A name universally known by all Taggers. An enigmatic creature with a particularly vehement disdain for all things, Ulysses is not just the most well-known Generation 1 Tagger, he was probably the most recognizable Tagger in TF2Tags history. Having been present from the days before the community formed to the bitter end of TF2Tags, Ulysses has seen and done it all, reaching tremendous heights and startling lows in his five-year career on TF2Tags. Many respect him, many despise him. But everybody knows about him and his cynical, asshole-y, edgelord personality.

In many ways, Ulysses can be seen as the trailblazer for the community, using things such as representative items and making Tweet Tags long before they became staple features of the community, as well as the community figurehead and representative for the better part of three years. And yet at the same time, he spent the latter half of his career calling for the total annihilation of the site. The man is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, with very few being able to fully understand his motives.

## History

### Early Months

Ulysses first appeared on TF2Tags on December 6th of 2013. Poetically, his first tag was of a nature related to rage and anger. This first tag would become successful, and he would continue to make tags regularly until the 21st. He would continue his regular tagging on New Year's Day through the first of February, where he would take a week and a half break before returning on the 12th, and in March his tagging activity soared.

March 10th is Ulysses's earliest known instance of community interaction. On that day, he would team up with Fear to start one of the first (if not the first) site trend involving paint puns (specifically related to the "A Distinctive Lack of Hue" paint but would transition to others). When the trend had been going on for at least a day, a rapidly rising star of a tagger named Relk\_Cehi, who joined TF2Tags a month before Ulysses, complained about the puns taking over the site, stating that back in his day TF2Tags was for clever renames, not crappy paint puns. Ulysses, in what would be his first (but far, *far* from last) counter against Relk, made a similar tag stating that back in HIS day, "People had A Distinctive Lack Of Fucks To Give about puns.". Later that month, Ulysses made a post commenting on the Huddahing, predicting the imminent ban of the site's first known shitposter. He may have also been more directly involved in fighting against Huddah, though no evidence remains of this due to all of Ulysses's comments prior to January 2016 were deleted.

In April, Ulysses would partake in his first April Fools' Week, using the many new items to make new, creative tags. Following April Fools, Ulysses would unwittingly team up with Relk to create another daylong trend relating to *Back to the Future*. He would make an early Tweet-style tag using his original representative item, the Unusual Attendant with the Circling TF Logo, to comment on it. This led to Relk questioning what kind of tag it was, as it held little to no name value. Ulysses would make another Tweet Tag in May specifically aimed at Relk, who was forcing a repetitive meme of puns.

### Mann vs. Bucket

In June, Ulysses would begin to complain about jokes relating to the show *Breaking Bad*, particularly because people kept telling him it's "time to cook". It became a known pet peeve of his, but not one would exploit. On the 17th, the TF2 SFM film *Expiration Date* released alongside the Love and War update, and it quickly became a source of memes and jokes on TF2Tags, as well as the wider TF2 community. Ulysses would capitalize on this somewhat, making some jokes related to the movie, including the first joke about the now infamous bucket (though this was not the first "Bucket Joke"). Ulysses, as well as everyone else on the site at the time, would go on to make numerous tags either related to the short or the update itself. Ulysses would often comment on the delayed release of the map Asteroid, a map that remains in development hell to this day. On the 24th, Ulysses would congratulate Relk for becoming the third person to reach the rank of Hale's Own, ironically because he followed a trend that Ulysses recommended he avoid.

On July 3rd, Ulysses commented on some minor drama that was happening on the site at the time, but it is unknown what this drama was about. The rest of July was, otherwise, uneventful for Ulysses. A similar stint of unknown petty drama that Ulysses commented on occurred again on August 4th. On August 11th, Ulysses commented again that he was sick of *Breaking Bad* jokes.

August 14th of 2014 would mark an era in Ulysses's tagging career that was largely focused on one particular thing: Buckets. You see, ever since *Expiration Date* released, there was one particular set of lines exchanged between the Spy and the Soldier that would be milked on the site for two months:

> SPY: This... is a bucket.
> SOLDIER: Dear God...
> SPY: There's more.
> SOLDIER: No!
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Ulysses had grown absolutely sick of these Bucket Jokes. In fact, for two days straight he only made tags relating to Bucket Jokes and how they were terrible. The third day started with another anti-bucket tag before he resumed normal tagging. This would not be the end of his Bucket Joke crusade, however. Before he would continue to rage against the bucket machine, however, he would create his best tag, which would eventually go on to reach 135 crits. It was also around this time that Ulysses became self-aware of his generally violent and not-so-passively-aggressive personality, and instead of changing that decided to utterly own it. On the 31st, Ulysses would make 2 sets listing off the tags he genuinely hated with all his being. *Breaking Bad* and Bucket Jokes aside, Ulysses listed off several jokes often used in low-effort tags that he believed to be utterly played out, such as Meatshot Scatterguns, semen Mad Milk, penis Originals, BDSM Disciplinary Actions, complaining about certain weapons, Dream Loadout sets, Kurt Cobain's Microphone, the Lucksman, fandom jokes, edgy jokes, and many, many others. People largely agreed with these jokes being overdone and of general low quality, Bucket Jokes included.

However, the Bucket Jokes just wouldn't go away, and in mid-September Ulysses began to rant about Bucket Jokes once again, and this time people would use this opportunity to make fun of Ulysses's clear hateboner for these jokes. Almost the entire site banded together and not only made Bucket Jokes, but Bucket Jokes related to or mentioning Ulysses. Whether it was older Taggers like Papa Nurgle or freshly new ones like Player 1 + Player 2, friends like Sensible Haircut or rivals like Relk, *everyone* made Jokes about Ulysses and Buckets. On the 19th, Squidward Testicles would go on to break Ulysses through Steam chats, where he sent him a message that was an amalgamation of the three things Ulysses absolutely despised: "KURT COBAIN, WE NEED TO COOK A BUCKET". This went on for over a month, and on October 25th Ulysses told everyone that the fact that people were continuously mentioning him whenever a Bucket Joke was made was starting to piss him off more than the Bucket Jokes themselves. The very next day, Yahiamice responded to this by making a simple little cosmetic item and uploaded it to the Steam Workshop. This cosmetic item was known simply as "The Pocket Bucket", which was a simple bucket attatched to Soldier's hip. Ulysses saw this and naturally had more of his faith in humanity erode.

Following this, Ulysses would not make any tags referencing Bucket Jokes for quite some time, but his reputation for utterly despising them had been solidified, becoming a site meme for multiple years. Until the community really went into full-throttle, Ulysses would largely be known as the always pissed-off bucket hater. Other than this, it was around this time where Ulysses's earliest crit milestone is known. By October 18th, 2014, Ulysses had accumulated 4277 points on his profile, placing him at the rank of Server-Clearing, and he would end 2014 nearly reaching the 5000 points needed for the rank of Epic.

His next bucket-related tag came on January 15th of 2015, where he attempted to actually *make* a Bucket Joke, but found himself so physically repulsed that he vomited before he could get it all out. In February, Ulysses's activity would begin to drop off. He posted no tags from February 6th until February 14th, and after that not again until the 23rd. His tagging activity would then resume to be regular, but less active, making a tag once every week or so, preferring to comment on others' tags than make any himself. By the 25th of February he had accumulated 5600 points.

### Community Maverick

Ulysses's tagging activity picked up near the end of March, likely in anticipation of April Fools' Week 2015. However, April Fools never came, and so Ulysses would for the first time reach out to Dr. Dos, trying to get to the bottom of why. He relayed their Steam chat to the site, and it was revealed that Dos was in the middle of a long-distance move, and simply did not have the time to update the site for April Fools' Week. Ulysses made another Bucket-related tag later that month.

May of 2015 saw a new spark of drama unlike anything TF2Tags had ever seen before. An anonymous user, now known as the Racist Anon, bombarded the site with deliberately provocative and shit-stirring tags of a racist nature for three straight weeks. After initially dismissing the Anon on the first few days, Ulysses would eventually insult the Anon, calling them a "filthy necrophiliac" and someone that could not be bargained with or stopped. Following his insults, taggers Blast and Crimson Blitz would begin to raise awareness for Timberwoof, who was unjustly banned on the 3rd in a case of mistaken identity. Though Ulysses did not seem to join in rallying for Timber's freedom, he did announce Timber's unbanning on the 10th. It is unknown how he attained such information, though he likely either contacted Dr. Dos about it or had Timberwoof himself come to him with the info.

