#Threat Awareness

[defensive-tactics]

Threat Awareness: Make eye contact

[smalltofedsblog]

What It Means To 'Provide For The Common Defense' In 2024

National defense and defense modernization dictates the nation must not only continue the tremendous work begun in recent years but supercharge it. What does that mean tactically?

[cyanbeetle]

Trinity thesis

[bixels]

I'm not explaining why re-imagining characters as POC is not the same as white-washing, here of all places should fucking understand.

[oathkeeper-of-tarth]

I have all the time in the world. How about you?

There is a theme to Aylin's threats and vows of vengeance that I've noticed and that I want to share.

Do what you will. I cannot prevent you. But you know as well as I, I will come for you. One day.

That one, for example, is for Balthazar, while she is imprisoned.

I cannot prevent you. But I can advise you. Be careful to whom you yoke your fate. One day, when he is severed from me, Ketheric will die. I will not. And when I am freed, I will remember whose recompense to claim.

Did you expect me to beg? To cry? To plead? For what. I accept my fate - for now. But the life of a divine is longer than you can fathom, Sharran. And this cold chapter will close, one day.

And those are for you, when you've yet to harm her, when she's still only warning you off. But then, if you choose to try to kill her, like so many before you:

Was it everything you hoped for? Was it sweet, Sharran, to murder a paladin of Selûne - her daughter - her sword? Congratulations - your mistress Shar will write your name on her hand. And I? I will come for you. When the time is right.

The next bit depends on your character's gender:

When your sons are grown and your beard is long and wiry; when you cannot hold your nightly water and your nose grows as long as your weary, weary days… When your daughters are grown and your chin sprouts whiskers dark - when your teeth are yellow as corn and your sleep grows short and your days are long and weary, so weary… When your children are grown and your eyes are weak; when your nose grows as long as your weary, weary days…

Ultimately, your fate will be the same:

That is when this immortal will visit you, Sharran. That is when I will show you what it is to be afraid.

All these long-term promises of one day, coupled with inevitability.

I find it so striking that most of Aylin's threats include her flaunting and flexing her immortality (as well as her flawless, long memory) over whoever has wronged her.

Present your weapon, soldier. Plunge it into the Nightsong. I cannot stop you. But know this: I never forget a face. HAH! Are you afraid, Sharran? Do you rattle and jump at the realisation that an immortal has your face emblazoned in her mind forevermore?

Everything is but a passing inconvenience to her, she claims, even a century of imprisonment and torment. Outlasting, outliving - that is simply what she does and what she chooses to intimidate with. Promising to wait until you are old and decrepit, until after you've experienced all the vagaries of age that she never will, leaving her sword hanging over your head throughout the entire miserable lifespan that she has permitted you to have.

Then, if you wrong her in a very heinous way, there's the extreme one of outliving not only you, but killing and extinguishing your entire bloodline in order to obliterate every trace of you from existence:

WHEN I AM FREE, I WILL DESTROY YOU! I WILL MURDER YOU, AND YOUR CHILDREN, AND THEIR CHILDREN BESIDE! I will rip this world apart, plank and beam, until every iota of your being is scalded by my light. This is my promise. This is my vow.

Over and over, Aylin builds her oaths of vengeance on the foundations of an utter, even proud, certainty that she will see her foe end, one way or another, due to her nature and the simple fact of her own endlessness. This is the well she keeps coming back to.

And I find all of this, this consistent insistence on it, so striking and ironic, because one of her other main emotional threads is being thoroughly enraptured by and devoted to and just so completely in love with a mortal. One who will age and die and pass into memory just like all the targets of her rage - if I think of Isobel when I re-read all of that dialogue up there, it seems to cut both ways so deeply. But then there's the extra element that every single one of these is spoken when she either knows or is (incorrectly) convinced that Isobel is dead. Isobel, who didn't get to grow old, and who is both an anchor to humanity and a very painful reminder of the truth of Aylin's situation being twofold.

Aylin will outlast what she hates, yes, but she will outlast what she loves as well.

[kacievvbbbb]

Mihawk is a man that knows, if he even showed the slightest bit of interest he could pull anybody he wanted. And that is something Shanks, crocodile, buggy and anybody he has ever even mildly been in the presence of, fear deeply

[nottheeconomy]

A crown of irises and a single dahlia!

Full images beneath the read more!

[lgbtlunaverse]

While rereading mdzs I am once again shocked by how talked about the "you were the only mistake he ever made" line from Lan Xichen to Wei Wuxian is and how heated it gets some people because honestly... I don't think he actually even believes that.

Stay with me. Look at the actual line. (I Included 2 translations for comparison's sake)

Firstly, yes he is mad at Wei Wuxian in this scene. But his biggest moment of anger was actually before this. By this point he's realized that Wei Wuxian forgot what happened after nightless city (and therefore ISN'T stringing along his baby brother on purpose) so he has in fact calmed down a bit.

