#shooting fundamentals

[historyofguns]

The article "Pistol Practice with a Purpose" by Mike Boyle emphasizes the importance of deliberate practice and maintaining skills in firearms handling, especially for personal defense. Boyle argues that mastering foundational marksmanship and handling skills is crucial since the use of a firearm in self-defense requires quick and almost automatic responses. He acknowledges the constraints modern life imposes on time and resources, noting that ammunition has become expensive and practice opportunities limited. Consequently, he suggests alternative training methods such as dry-firing, using inert pistols, and practicing at home with dummy rounds to keep skills sharp. He further stresses that while aiming and point shooting both have their places, consistent practice—whether on the range or off—is essential for developing an intuitive and effective defense response.

[rotzaprachim]

feels worth mentioning as a long time opponent of the 21st century hawkish nature of Israeli politics that… we’ve seen a lot of comparisons between the U.S. and Israel when it comes to politics, and many are worth pondering, but the U.S. has simply never ever had anything like the second intifada to push the civilian populace into hard right hawkish politics. (Yes there was 9/11 and I recognize that was awful. I’m talking about a years long protracted campaign from terror groups kilometers away from where middle class Americans raise their children. There’s simply no comparison.) the U.S. got here on their own with the vague image of a violent criminal invader, not an actual reality of hundreds of civilian deaths from targeted bombings on buses and in pizza shops and public arenas. This is not to let either the government of the state of Israel NOR the U.S. off the hook but it IS to say that I don’t think there’s a single thing inherently more peaceful about Americans than Israelis (or any other country that’s had a sharp right wing political swing) and I cannot imagine the kind of fascist hellhole the U.S. would be with even a quarter of the targeted political violence experienced in IL

[yeyinde]

This might sound so cringe and cliche, but I wanna be of help in some way-

how about price faking injuries to see a specific nurse he has a crush on but won’t admit.

Cringe and cliche are quite on brand for me, tbh.

It starts as a concussion, a stiffness in his neck. A pinch in his shoulder. 

Then it changes shape, shifting, evolving, into something more. A tenuous dance held together by silken threads. He tugs on the ends sometimes, just to watch little pieces of you begin to unravel. Raw skin, untouched and new bared to his curious eyes. 

You’ve thrown him off-kilter, left him feeling strange. All asunder. 

He shouldn’t be too surprised by the way you unmoor him so easily. Your eyes swallow the atmosphere around him, eating through gravity. Weightless, he’s left to drift in the aether until you snatch him from the air, leaving him wing-clipped, and kept cupped in the soft swells of your palm. 

It’s greed, he thinks. That awful little thing that makes him keep coming back for more.

The helicopter crash did a number of things on him—mild concussion, a fractured rib, sprained wrist; it seemed to have flipped his insides all askew for a moment when he plunged to the earth before somehow righting themselves when he'd landed—but in retrospect, hindsight, whatever, it could have been a lot worst. 

A fact Gaz seemed to have picked up on quicker than he had when they'd met in the medical bay together, holding their broken bodies with trembling hands. 

(Or maybe threaded together by a statuette of Nefertem laced in the fibres of their hearts.)

"What's this now," Gaz asked when he limped in, knee smarting without the surge of adrenaline keeping him upright. Mirth rolling through his teeth, ge offered Price a fractured grin that very likely might have been a grimace. "Two for two? Might be a sign, cap…"

"A sign for what?"

Gaz shrugged, pressing tender fingers against the gash on his forehead. "Stay the fuck out of helicopters. Take the bloody bus instead."

There's a retort in the back of his throat, but it's swallowed when you walk in, hands gripping a medical bag between blanching knuckles. He's closest to the door, and you turn to him with an air of pensive uncertainty that nudges the spot inside of him that preens under authority. That likes law, order, and the simplicity of life. A natural-born leader. He plays the part, of commander and captain, and dips his head toward Gaz, a silent motion meant to convey him first. 

The always in that is ironclad, he thinks. Brassbound. Even if he was bleeding out on the pavement. His men, his boys, first. 

Except, he catches Gaz doing the same thing toward him. A stalemate, then. 

You're new, he notes; ears still wet, face still green. He braces himself to step in, to lay down the authority you need before you flounder, unsure what to do, but instead of being met with uncertainty, he finds himself breathing in your ire. 

"Well, heroes," you snip, brow pinching together in displeasure. "One of you has to go first, don't you? So while I put my stuff on the table, I expect you to have figured it out amongst yourself, yeah?"

And it's—

It's something. 

A strand of static in the air. Direct current to his heart. It thuds in a strange murmuration, off rhythm, off balance. But it makes sense. You'd thrown him so wildly off kilter. 