Ulysses would make another Bucket tag on the 11th. On the 13th, Ulysses would contact a recently-inactive Relk as to why he had not been on the site recently, and relayed their chat to the site. Relk decided to take a break for awhile, and stated that maybe he had just run out of moxie. Relk would later return and dispute him running out of any moxie, so either Ulysses lied or Relk was trying to cover his own ass. Both are equally likely. That night, Ulysses allegedly had a nightmare about him unboxing seven Unusual Brain Buckets.

When the Racist Anon Incident finally came to an end, Ulysses made a response hailing that the Anon's defeat created a "New Age" for TF2Tags due to Anonymous being disabled and many taggers leaving. Ulysses said that this was not a new age at all, and though "they" (unknown if referring to the Racist Anon or the taggers that left) had left, it didn't mean "they" wouldn't return, and those that remained should use their time wisely. Either way, the Racist Anon never did come back, and most of the people who fled the site due to the Anon returned. Later, Ulysses would change his name on the site to a generic TF2 character, pretending to post a tag Anonymously as a joke.

On July 7th, shortly after the release of the Gun Mettle update, Ulysses once again contacted Dos asking where all the new items were. Shortly after this, Dos posted a new entry on the news section of the website, explaining that him trying to do this spawned crazy numbers of Stickybomb launchers. A few days later, Ulysses again criticized the idea of there being a "New Age" of TF2Tags, as everyone was largely still there, it was just a lot of new taggers were coming into the site. A few days after that, shortly after the death of Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, Ulysses relayed the news to the site. The comments of this tag led to another wave of drama known as Team Legownz. Legownz, who did not care about Iwata's death, said so in an admittedly rude way, and while many criticized him for it, people eventually sided with him when Player 1 + Player 2 renamed himself to "Legownz is a faggot" for holding such a stance. In response, many began to change their name to some variation of Legownz to show support. Ulysses, though his tag is where the drama started, did not partake in this drama, as he was in Las Vegas for a week and had been making tags less frequently because of it (including another bucket tag among a sea of Bucket Jokes that he still despised), eventually saw the drama and demanded an explanation. Crimson and Sensible gave them in the comments. In that very same comment section, however, Player 1 + Player 2 revealed why he hated Legownz so much, which was ultimately something trivial. Legownz apologized for the perceived slight against him, and the drama largely petered out from there. Though he was uninvolved, Ulysses had unintentionally started and ended Team Legownz.

Later on in July, Ulysses threatened the next tagger to post a bucket with banishment. Sensible and the new tagger Fancytag (then Tagattack) took up this challenge. They called Ulysses's bluff. A few days later, Ulysses insinuated that he may have possession of a Ulysses/Bucket fanfiction, and asked the community how they would react to seeing it. The next day, he posted a set of this fanfiction, which was apparently to raunchy and unholy that someone reported it to Dos, and it was taken down overnight. In response, Ulysses stated: "I think I don't have to worry about the Pacific Ocean running out of salt now."

On August 13th, Ulysses made a set reacting the influx of new taggers, soon to be known as members of Generation 2. With the release of Gun Mettle, TF2Tags continued to receive new users, and the veteran taggers (now known as Generation 1) lamented the inevitable flood of bad and duplicate submissions. Ulysses said that Dr. Dos had forsaken them, and that they needed a champion to fight back. And his name is John Cena. Yes, Ulysses made that entire set as a John Cena joke, which was a trend he had been riding for awhile, but many veteran taggers reacted to it seriously, especially Legownz and Sensible Haircut. The next day, Ulysses posted his 666th tag, and the following day revealed his true plan of summoning the anti-tagger to bring ruin to the site, but alas, his chant to summon the anti-tagger was his *667th* submission, and it didn't work. He shrugged it off and went on with his day.

### Bring Back Misses

*Main article: Bring Back Misses*

On August 16th, 2015, Dr. Dos launched a new major update to the site, dubbed the Mobile-Friendly Update. This update brought with it... many terrible decisions. Mainly, the removal of the Miss Button and all negative points earned on every single tag in the site's history. Ulysses first noticed this when he suddenly became Hale's Own, stating that it was time for him to leave "before this place blows up like Little Boy." He immediately made a site after this saying "Just kidding." No, Ulysses was staying, and he was going to fight. He and Sensible Haircut teamed up, alongside Legownz, to form the Bring Back Misses movement, which argued for the immediate restoration of the Miss Button and all negative points. While Sensible manned the militant division of the movement and Legownz bolstered support, Ulysses went about negotiating with Dos for the restoration of Misses. On the 17th, following a conversation with Sensible on the matter, BBM argued three basic points:

1. Bad submissions could no longer be punished and deterred for others for being bad.
2. There is no way to give new taggers direct negative feedback outside of comments.
3. It directly interfered with the goal of A Fucking Idiot, who was trying to achieve Negative Hale's Own.

After the militant division received bans, Ulysses took the diplomatic approach and went to Dr. Dos directly via Steam. He argued that removing Misses was for the worse. Dos stated he had been wanting to remove Misses for a very long time, and tried to argue against Sensible's point of misses being a deterrent by bringing up AFI, which Ulysses countered by stating AFI's goal of Negative Hale's. However, Ulysses was promptly ignored, and so he went around asking various taggers whether they agreed with BBM's points. Support was received from Yahiamice, Player 1 + Player 2, Crimson Blitz, Lt. Col. Problem, Makin' Bacon, and many others. He made a set on the site relaying all this information, and argued that all the problems that came with Misses could be easily solved by hiring a few moderators, nominating his two BBM co-founders and Relk. Ulysses then criticized Dos:

> "You essentially moved all negative Power to yourself and removed the agency of the user to visibly show dissent. All you did was take power from me, from Sensible, from everyone else. And gave it to yourself. If it stays like this, a majority of us will leave. I can guarantee it. Now, go on. Ban me. You can ban me, but you know that we're right."
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The comments of this tag were full of ardent support from taggers both mentioned and not mentioned in the set (such as Blast and TheOnlyGuyEver). Sensible, who was at the time banned for trying to demonstrate his point by filling the site with terrible submissions that could not be missed, told Ulysses he "actually shed a tear at the outpouring of support and love from these men." As Ulysses continued to lead the BBM charge, Dos eventually messaged him back on Steam, stating he had no idea people would care so much about the removal of misses. On the 18th, just two days after removing the Miss Button, he reinstated it, all the misses, and unbanned the militant taggers. Ulysses mocked Dos's opening "Well, that went poorly!" line in the News article that came with him bringing them back, and as BBM disbanded with their goals fulfilled, Ulysses went back into hiding, waiting for the next shitstorm, stating that balance had been restored.

### Troubled Waters

Shortly after the restoration of the Miss Button, Ulysses briefly took a leadership role discussing the community moving forward, asking everyone for three taggers they believed would make good moderators, as well as trying to name the debacle of the previous two days. However, nobody really commented on these tags so he just resumed his standard role.

The day after Misses were restored, the minor tagger L'Étranger decided to make a name for himself and... boy, did he do it. When he started using a made-up voice inside his head named George, Ulysses would be among the first to call him out on how stupid it was, stating "Look, I might have my own hallucinations, but I keep them to myself." Ulysses would continue to mock Tranger until the next big shitstorm, which happened only a few days later.

On August 20th, 2015, former BBM militant CP reported A Fucking Idiot, practically the posterboy for BBM to Dr. Dos, and he was subsequently banned for the remainder of the year. As the site was stirring and preparing for another shitstorm, Ulysses stumbled in confused and potentially drunk, and asked for clarification on the situation. After being informed, Ulysses began to hurl derogatory words towards CP, calling him the "The Person Who Kills The Fun" trope and mocking his infamous "I deserve credit." line. The following day, he would warn the site that all the drama coupled with personal issues had made him very much on-edge, and told people not to be the one to make him snap. He would later wish Relk a happy birthday (with an added "Just kidding, fuck you" because he is Ulysses). On the third day of the shitstorm, Ulysses again insulted CP, calling him someone "who thinks they deserve credit for something stupid." This drew both positive comments from those like P1P2, Sensible, and a now-unbanned AFI, alongside negative comments from the likes of Crimson, Legownz, and of course CP himself. Ulysses later claimed that he was neutral regarding the entire debacle and was just going along with it because he was bored, though many are unsure of whether or not this was true. Eventually, AFI and CP buried the hatchet, and things went back to normal. This incident also spawned the TF2Tags Nightly News Network from the tagger Expand, which Ulysses would step in and host every now and then.