Secondly, notice that he starts by talking about how his uncle felt. This is not Lan Xichen making a value statement about what he thinks. When he says Lan Wangji was proper and righteous he is talking about him being a model lan, he's talking about their family and clan's perspective of Wangji. Indeed, in their eyes, Wei Wuxian is the only time Lan Wangji was ever not the textbook perfect Lan.

Thirdly, what is Lan Xichen trying to say here? What is he mad at Wei Wuxian for? It's that he doesn't know Lan Wangji is in love with him. His anger is eased by realizing Wei Wuxian doesn't remember the very blatant confessions lwj made in the cave after nightless city, or Lan Wangji fighting his own clan elders for Wei Wuxian, and so had no way of knowing the whipmarks on Lan Wangji's back were related to him. But he is still mad, he still thinks Wei Wuxian should have been able to figure it out. So what does he highlight?

The fact that the only thing Lan Wangji, perfect model-Lan righteous Lan Wangji, ever defies his clan for is Wei Wuxian.

And Wei Wuxian has seen him do this! Even if he doesn't remember this one instance. Because Lan Wangji has been doing that the whole story through. Wei Wuxian has watched Lan Wangji blatantly stand against the entire cultivation world for him, and here Lan Xichen is highlighting just how unusual that is, how much Wei Wuxian must mean to Lan Wangji that he's willing to do that. The important part of the sentence here is not "mistake" it's "only."

Lan Xichen here isn't trying to say that he disapproves of Wei Wuxian, or telling him to stay away from his brother. Remember, the thing that made him mad in the first place was Wei Wuxian saying that he and Lan Wangji slept in seperate rooms. He thought they were together! He's mad because they're not!

At no point does Lan Xichen say he individually considers Lan Wangji's feelings for Wei Wuxian a mistake. If he ever did, it's clear he accepted them regardless long ago. Mistake or not, what he wants is for his little brother to be happy.

[padmerrie]

sasuke&!

comfort drawing my comfort characters using a panel from my comfort manga

bookends au

[defensive-tactics]

Gun free zones not only do NOT make us safer, they also make the areas more dangerous!

[feanorianethicsdepartment]

refugees do not, in fact, stop being refugees because you don’t like their leaders

[cable-salamder]

PSA: Don’t repost people’s shit without credit, obviously.

However, if you do, know that I will find you. I have a Pinterest account. And though I barely go on it nowadays I still check every once in a while (I also upload and link some of my stuff on there). If I find my own art there WILL be a passive aggressive comment with <3 telling you to credit people.

Thank you, that will be all.

[stop-breaking-my-heart-dragonage]

my greatest achievement in DA2 is maxing out Carver's friendship

and all it took was begrudgingly kissing a little templar ass in act 1 because Carver didn't want to plan a prison break if my Hawke got his ass arrested for being stupid.

[miscmonstro]

working on a concept for a dpxdc fanfic.

Tim, 17, is at the tail end of junior year at Gotham Academy. During gym he typically ducks into the toilet stalls or showers to change. He’s a vigilante and he can’t exactly explain his bruises/cuts/scars without causing concern, thus he just avoids anyone finding out at all. Unbeknownst to him, one of his classmates was in the same situation.

Wesley Weston was always late to the class after PE, he was always the last out of the locker room. He always showered after class and was very meticulous about putting away and taking out his uniform. He’d even refold his gym clothes a few times and comb his hair until nothing was out of place. Some thought he had OCD, others thought he was vain, and others still thought he was fruitlessly trying to be accepted; Wes was a known loner. There was plenty of speculation when the gossip mill was slow but in reality, Wes always stalled so he could change as quickly as humanly possible, but only after the room was empty.

By pure chance Tim forgets to switch out his gym shoes for his uniform shoes after PE one day and when he gets back to the locker room, it’s locked. Makes sense, the coaches always lock the locker rooms when there isn’t a class using them. Not having time to track down the coach and not wanting to be late to class, Tim picks the lock and out of habit, slips in quietly. He rounds the corner and sees Wes changing. More than that, he sees that Wes is covered in scars and scrapes. And in plain view is the still raw and distinctive injury Damian gave a mysterious, non-bat/bird affiliated vigilante recently.

That is how Tim accidentally discovers that Wesley Weston is Spyris. Spyris who appears and disappears without rhyme nor reason, who sometimes will hunt down Batman’s rogues and who sometimes will walk right past them. No one knows what Spyris does or why, just that he’s there and he’s competent enough to evade the batclan for the several months they’ve known about him.

Maybe he notices then or maybe Tim confronts him about it later but in any case, Wes automatically threatens to out him as Red Robin if he says anything and Tim is shook. When did Wes find out, how long has he known, how did he figure it out. Was anyone else compromised? And what did Wes want? What was Spyris’ goal?

Overall I want Valerie, Sam, Tucker, Danny, and Wes to be vigilantes in Gotham for whatever reason (ghost stuff?) working as a unit, but Spyris is the only one the bats/birds are aware of.

Tim and Wes passive aggressively stalk each other back and forth.

[nights-at-crystarium]

wolqotd

Your WoL fights a random enemy, a random npc/civilian happens to witness that. How would they describe the encounter?

[moeblob]

Druas and Eva