He clears his throat of the soot that congeals the back, and nods once. Sharp and jerky. 

"Right, yeah…" 

Price turns to Gaz, brows pinched in the middle. A messy bow. 

It isn't like him to be so askew, but you turned everything upside down before he could familiarise himself with the world in its right state. He's adrift for a moment. Floundering, he notes, tasting something sweet behind his teeth. 

Gaz meets his eyes somewhere in the fog, the furrow in his brow asking the questions he won't voice aloud—you alright, cap?—but he isn't sure what he's meant to say. Everything feels like it was knocked loose inside of him, left to roll off shelves and clatter to the floor. Disorganised chaos. Awash. Lost in tangled webs. He isn't used to this. To feeling so useless, so askew. 

He later finds it just the concussion warping the edges of his mind, turning his thoughts into a slurry. That the mild part was an oversight, one that was immediately corrected by you—firm fingers holding his chin still, nails scratching against his beard as you peered into his eyes with a clinical air of detachment that shouldn't have made his heart beat as loud as it was. 

You smell of summer rain. The musk of water on a hot pavement. He breathes it in until it's clogging the back of his throat, so thick he can almost taste it. So heavy, so heady, his head swims. Ozone. Charred wood. War tucked in a bottle.

The soft fingers against his pulse was a shock, made potent by the little curl of your brow when you counted the beats per minute and found they were much too fast. He isn't embarrassed. Doesn't think he has it in him anymore to feel that way, but there's a sense of frustration in the back of his mind as you move around him, commandeering him with an ease that leaves him feeling a little breathless. 

"You're concussed," you say at last, lips pitching downward as you read his charts, the scrawl left behind by the nurse who'd seen him earlier. The one who promptly sent him to you. "And it isn't mild."

With that, and a list of things he ought to do (non-negotiable), you send him on his way. Gaz, too. Fixed up with gauze and made shiny and new. 

Soap asks why he's so quiet later when they meet for a debriefing later on (one that he knows is definitely on the list of things you told him not to do), and has to stop the rip current from spilling past his lips. 

"He's concussed," Gaz supplied, narrowed eyes clipping the side of his face when it lands; a physical blow. "Doc said he needed rest. But good luck telling him that."

"Don't need rest," he grumbles. There's a blossom of pain in his temple. A little sapling that flourishes under the waning sunlight. "'M fine."

They don't believe him, but the debriefing is too short to push him to lay down, and he spends the next hour pretending he's not seeing shadows in his periphery. That the words on the pages don't bleed together. 

(That the scent of Petrichor doesn't glue to the back of his throat.)

When the hurt in his head dims, he finds his thoughts drifting back to you. Meek and unassuming. A wolf in sheep's clothing. It lingers long after the meeting has ended and he's ushered to the barracks for rest. Home tomorrow, Gaz promises on the tail end of yawn. Gonna sleep for a whole year, I think. 

Aye, gonna head home in the morning, Soap murmurs, but his eyes don't stray from the corner where Ghost leans, chin dipped low to his chest. 

(Price wouldn't put it past him to be asleep already.)

They tell him to get some sleep, dressing the worry in their voice as a friendly admonishment, and he takes it as it is. 

But rest doesn't come. 

He's curious about you. The little hellion that managed to snatch him clean from the air, and cup him in the palm of your too-small hands. 

(He wants to feel it again.)

It begins as idle curiosity.

Price is a large man full of bulk and grit. The snarls in his throat command authority, respect. He isn't used to feeling so wing clipped, sidelined, and he blames that on why he seeks you out. 

A pinch in his shoulder. His chest feels swollen around the broken rib. His knee hurts. There's an ache in his throat. A throb in his kidneys. 

Each time is met with the same stern expression, firm hands. You commandeer him around the room, dragging out the ailments with ease that always seems to leave him off-kilter and breathless. 

He realises what it is the fourth time he comes to your office, exacerbating some mild pain. 

You take up space. All of it. Any crevasse, or corner is immediately filled by you. You have this presence about you that is so at odds with the meek façade you carried on your countenance like an ill-fitting mask when he'd first laid eyes on you. 

You're an enigma, a paradox. A riddle begging to be solved. He wants to take you into his hands and pull you apart until your insides are bared to him, true and real, and known. 

He's met people like you in his lifetime. Leaders in roles that don't fit them. He thinks you belong in worn pages of history, tucked behind a desk as you commandeer the world around you with firm hands and a gnarled smile instead of standing before him, musing softly at whatever ailments he throws your way. 

Despite his plethora of issues, you tackle them all with an air of severity and seriousness that he finds kinship in, touching softly at the twined mass that writhes before him. The cuts in your gaze are made from the same shorn razor as his, and he wants to see what's behind that ill-fitting mask. 