And normal for Ulysses meant returning his ire to Tranger. On the 24th, as Tranger returned to his George schtick, Ulysses made a tag requesting someone stop him, for he was on the verge of killing Tranger, and said that unlike AFI, his posts are not and never will be funny. It was around this time that Ulysses began to befriend TGRobert, a newer tagger who had been mostly commenting on other tags than making his own. In their mutually chaotic minds, they decided to attack Tranger via Steam, where TGR would befriend Tranger only to wind up bullying him instead. This backfired on Ulysses, however, when TGR realized that he and Tranger were fellow weebs, and they actually became real, legitimate friends. And so, Tranger lived to see another day.

After a temporary lull in drama, the site went into its craziest frenzy yet on September 8th after Sensible Haircut got into an argument with a minor tagger named Yuurg over a Bruce Jenner joke, who reported it to Dr. Dos, who banned Sensible. Initially, like everyone else, Ulysses assumed this ban to be temporary and made a snide joke at it, but eventually Sensible reached out to him and informed him of what was really going on. The next day, Ulysses relayed to the site that Sensible was, in fact, banned and staying banned for good. Sensible and Dos exchanged words and it ended badly, with Dos blocking Sensible outright. This banning effected many taggers at the time, but it effected Ulysses particularly hard, as Sensible was his closest friend and ally on the site. He mentioned in the set relaying information that he might as well leave with Sensible, as he saw TF2Tags as "goin' to hell real fuckin' quick". Many others took up this position, but Ulysses was tethered to the site for one specific reason which would quickly become one of the most volatile confrontations in site history.

On the tag where Ulysses announced Sensible's banning, Relk rejoiced, as he had been getting fed up with Sensible for a long time and was glad to see him go. This naturally made Ulysses end his "Status on Sensible" set with him calling Relk out, stating "And Before Relk pops up talking shit; Nobody cares about what your pissy ass has to say. I'm out." This led to Relk angrily responding that he wished he never gave him "hope or any sort of encouragement" and was glad to see him go too. However, Ulysses did not go, for he was not one to leave such a slight against him unchallenged. This led to an *extremely* heated flamewar between the two that lasted for several hours, ultimately ending with Relk reporting Ulysses to Dos, seemingly for harassment purposes, which gave Ulysses a 24-hour ban. This caused the majority of the rest of the site who remained to start a hatewagon against Relk for both his approval of Sensible's ban and getting Ulysses banned. What was exactly said is lost to history at this point, but what is known is that once Ulysses returned the following day, his up to that point friendly-ish relations with Relk had been shattered, and the two would go on to partake in the most infamous feud in TF2Tags history over the course of the following year.

Following Sensible's Ban and the fallout of his now immortal feud with the site's top tagger, on September 14th Ulysses was subsequently caught in the middle of a war between his now closest Tagging friend TGRobert and the now second greatest enemy Tranger. In what the two belligerents have dubbed "The Weeaboo War", they got into a very intense (but ultimately friendly) argument over who the best girl in Katawa Shoujo is. While the two weebs went at it, Ulysses decided to fan the flames with the interest of adding some character to the site, and encouraged everyone not necessarily to partake in the war, but to just riot. People largely did not want to go along with this and mostly just wanted all three of them to stop. Alas, no more chaos for Ulysses on that day.

Some chaos *was* introduced on the 18th, when people were randomly getting Missbombed by an unknown party, but Ulysses did not care whatsoever. Instead, he continued his petty attempts at getting L'Étranger banned on the 23rd, this time offering an unknown prize for whoever could get Tranger banned and show proof. This was likely withdrawn as Tranger commented he was now trying to actively get himself banned, with TGR's encouragement.

### Mann x Machine

In the span of 5 days, two amazing things came in to Ulysses's life. First off, thanks to a critbomb by TGR, Ulysses became the 5th person to achieve the rank of Hale's Own on September 24th, 2015. Though initially he made it seem like he was leaving the site as he no longer had any purpose for being there, he would of course continue to tag with this shiny new badge of honor. Two days later, he would be critbombed *again* to 9000 points. Then, on September 28th, Ulysses had finally played through *Undertale* to the point where he fought against the boss of the fourth area: Mettaton EX. This particular character had such a profound impact on Ulysses that his love of Mettaton would go on to eclipse his hatred of Bucket Jokes as the running gag people made about him. In his first tag referencing his love of Mettaton, he called the character his spirit animal.

At this point, Ulysses had pretty much, whether he intended to or not, become the biggest celebrity this website had, with much more of a reputation than the site's own creator or its top performer. Ulysses was the most recurring tagger in community-related jokes, memes, and sets, as well as the one whose opinion most people at least respected. This was particularly true when Ulysses saw the writing on the wall regarding Dr. Dos, who had been increasingly more absent from the site following Sensible's banning, rightly debunking Relk and CP that new items that were getting added was a result of an automatic setting Dos implemented during the Mobile-Friendly Update, and not Dos himself.

Then, on October 13th, 2015, L'Étranger initiated his third and most well-received (as well as short-lived) minor shitstorm, where he changed his name to Ulysses and pretended to be him, with intent to annoy the Ulys-man himself. This was quickly followed with TGR doing the same thing, followed shortly after by CP, Legownz, and eventually Walumancer. The five caused some chaos and confusion on the site for a total of ninety minutes before Ulysses came onto the site and, to their delight, became greatly annoyed. He proceeded to message each of the five on Steam, demanding they change their names back. These demands were often coupled with threats of bodily harm, typically relating to the copycat's spine. The five quickly heeded his warning and changed their names back. Ulysses returned to the site, acting like nothing happened. The Ulyssesstorm, as it was dubbed, came and went.

Ulysses would experience his first missbomb on October 24th. Though the culprit is unknown (all of Ulysses's comments up to a certain point were deleted), it seems like it might have been P1P2, though he denied doing it on account of the vote log having a crit on one of CP's tags, who he hated. Regardless of who did it, Ulysses's reaction was actually ambivalent. In fact, in some ways he *enjoyed* getting missbombed, and this would come into play later.

At the onset of November, Ulysses began to make more and more tags related to Mettaton, starting with the leg-related quotes and memes followed by his own jokes. He then made a set declaring his feelings on certain taggers, specifically giving a "Fuck you" to Relk, Tranger, P1P2, Marmot, and Legownz, while also calling a tagger represented by White Graybanns cool. The following day, he made another tag commenting on Dr. Dos's absence. On the 6th, after hearing that someone got banned for 24 hours for use of the word "bitch", Ulysses criticized the idea of getting banned for swears and said seven swears, including bitch, and demanded he be banned too (which Relk tried to help bring to legitimate fruition).

From there, things all seemed to be normal, until the 12th when P1P2 pointed out to the site that the submission limits were not resetting. Ulysses, realizing he had used many tags, only had two remaining on the 13th, so he "ended" his tagging career with a Mettaton tag followed by a goodbye "See ya fellas in hell." tag. Thankfully, Dos finally returned to fix the site bug called the Taggening, and Ulysses was able to return the next day alongside everyone else. Following the first Taggening, Ulysses made a self-aware tag about how he was able to make terrible posts but still get crits through his reputation (which he called "Ulysses Syndrome"), and then announced that he would be... relieving Le Tryhard Hunter of his duties as host for the TF2Tags Gameshow idea the latter had created. Most likely, this was because he wanted to further make himself into the physical embodiment of Mettaton. However, he seemingly left Tryhard alive long enough to host an actual Game Show, and Ulysses was left to announce the winners. This game show pretty much died after that, despite his attempts to revive it the following month.

On December 3rd, Ulysses began to invite missbombers to attack him. With nearly 1000 tags under his belt at that point, he found the idea of someone missing every single one of his tags to be impressive rather than daunting. The next day, he revealed to everyone that he did intend on having sexual relations with Mettaton. By the 8th, Ulysses had still not yet been missbombed, and again said that he was waiting for someone to do it. Ulysses later put his name into the TF2Tags Hunger Games Simulator, though he did not win. He attempted to revive the Game Show on the 11th, but that endeavor crashed and burned when everyone was unoriginal. The next day he stated that "You people disgust me." That same day, many people were getting missbombed, including Marmot, Walumancer, and Blast, and Ulysses was practically begging on his knees for someone to missbomb him. The missbomb never came. Ulysses ended 2015 with around 11200 points on his profile.

### New Year, Same Ulysses

Ulysses would begin 2016 by dispelling a myth relating to Sensible's ban (he wasn't banned until 2050 as many had popularly accepted) and calling once again for site moderators. On January 7th, Ulysses made a set responding to a set by Makin' Bacon, who spoke of the state of the site and community after two full months without Dr. Dos. Ulysses stated that there were two options for the community at this point: to either form an unofficial democratic system of community governance and wait for Dos to return on his own, or go apeshit and force Dos back now. Early responses favored the latter, but overall opinions were mixed. Relk called them all doofuses. A riot *would* ensue, but not out of any action from Ulysses or riot supporters, due to a slew of new taggers sparking what is now known as the New Tagger Riots. Ulysses did not seem to partake in these riots, or if he did the evidence of it has been erased.

On January 11th, the tail end of the riots, Ulysses would involve himself in an endeavor to create the first Hale's Own comment section on a tag, teaming with Bonkspenser, Kokogumi, and Le Tryhard Hunter to quickly bring a tag's comment section to 8500 comments. Well, this resulted in The Great Comment Crash, where their efforts actually *crashed the entire site*. This apparently fulfilled the latter option of Ulysses's previous set prior to the start of the riots, as the crash forced a peeved Dr. Dos to come back and fix it, implement comment limits to make sure it didn't happen again, and erased every single comment those four users ever made up to that point just in case (this is why, in the archive, none of these four users have any visible comments prior to January 11th, 2016 despite being present since, at the latest, mid-2015). Everyone involved was banned, but these were quickly undone later that night. Ulysses found the entire event hilarious.

In a major tagging milestone, Ulysses posted his 1000th tag on January 17th. He didn't celebrate it, nor did anyone else. But it still happened. Two days later, in response to Blast and Relk and getting offended at a tag calling bronies autists (ironically made by Meta Breakers, an autistic brony), Ulysses posted a set regarding offensive jokes and how people should just shut up and toughen up. He made a follow-up the following day addressing more touchy subjects. The community largely agreed with him, including Blast, who apologized for jumping the gun.

In early February, Ulysses would get annoyed at the announcement of Bonkspenser and Marmot's romantic relationship. Not because it was homosexual, but because they *wouldn't shut up about how much they loved each other*. On February 10th, Ulysses called out the community for their hypocrisy regarding jokes and who made them, calling out the fact that people get away with overused and/or bad jokes if they are well-known and popular enough, while new and middling taggers got shafted and shit on for them. He would continue to make these types of critical sets somewhat regularly. Three days later, the Krazy Weegee incident occurred, causing Walumancer's Wahfia to experience a surge in new recruits, becoming a dominant faction on the website. Ulysses, the independent firebrand he is, fervently decided he would have no part of the Wahfia or other factions created that day, finding the entire concept stupid, a position he would hold for the remainder of his time on TF2Tags. The following day, he directly insulted every major figure that the new factions worshipped, unafraid of the repercussions, even the threats against his beloved Mettaton.

On the 28th of January, for some reason many item qualities such as Vintage, Genuine, and Unusual were unable to be used. However, Dr. Dos quickly came back to fix them by the 4th of February. However, the bug soon resurfaced on the 15th. At this point, it was routine for Ulysses to act as the community representative to Dr. Dos, and so he messaged him on Steam asking him what was going on. As it turns out, the only good thing about the Mobile-Friendly Update came back to haunt everyone, as the automatic item update feature was to blame, as the TF2 wiki pages Dos was using to update the site were severely outdated, and when things are outdated bugs and glitches tend to follow. That same day, people were complaining about the new comment limits imposed the previous month, as at that point posting one comment was the equivalent of posting one tag for someone's daily submission limit. Ulysses made a snide joke at it. In the comments, Relk antagonized him, but Ulysses refused to take the bait. The following day, Ulysses dabbled in the world of NTF2Tags for the first time using his Jessica NTag alter ego. On the 17th, Ulysses relayed more information from his chats with Dos regarding the Colorless Times and other site issues. Ulysses relayed the issues Dos was having trying to fix the problem with item qualities, his intent to rework comment limits into their end form, the reason why he hasn't appointed any admins yet, and his estimate that he would be able to fix the bug by the following week. The taggers seemed satisfied with these answers.

Unfortunately, the restoration of the item qualities would be put on hold due to the first major shitstorm in months: The Attack of the Clones. On the night of February 20th, an unknown user who later called himself the Shitposter of 2016 created a bunch of alternate Steam accounts with the purpose of impersonating various taggers on TF2Tags, causing general chaos and mayhem on the site. Ulysses, the unflinching man he was, taunted the Shitposter, daring him to impersonate him. He would later make some comments during the entire fiasco, such as praising the fact that the Shitposter prefers breasts to posteriors, and speculating whether this was the return of the infamous Hudduh. However, things eventually took a dark turn when Dos was summoned back to the site to take care of the issue, as not only was the Shitposter of 2016 banned, but AFI as well for posting an entire page of shitposts to either combat the menace or show solidarity as a fellow shitposter. Ulysses relayed AFI's seemingly permanent banning to the site.

### Surrounded by Idiots

Following Dos's infamous "Good morning. I'm going to ban people." tag following the Attack of the Clones, Ulysses made a set demanding that the community heed his warning and follow some advice to ensure Dos didn't pull the plug on the site. This advice pretty much came to licking Dos's boots: no shitposting, no complaining, no asking why something happened or why someone was banned, no contacting Dos for *anything*, because one wrong move and the entire site gets destroyed. In the comments of this set, some such as TheOnlyGuyEver pointed out the hypocrisy in the words that Ulysses, the eternal rebel, said, given how much of an incendiary role he had played in previous shitstorms, to which Ulysses responded that he was only saying what he think would keep the site alive and that he wasn't going to become a tags police or anything. He advocated for a true "New Age" of TF2Tags where everything reset back to square one, with no shitstorms (whether in jest or serious) or in-jokes (such as Smash Z's MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE). The next day, Ulysses would then suggest people come up with a name for this event for the wiki, and then made a symbolic post signaling the transition to the New Era of TF2Tags. He would later comment on this post complaining that "It's still the same, you assholes." He would grow angry on the 22nd as people couldn't take his advice for as long as one day, as new memes and in-jokes were birthed. Regarding this, he stated "I shouldn't be coming back to this shit every day, god damn."

On the 1st of March, Ulysses found himself caught at the end of an... interesting interaction with Meta Breakers. Ulysses had already been expressing negative opinions on Meta in the weeks prior in private discussions, and when goaded to share his thoughts publicly by Makin' Bacon, Ulysses chose not to and continue to do so privately, "away from lunatics". When Meta later "debunked" the Colorless times by using a Strange Botkiller Weapon in a tag, however, things soon exploded out of control. Ulysses corrected Meta (albeit rudely) by pointing out that Dos changed it so that Botkillers defaulted to the Strange quality and could not be made Unique due to a bug that caused the tag not to be posted. This simple correction quickly spiraled into Meta insulting Ulysses and having an entire emotional breakdown. Ulysses messaged Meta on Steam to fucking *chill out*, which Meta responded to by basically saying "Woah is me, my family hates me and my friends are fake." Ulysses tried to reason with Meta but was only met with more "please pity me" nonsense, so Ulysses ended the conversation telling Meta he understood why people hated him and told him to "off yourself before you reproduce." This conversation spilled over to the site, where in a tag titled "Calm down Meta", Ulysses revealed more conversations with other taggers regarding Meta, where pretty much *everyone* was unified in stating that Meta Breakers was acting like a child, which made Meta get defensive and start insulting everyone, which only made Ulysses angrier and come to the defense of the people Meta was insulting, as well as encouraging Meta to choke on his own vomit. Meta once again tried to earn pity points by spilling his life's story, but nobody gave a damn at that point, so he Left and Never Came Back. Naturally, as Ulysses predicted, Meta was back the very next day. When Meta tried explaining that he wasn't "back", Ulysses pointed out how bullshit that was because he was on the site and using it. At this point, Ulysses had decidedly hated Meta's guts, but figured he had to be the one to put a stop to the nonsense, lest Dr. Dos be forced to be involved which at that point clearly was a bad idea. He privately messaged Meta on Steam once again, and, playing to his role as the community's resident edgelord, edged Meta into soberness, spilling *his own* life's worth of baggage that was apparently far, far worse than anything Meta experienced, which humbled him into apologizing for his behavior. Overall, despite his role in instigating and ending it, Ulysses came out of this entire event, later dubbed the "Edge Incident", with someone he felt less affection for than either Relk or Tranger combined.

Speaking of Tranger, he came back on March 5th because Bonkspenser promised him a hat for doing so. Naturally, this made Ulysses want to nuke the soda man from orbit. However, Tranger seemed to be harmless at this point, and the two had no further negative interactions.

On the 10th, Dos finally fixed the bug that caused the Colorless Times, restoring the item qualities as well as the beloved Unusual effects, with Ulysses relaying the reason why it hadn't been fixed sooner through another Steam chat with Dr. Dos. He then made another tag telling people to shut up about adding new Unusual effects, weapon skins, etc., because one major problem had only *just* been fixed, and Dos deserved a break. The following day, Ulysses sarcastically commented on this new supposed "Golden Age of TF2Tags" with dead Sensible, dead AFI, a Dr. Dos that wanted to axe the place, and Meta Breakers existing. Besides this, the remainder of March went on without any major problems, which made Ulysses want to stir more chemicals and once again began encouraging people to Missbomb him. Once again, nobody did.

April Fools' Week 2016 came, and with it came the addition of *Undertale* items. So naturally, Ulysses went *all out* with the Mettaton tags, as did everyone else making Ulysses x Mettaton tags in a similar vein to when Ulysses vs. Bucket Jokes were at their height. It was a good week enjoyed by all. Shortly after April Fools' Week ended, Ulysses signed on to join the TF2Tags video game development team. That entire endeavor can be summed up as follows: It never went anywhere, Ulysses spent half the time trying to kill the entire project and the other half leaving, and eventually it did die but the stubborn man in charge of it refused to let it fully die and is now writing books about it.

On April 9th, Ulysses finally addressed the mysterious Missbomber who was absolutely *nuking* Makin' Bacon's score and missbombing several others. From the very beginning, Ulysses knew *exactly* who the culprit was, but nobody believed him until it was revealed. Considering all the people hit by the Missbombing and the fact that he and Tranger were both *critbombed* by this same user, it could only be TGRobert. So, Ulysses decided to join in and went about doing some Missbombing himself, targeting Blitzkrieg, SaturnCaine (who left the site over it), and Legownz (whom TGR was critbombing the most). When Dos banned TGR, however, Ulysses was proven right and we was not too happy about it, especially considering that he got off scot-free even though he himself missbombed 3 people. He got into a heated argument with TheOnlyGuyEver (who was also hit pretty hard by TGR's Endiome antics) about it, because he demanded that TGR be unbanned, to which TOGE thought was an insane request. As TOGE and Makin' cheered, Ulysses and Ashton Doovis mourned the loss of their friend... until he showed back up because Dos only banned the original TGR account and not the Endiome account so *whoops*. Out of an odd sense of spite, Ulysses then critbombed Makin' to Hale's Own. Makin' confusingly thanked Ulysses for the random act of uncharacteristic kindness. On the 16th, an anonymous tagger posted a picture to Imgur calling for Makin's banning due to spamming submissions related to TGR, and Ulysses was getting so fed up with the drama he demanded that both parties cease acting like two school children on the playground. When TGR and TOGE made up, he encouraged Makin' to do the same (though unknowingly he already did).

### Burn It Down

The rest of April was relatively calmer than the first half, though on the 26th Ulysses lamented the fact that so many people had reached Hale's Own at that point, as it made him feel less unique. He couldn't overtake Relk, and he wouldn't be able to dethrone AFI as the worst, and he was not content for being second best. So he insinuated that he would start Missbombing people much more regularly, because in his mind getting banned until 2050 was preferable watching everyone else becoming unique. The following day, Ulysses made another set of self-reflection, particularly that he deliberately refuses to censor or even filter his words. He saw it as both a gift and a curse, and he reveals that he felt regret for telling Meta to kill himself, and said it only because it was the first thing that came to his mind. He worried that one day it would land him in hot water, while landing jab to Relk in the process. On the 29th, Ulysses came to the site to find multiple pages of a singular joke, and told everyone to cut it out.

On May 13th, Ulysses once again threw antagonistic comments at Meta Breakers, who hit 5000 points and was leaving the site to focus on being a good boyfriend. That same day, Bonkspenser executed a plan of advertizing the site to a bunch of new people on Google Plus, which flooded the site with shitposts and bad tags. Naturally, the insular community rejected these new users without giving them a chance, which royally pissed Bonk off and led Ulysses to comment that the site was going mad. When Makin' pointed out that mad was typical for TF2Tags, Ulysses countered that it *shouldn't* *be normal*. Bonkspenser would go on a bitter tirade and get into many arguments over the following week about how the site was going in a terrible direction full of in-jokes like MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE, the Wahfia, and a second Ulyssesstorm, and that rejecting new taggers showed just how suicidal the community was acting. Ulysses threatened to step in and contact Dos and pointed out Bonk's hypocrisy for complaining about people filling the front page of the site with such jokes, when he had done it numerous times in the past. Bonk merely deflected and didn't address the criticism. On June 5th, Ulysses made his first bucket-related tag in almost a year. On June 14th, Ulysses once again called Bonk out for his constant complaining regarding the site, as for the past months all Bonk had been doing is basically saying "wow this place is dead now guize fuk u".

Following this, as summer progressed one could see that Ulysses's frustrations with the site as a whole were growing, which can be observed from various tags he had made throughout, as well as an overall decrease in site activity. On July 15th, he made a tag announcing his 12,300 point milestone, and asked why people loved his stupid tags. He later mocked people for getting upset at having their tags stolen, because it was a common occurrence on this site since the beginning. On the 24th, he made a tag stating he would do a face reveal if it got 50 crits. It only got 14. He also began to get into conflict with the newest tagger to join in months, vulture\_prime, even missbombing him (alongside Meta Breakers and Bonkspenser) just before he reached the number of points necessary to be considered a major tagger in an attempt to get him to leave (he never did). On August 28th, he threatened vulture shortly after his announcement that he would challenge TGR's record for longest set on TF2Tags, stating that if he did it, he would find a way to get the site shut down.

In September, Ulysses had finally had enough. On the 5th, he proclaimed that he wanted the site to burn and requested that Dr. Dos pull the plug. While many taggers disregarded this as Ulysses being the typical edgelord he is, he was deadly serious, and he began forming a plan, and after that he made several cryptic posts. On the 7th, he realized that he was the only active user who started before 2014 (which is incorrect as Danjin, Master of Skelenomics pointed out, as he started back in 2013 as well). Regardless, Ulysses expressed how he missed the old guard of Generation 1 taggers, especially considering how many Generation 3 taggers there were on the site at present that were acting like the biggest cunts possible (he specifically named vulture, Yonkerbonk, and Ouill in a following tag). Later, he expressed his desire to leave the site. These three largely found it entertaining they got on an old man's (that was basically what Ulysses was at that point) nerves.

Finally, on September 11th, 2016, Ulysses executed his plan to get Dos to kill the site. He posted a tag of the Air Strike titled "Truly Feared Sun-Kissed The Air Strike" with the description "oh boy its 9/11 again time for me to be as offensive as possible". Immediately following this, Ulysses began to carbetbomb the entire site, missbombing anyone and everyone he found in one of the largest attempted missbombing campaigns ever recorded, rivaling even Endiome. The intent was to get so many people to complain to Dos about missbombings that he would get so fed up with the site that he would finally just end it like he threatened to back in February. However, Ulysses severely overestimated how short Dos's fuse was, and he was banned for 10 years, the site still very much staying up.

The response to this attempt at destroying TF2Tags was interesting, to say the least. Many were shocked and confused. Others were surprised Ulysses hadn't fully snapped sooner. Many mourned the loss of such a hardened, omnipresent presence on this website, while others celebrated. Alas, it seemed to truly be the end of an era.

### Systemic Circuit Breaker

On September 15th, 2016, a new tagger joined this odd and volatile website named Systemic Circuit Breaker. This tagger started off reasonably enough, making tags and commenting on others' tags. However, people soon grew suspicious of this tagger. First off, this tagger was apparently *female*, which in this site was an extremely red flag (the only female tagger at that point, biological, transgender, or otherwise, was Greg the Mannequin). Many people took her at her word (some, like vulture, even began to somewhat simp for her), but others thought that this was suspicious. Secondly, this tagger just happened to have a similar manner of speaking as Ulysses, that being rude and unfiltered. Third, and probably the biggest red flag that something was up, was that this tagger had apparently *never even heard of TF2*, saying that she stumbled on the site, got curious, and decided to stay. Makin' Bacon immediately saw through this facade and claimed that "Systemic Circuit Breaker" was just Ulysses in disguise, and a few others agreed. This made Systemic threaten to leave, with many coming to her defense, seeing her accusers as over-paranoid and delusional. However, over the next week of Systemic's presence, many cracks began to form in her stories. Makin' pointed out that she and Ulysses had the same IP address, and she tried to cover this up by saying that Ulysses was her neighbor, which was *impossibly unlikely*. At that point, Makin' and many others were fully convinced that this was just Ulysses in drag.

As people formed their opinions, a twist in the story occurred. On October 2nd, Ulysses officially returned under an alternative account of the same name, his first words addressing the community's response to his banning.

> "You know what bothers me? When people talk about someone in a negative way when they're listening.
> Ulysses was a good man! Ulysses was a terrible person! He deserved to stay! Fuck him, he should stay gone. Make up your minds.
> Also, fuck Kokogumi.
> Will I stay? Maybe, maybe fucking not. Depends on how many actually want me here. Even if I do decide to get the fuck out of here, just remember this tag, and remember that I'm listening to you assholes. Always."
>
>

In the comments of this tag, Systemic said words, and Ulysses told her to fuck off. People didn't really seem to care about whether Systemic was Ulysses at the moment, as people called for a celebration hailing his return to the site.

The next day, the site was met with an anonymous missbomber who had no profile picture and a blank name, and people began to speculate as to who this was. Naturally, people assumed it to be Ulysses, but he claimed to have been asleep at the time of the bombings. Twelve Hour Respawn claimed to know who it was, but refused to say who other than the fact that it wasn't Ulysses. Ulysses also debunked the other popular theory of it being Dos, because Dos doesn't care enough to do something like that. Then Ulysses posted a Steam chat that claimed that it was Systemic who was doing the bombing. The site never truly came to a consensus as to who exactly did it.

Ulysses took a hiatus from the site starting October 6th. During that time, Systemic posted somewhat regularly before stopping on the 24th. Ulysses posted once on the 26th and would not reappear until November 14th. Systemic then posted again on the 16th. However, this would be the last time Systemic Circuit Breaker would appear until March. At that point, the jig was up, and Ulysses confirmed to many people through private Steam chats that yes, he was Systemic Circuit Breaker the entire time, though he publicly denied being her for the rest of his presence on the site.

### Jaded Drifter

Following the Systemic era of Ulysses's career, he maintained the role of a jaded man who only visited the site occasionally. He still fully believed that the site should die for what it had become, and that he felt at least partially responsible for making it that way, but realized that there was nothing he could do to change that and just stuck around for the time being and see what happened. People, though their opinions on him differed, still largely respected him and valued his input on various things, but from this point forward he would take a step back and act more as an observer rather than a community figure.

Ulysses would make a few tags through November and December of 2016, but would not make an appearance in the community again until March 3rd of 2017, when he joined Makin' Bacon's Discord server, which he eventually became a moderator of alongside Twelve Hour Respawn and Marmot, and all four of them would grow close over the course of the year. Around March 13th, Systemic Circuit Breaker would return to active tagging.

Ulysses would return to the site at the beginning of April Fools' Week 2017, where he would spend most of free time making use of the wacky tags. Mettaton abounded, though not as much as the previous year. Systemic was also seen making April Fools' tags, though after April 1st the account only made one tag for the rest of the month. After that single tag, Systemic Circuit Breaker would only make 10 more tags from May through August. Following April Fools', Ulysses would begin to visit the site regularly once more, making a few tags and comments every week through the remainder of the month and throughout May. He would post only one tag in June, on the 30th, and would resume this pace again in July.

On July 7th, Ulysses bore witness to the disappearance of Item 200,00. Though he didn't comment much on the first milestone of Item 100,000 back in November of 2015, he would throw his detective hat into the ring this time and see just who the person who got it was and was not. He first dismissed the idea that it was Proto Kirby, as her set started at 200,050, meaning she missed the mark. It also wasn't Makin', as his set ended at 199,787. He personally suspected Relk of being the stealer, a sentiment which Twelve Hour Respawn shared, though others believed it to be Bonkspenser. As with Item 100,000, nobody could ever figure out who it was.

Ulysses would continue to just exist and tag normally through July, August, and September, the latter month being quite eventful for Ulysses. First, on the 3rd, came the return of Sensible Haircut, Ulysses's old friend from 2015. This was initially a cheered and celebrated return until the community fell out with Sensible after he went on several racially-charged rants in the Discord server. On September 15th, Ulysses would wake up to find his vastly smaller profile score had descended to -21 points overnight by a new tagger under the name Yuuka, who changed their IP to be able to downvote all of Ulysses's ~170 submissions multiple times. Ulysses was not in the least bit upset. In fact, in typical Ulysses fashion, he was *extremely impressed* at the tagger's dedication and applauded them. In that very tag, a minor tagger named Polareon told Ulysses that karma is a bitch. This tagger would soon bring the *entire site together* in opposition to him in what the community has dubbed The Greatest Event in History two days later. Polareon entered the site about a week prior and somehow managed to attain 30+ crits on all his posts. The taggers soon found out about this, called him out for it, and gave him a taste of his own medicine by righteously sending multiple missbombs his way. Ulysses, a known bomber himself, naturally took part in this. He estimated that if Polareon did not self-crit, he'd barely have 100 points rather than the 1300 he somehow attained in less than a month. This event ended in a large Discord party that night where many memes and merry were made.

The remainder of 2017 was uneventful, and Ulysses posted his final tag of the year on December 4th.

### Tagpocalypse and Tags.tf Involvement

The beginning of 2018 started with the unexpected expiration of the TF2Tags domain, which Dr. Dos had unintentionally had set to renew under a credit card that was expired. The site went down on the 16th, and was quickly restored. Ulysses notified Dos that he should probably not leave his Twitter lying around, as in people's panic to restore the site they found it and tried to find information on the site there. Dos found this to be extremely creepy that Ulysses went looking for his Twitter when they had contacted each other so many times in the past, but Ulysses stated that he was not the one who found it, and was warning Dos that he *might* want to make it a bit harder to find.

On January 30th, 2018, Dos announced the end of TF2Tags in what has now become known as the Tagpocalypse. The site had been renewed for one final year, and after that TF2Tags would be no more. Ulysses, who had been wanting the site to die for a very long time now, made a tag and comments addressing the situation:

> "man alive, man alive, i didn't think it'd actually happen
> so, the site's been running on borrowed time for a while now, way too long in fact, but the time has finally come; the beginning of the end, so to speak
> feels kinda bittersweet, seeing something i've wanted for a while actually become reality
> nonetheless, tags' days are numbered, and thats good
> but, are people going to be smart, and let it go? no.
> there are already plans to revive the site with the code from the github linked in the announcement
> this can be a good or bad thing, but that depends on how you look at it
> on one hand, our community can actually run the place, by people that are consistently involved and know whats wanted or needed
> on the other, it can lead to the same mistakes being repeated, and you know those who dont learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
> You people have not learned.
> now as for this announcement
> there's a couple lines in here that feel kinda weird to me, including this one;
> "I am at least glad that a lot of you have done this."
> this threw me for a loop, especially with the plentiful disturbances on the site that you've clearly shown disdain for in the past
> unless you're speaking about the mistakes you've seen along the way
> "There's way more hostility than I had expected,"
> this threw me for an even bigger loop, you had to have seen that coming, the internet is a very hostile
> the entire announcement spoke many truths, but there was one line that felt kinda sweet, in a schadenfreude way
> "When I saw that I had mistakenly used outdated payment info when I renewed the domain, it finally hit me that I could be completely done with the site forever."
> this leaves me questioning if it genuinely took this long for you to realize, or if you just didn't care in the slightest
> either way, i'm kinda glad this place is going down, and hopefully most projects with it
> ありがとう [Thank you]"
>
>

TF2Tags in 2018 can largely be described as a complete and utter ghost town. Activity had already begun to wane in the latter half of 2017, and while the announcement of the site's closure did lead to a temporary revival of site activity, including the return of many taggers who had long since left the site behind, the site had largely been on life support, with Ulysses pretty much only checking in once a month to see how things were doing, preferring instead to spend his time on Discord.

Tragedy struck the TF2Tags community in August of 2018. On August 20th, Ulysses announced to the community that Twelve Hour Respawn had died in a coma following complications from intestinal surgery he underwent to treat his hereditary skin cancer. A friend who had access to Respawn's account notified Ulysses that he had flatlined the Wednesday prior, allowing him to relay the terrible news to everyone else. Respawn was a good friend appreciated by the whole of the community, and his loss affected everyone very hard, including Ulysses who had grown close with him over the past year and a half.

Following this tragedy, Ulysses would largely not visit the site again until the very end, though in December he would begin talks with TGR about the formation of a successor site to TF2Tags. In January, during the final days of the site, Ulysses returned to partake in the final Wahfia raid on TF2Tags, which was the most meme-filled, spammiest vomiting of tags ever produced, and it was glorious. Relk said everyone involved should be utterly ashamed, and in Ulysses's book that made it worth partaking in. On January 15th, 2019, TF2Tags shut down, and Ulysses proceeded to announce the development of TF2Tags's successor site, which would be developed by TGR's older brother AncientShed. The site would be reworked entirely from the ground up with new features and an actual moderation team that consisted of TGR, his brother, Ulysses himself, Makin' Bacon, Le Tryhard Hunter, The Lazygineer, Moura, and (at Ulysses's request, despite their conflicts during the days of the failed TF2Tags game development) Walumancer. Ulysses took special glee in the fact that they were able to hide this from the community for so long, with the added bonus that Relk was pitching a fit over *both* his greatest on-site enemies moderating the new site.

Ulysses, however, would soon realize that he had been involved in the TF2Tags community for far too long, and that his continued involvement would only go on to hurt him. So he decided that once Tags.tf released, he would immediately resign from the moderation team. However, since it took a year and a half for the new site to be made public, he decided to just quit altogether midway through development. Ulysses left TF2Tags for good that day, and hasn't been heard from since.

## Style

Ulysses is one of the rare taggers who has his own very distinct style of tagging, in that every tag has at least some form of underlying toxicity. Whether it is an insult to the person viewing the tag, the class that wears it, the item itself, or any other thing that might be on Ulysses's mind. If not direct insults, Ulysses's tags are almost always of a provocative nature, meant entirely to gauge certain (usually negative) reactions from the viewer. Ulysses also had a knack for sets that pulled the rug out from under you, so to speak. Those typically being sets that are either leading up to a joke or appear to be discussions of serious issues (titles like "Important PSA" or something similar), only for the set to reach an anti-climax where the batter doesn't just not hit the ball, but never swings in the first place.

Ulysses also commonly employed more meta tags that addressed the viewers. In fact, Ulysses may be the original proponent of Tweet Tags (or tags that would otherwise belong on a site like Twitter that consist of personal things, discussions, etc.), and may be a reason for their increase in popularity beginning in the latter half of 2015. In a similar vein, Ulysses would often post snippets from Steam chats he had with various other taggers, which often took two forms. First, a particularly cursed comment from one of his friends (especially Sensible Haircut or TGRobert), or second information he gained from speaking with Dr. Dos. A rarer, but third form of this is Steam chats giving scoops on whatever the current shitstorm was, with such prominent examples as whether or not the community agreed with Sensible's points during the Mobile-Friendly Update or how the community reacted to Meta Breakers during his emotional breakdown.

Ulysses's style can also be defined by the things that he either loves or despises (usually the latter). Most infamously was Ulysses's absolute *hatred* for Bucket Jokes, which were tags parodying the "This... is a bucket" scene from TF2 SFM movie *Expiration Date*. For some reason, however Ulysses has actually made several bucket-related tags even after he revealed he hated Bucket Jokes (though he never made a full-on Bucket Joke himself). Ulysses also hates *Breaking Bad* jokes, but these were never as used compared to Bucket Jokes. As Ulysses's raging hate boner for Bucket Jokes waned, they were replaced by his *actual* boner for *Undertale* character Mettaton, especially in his EX form.

### Missbombing

Ulysses is perhaps the only serial Missbomber that the community has largely excused. He has probably missbombed more taggers than anyone else bar maybe TGRobert. Ulysses would Missbomb for a variety of reasons. The easiest way to get him to Missbomb is to announce a milestone in a tag or set. Ulysses, who loved playing the jerk, would *always* Missbomb anyone who celebrated reaching x amount of points on their profile. Ulysses would also Missbomb simply out of distaste for specific users, and it didn't matter if said distaste was long-running or just popped into existence. On one occasion, he would Missbomb the entire site in an attempt to get Dr. Dos to burn the entire place to the ground.

This behavior most likely stemmed from the fact that Ulysses thought little of the damage Missbombs inflicted. He realizes that the points gained on TF2Tags are imaginary, and as such does not care how many he receives or loses (he barely seemed to care when he achieved Hale's Own, for instance). As such, many times Ulysses would often *ask* to be Missbombed himself, though these requests usually did not get fulfilled. However, the one time it was he praised the one responsible.

## Relationships

### Relk\_Cehi

Ulysses and Relk's relationship is... complicated, to say the least. With both men having joined in late 2013 (Relk in November and Ulysses in December) and staying with the site until the very end in January of 2019, they have interacted with each other more than any other tagger. And boy, has this relationship been *rocky*. They were tacit friends at the beginning, with both giving each other advice and congratulatory messages upon meeting certain milestones, with Relk notably encouraging Ulysses to continue tagging in the very beginning. However, this all changed during the fallout of Sensible Haircut's ban, as both were on opposite extremes of the opinion spectrum regarding it. Ulysses, like most, fervently believed the ban to be unjust and cruel, while Relk supported it 100%. When Ulysses called out Relk in his intended goodbye set following the ban, the two got into an verbal fight the likes of which has not since been replicated in the TF2Tags community. This ruined their relationship for the remainder of 2015 and the majority of 2016, with the two often getting into several vitriolic spats throughout the year. They eventually cooled off in late 2016, but by no means returned to friendship, instead preferring to largely ignore each other for the majority of their time on the site.

### Sensible Haircut

Sensible Haircut was Ulysses's first best friend on TF2Tags. When Sensible began to tag regularly beginning in August of 2014, the two hit it off immediately due to their similar senses of humor. During this year of their friendship, the two would often get into many cursed Steam chat conversations and would post lines from them onto TF2Tags, often with the other responding in the comments. The two often agreed on things surrounding the site, Dr. Dos's actions, and the activities of the community, be them positive or negative. It was the two of them (alongside Legownz) who formed the Bring Back Misses movement, and their dedication and leadership made them heavily respected community figures. When Sensible was banned in September of 2015, Ulysses did everything he could to convince Dr. Dos to unban him, but his efforts proved futile. It is unknown if they kept contact with each other after Sensible left the community following his ban.

This friendship made Sensible's return on September 3rd of 2017 all the more painful for Ulysses. When Sensible returned, Ulysses was overjoyed and ready to accompany him on his biker apocalypse attack on TF2Tags. However, things began to take a turn for the worse when Sensible joined the community Discord servers. As it turns out, Sensible's offensive right-wing political humor may not have just been humor, but legitimate bigotry, which rubbed the entire moderation team of Makin's server (of which Ulysses was a part) the wrong way. Ulysses would eventually confront Sensible about this and after a verbal conflict muted Sensible, who perceived the move as a betrayal and promptly left the server. The two fell out shortly after.

### Dr. Dos

Ulysses was one of the rare few taggers to not only exchange words with site owner and creator Dr. Dos, but do so regularly. Though they were not by any means friends, the two would often chat on Steam on matters related to site business, with Ulysses acting as the liaison between Dos and the rest of the site community. Ulysses would notify Dos of the concerns people had (such as the lack of new items, a site bug, or their vehement disagreement with particular administrative moves) and would relay his response directly to the people. This role began to fizzle out over time as Dos grew more and more reclusive, and with said time Ulysses became more and more critical of his actions. However, as Ulysses grew to hate the site in 2017, he took a largely sympathetic perspective on Dos, and at the end would come to respect him much more and even warn him of the community finding his Twitter, though Dos considered this warning creepy.

### TGRobert

When Sensible left following his ban, TGR largely filled his void in Ulysses's social circle on TF2Tags. A newish tagger who had been somewhat of a presence since the permanent disabling of anonymous and began picking up in activity following the Mobile-Friendly Update. Like Sensible, TGR had a sense of humor that gelled very well with Ulysses's, and the two got along swimmingly. TGR likewise looked up to Ulysses, and in many ways his personality on the site was shaped by the veteran tagger. And since TGR *wouldn't* wind up getting permanently banned, their friendship lasted much longer. He would be one of only two people to advocate TGR's unbanning following the Endiome incident. At some point, they even began to speak with each other romantically, though things eventually took a dark turn when, in a cruel twist of fate, the student became the master and Ulysses found out TGR had been leading him on, and they had a falling out. Unlike with Relk and Sensible, however, their relationship became more of an on-again off-again friendship that would change many times throughout their rest of the time on TF2Tags and up to Ulysses's involvement in Tags.tf. With Ulysses gone from the community, however, it is probably safe to say that switch is set in the off position as of now.

### L'Étranger

L'Étranger would be the first of many taggers that pissed Ulysses off to the point where he would do anything to get them to leave the site permanently. Though nobody really liked Tranger at all during his time on the site (bar Walumancer and TGR), Ulysses's hatred was... let's say, special. He would divine numerous plans to try and rid himself and the site of Tranger, from Missbombing, to threatening, to sending TGR to double-cross him (which backfired and caused the two weebs to form a close-knit friendship), to offering a reward to anyone able to get Tranger banned. Nothing ever worked. Tranger would eventually go on to cause The Ulyssesstorm in mockery of Ulysses, which of course angered him very much. Though Ulysses has long since mellowed out on Tranger, his hatred at the time was pretty comical.

### Marmot

Marmot and Ulysses started off rocky (which is true for all of Ulysses's friends bar Sensible and TGR, whose friendships *ended* rocky), but eventually as they began to talk more and more, they become much more friendly, even talking to each other frequently on Steam. Ulysses would often lightly poke fun at Marmot and Bonkspenser's relationship, but eventually Ulysses would start seeing Marmot romantically following their break-up. Things didn't work out, however, and they ended the relationship on positive terms, remaining friends. When Marmot came out as transgender in 2017, Ulysses supported her 100%. They would eventually reconnect as friends when Ulysses joined Makin's Discord server, where he would shortly be made a moderator.

### Makin' Bacon

When Makin' Bacon first joined TF2Tags, and for a significant amount of time after, Ulysses saw Makin' as an annoyance, but not a big enough annoyance to target like L'Étranger. However, as Makin' grew as a tagger, Ulysses eventually grew to respect him somewhat, to the point where he would critbomb Makin' to Hale's Own. They would work together on the TF2Tags video game, which saw the two become somewhat friendly. He would immediately figure out that Systemic Circuit Breaker was Ulysses because of this. When Ulysses eventually joined Makin's Discord server, he was eventually promoted to moderator, and the two would grow closer as friends.

### Twelve Hour Respawn

Though they didn't interact much on the site, Ulysses and Twelve Hour Respawn evidently chatted on Discord, when Ulysses finally decided to get on there. Ulysses respected Respawn's chill personality and the stories he told, and the two evidently got along very well. They must have gotten along especially well, because Ulysses was the one who was first informed of Respawn's death, and the one who relayed it to the rest of the community.

### Meta Breakers

Meta Breakers was the second instance of a tagger that Ulysses hated so much he took action to try and get them to leave, and this instance is probably the most toxic Ulysses has ever been towards a specific user. Though initially calm with Meta, talking to him on Steam quickly drove Ulysses over the edge, as he *hates it* when people randomly bring up their life's story to seek out pity from everyone else. Thereafter, Ulysses would go on to disrespect Meta at every turn for a long time, and on numerous occasions encouraged him to commit suicide (which he now regrets doing) and Missbombed him (which he does not regret). Though this hatred was ultimately short-lived, it was probably the farthest Ulysses ever took his vitriol.

### vulture\_prime

As with Tranger and Meta, vulture\_prime became an object of Ulysses's ire. In truth, Ulysses had a great dislike for all the incoming Generation 3 taggers, but vulture was probably the one he disliked the most, probably for being the one who was the first to enter the site and actually withstand the insular and toxic nature of the site's community. He especially hated the idea of vulture beating TGR's record of longest set on TF2Tags, and threatened to try and get the site killed if he managed to achieve that. The two would go on to get into numerous scuffles before Ulysses ultimately tried to carpetbomb the site into oblivion on September 11th, 2016. Funnily enough, when he returned under the guise of Systemic Circuit Breaker, vulture was one of Systemic's most ardent defenders against those who accused her of being Ulysses. Even despite this, Systemic disregarded him.

### Llux

Of all the Generation 3 taggers, Llux looked up to Ulysses the most in many ways similar to TGR, and while they did not interact much until Discord, Llux openly modelled her early career to become Ulysses's successor in terms of tagging style, impact, and personality. Ulysses would only comment on her once following his return to TF2Tags after the 9/11 incident, showing he was aware that Llux was known as a clone of him. However, as Llux grew and matured as a tagger, she eventually found her own identity, and as she and Ulysses talked more on Discord, they eventually became good friends.

### Others

In terms of everyone else, Ulysses was on good terms with AFI and Sqwid, though not particularly close with either. He was also on good terms with Expand, as he would sometimes fill in for them for the TF2Tags Nightly News Network. He was also on good terms with Le Tryhard Hunter. Legownz looked up to him and they even collaborated to form the Bring Back Misses movement with Sensible Haircut, but Ulysses would randomly Missbomb him after he reached Hale's Own, souring their relationship. He had previously gotten into disagreements and conflicts with Crimson Blitz, Fred Fuchs, and TheOnlyGuyEver, but did not seem to be on particularly bad terms with them. He has gotten into some conflicts with Walumancer, though this was mostly during the days of the TF2Tags game development. Their feelings for each other are ultimately mixed, and Ulysses respected Walumancer enough to recognize him as a good pick for the Tags.tf moderation team. He had numerous conflicts with Bonkspenser following the latter's attempt to fill the site with new blood, but this was largely short lived and they did not interact much otherwise (outside Ulysses's previous pokings at Bonk and Marmot's relationship). He has openly stated that he readily dislikes Kokogumi, though the specific reasons for this are unknown. He evidently had something against SaturnCaine, as he Missbombed him to the point where it caused him to leave the site.

## Gallery

Ulysses's first tag.Tag 44,444.Let it be known that Ulysses made the first bucket joke, but not the first Bucket Joke.Tag 50,000, which Ulysses holds.And thus, the hatred begins.Ulysses's best tag.Ulysses speaks the truth.Yes, he did this joke twice. Yes, both times got enough crits to be in the gallery.There is a greater hatred...Bucket Bad.Ulysses calls out THOSE Pyro mains.Ulysses's final tag on his original account. Shortly after this, he carpetbombed the site, leading to this account's permanent banning.Profile Picture for Systemic Circuit Breaker, Ulysses's alias shortly after getting banned.Ulysses creates the longest single tag possible, so long it actually changed the size of the tag box. Impressive.
## Trivia

* Ulysses has gone through more representative items than any other Tagger. Though the classic light pink Big Mann on Campus is recognized as his most prominent rep item, he has gone though, in roughly chronological order:
	+ [Unusual] The Attendant [(Circling TF Logo)]
	+ Shotgun
	+ Fire Axe
	+ Pink as Hell The Fed-Fightin' Fedora
	+ [A Color Similar to Slate] Macho Mann
	+ [A Deep Commitment to Purple] The Apparition's Aspect
	+ Big Mann on Campus (various colors, usually default or Color No. 216-190-216)
	+ The Force-a-Nature
	+ Flak Jack
	+ The Scotch Bonnet (typically used when referring to himself missbombing)
	+ The Brütal Bouffant (also used for Mettaton)
	+ Axtinguisher
	+ Fortunate Son
	+ Dead'er Alive (as Systemic Circuit Breaker)
	+ After Eight Lord Cockswain's Novelty Mutton Chops and Pipe
* Ulysses has also been shipped with several things. The list includes: A Bucket, Marmot (especially during the Bonk x Marmot days), TGR (which apparently really happened), himself, Relk, and Mettaton.
	+ Ulysses only approves of the last.
* Ulysses used to have the second-highest number of points on in the site's community, behind Relk, but has since been overtaken by Makin' Bacon and Twelve Hour Respawn
* Ulysses has a special hatred for the Max's Severed Head cosmetic due to the fact that it clips with everything but is allowed in the game while other cosmetics on the Workshop get rejected for that reason.
* In May of 2015, Ulysses began to flirt with the enemy - Overwatch. He may or may not have been seduced by Marmot into trying it. Thankfully, his shit computer came to the rescue, and he couldn't run it.
* Ulysses is a big fan of synthwave music, specifically Outrun.
* Ulysses is bisexual, though he generally prefers men for sex and women for romance.
* Ulysses hates Valentine's Day.
* Ulysses may or may not have a gore fetish. It's really hard to tell with this guy.
* Ulysses is a sadomasochist.