He wants to see you slip. 

But you don't. 

Tongue between teeth, clenched so hard that blood blooms and swells in the tip, you keep everything locked tight to your chest, and usher him out with pantomime remedies to heal his farcical hurts. 

Price isn't sure why he keeps going—curiosity, maybe. An attraction that cracks like lightning striking through his chest. A gale of turbulence that leaves him seaswept and standing on shaking knees. He doesn’t know what to do with the kinetic energy that buzzes in his veins, begging to be free, and so he tests. Pulls and tugs at the seams that keep you spooled tightly together just to see that fissure that once split across your face, leaking fury and fire into the air until it ripped through his nerves, an electrical fire, and set him alight from the inside out. 

(He finds he likes the way it hurts.)

As much as he tugs, he finds he likes it when you pull back. 

"Should be careful," you coo, and the syrupy sweetness of your voice sparks against some dormant part of his mind. "You seem to have a lot of bad luck when it comes to ailments."

He shrugs. "Just unlucky."

"Or you're being cursed." 

"Oh, yeah?" He hums. "Could be." 

You offer a flimsy smile, but it’s enough to soothe the ruffle through his plumage. 

"What's your name?" He asks, fingers plucking at the gossamer that sits between you, unsettled by the quiver in his chest. 

The smile you flash at him is all teeth. "Sekhmet."

Laswell doesn't ask why when he requests your records, but he senses the confusion in her voice when she calls. 

"All of them?" 

He grunts in response. 

"I vetted them personally, John… but," there's a shuffle in the background. Boxes sliding on linoleum. She's overseeing the tearing up of Shepherd's office, and this minute request suddenly turns his stomach sour. "Fine. If that's what you want."

"It's just—"

He isn't quite sure what to say. He was weakened and flummoxed by the world around him. You turned the tipping axis on its head, leaving him feeling asunder. 

"Heard they were quite rough with you," she teases, an olive branch. An excuse. "Bossing around the boss. Is this what it's about?"

He scoffs, then, and only feels an inkling of pain. "No, Laswell. And I wasn't bossed around."

"Manhandled?"

It gives him pause. That feeling from before swells in his chest. Soft hands against his talons, clipping his wings. 

"No," he mutters, but the airiness of his voice gives him away. 

Laswell, in a feat of mercy, just hums. "They're good, John. Good for this team."

Good for you, she doesn't say. John thinks she doesn't have to. He hears it, anyway. 

There are cracks inside of him, ones made from the chipped clay that once concealed an unslaked black hole. 

You fill space, he thinks. 

He isn’t surprised to find you fill the gaps inside of him, too. 

He goes again, but this time it’s real. A bullet grazed his shin, deep enough to warrant stitches, and finds you waiting for him with that clipboard pinched between your hands. 

The look on your face gives him pause. It’s pulled taut, coiled like a defensive viper, but where he expects the same clinical efficiency and detached airs, he instead is met with a palpable sense of uncertainty—too much, he thinks, like the first time you walked into the room, unsure and wobbling on unsteady feet. 

His heart thunders under your prying gaze. “Need some stitches,” he says, if only to fill in the terse silence that settles over the room, hushed and aggrieved. 

“Right,” you echo, eyes dropping to the blood that runs in streaking rivulets down his leg. 

And you say nothing else after, working quietly as you knit skin back together and sponge the drying blood from the wry thatch of curls that blanket his shin. 

Price takes in the paleness of your lip, pinched tight against your clenched teeth. The deep ravine that cuts a line between your brows, heavy with shadows and flooded in some strange amalgamation of anger—potent enough that he can catch the embers in the air on his tongue—and this uncharacteristic sense of disquiet that makes your shoulders tense, your hands slacken. The firm, sure touch is gone—replaced, instead, with clouded unease—and you no longer commandeer him around the room, catch him from the air and manoeuvre him to your fanciful whims. You nudge, now. Soft utterances; requests. 

You don’t move space to fit yourself between the brackets. You linger in the periphery. 

He isn’t accustomed to this, and the hesitancy in your brow needles behind his ribs, pinching and pushing until he’s left feeling that same, strange sense of weightlessness as before. But where you led him around by the tip of his ears, he finds himself unmoored. 

(He likes the loss of control, but only when it’s tethered to your hand.)

His wound is patched up, skin knitted together with silken black lines that cut a neat crisscross through his tumid skin. There is no reason to linger, despite the weight on his tongue urging him to speak. 

But you strike first, catching him at the door. 

"Is there a problem?" You ask, words stripped bare, and masticated between clenched teeth. Reluctance is a heavy weight on your brow when he turns to you, as if you don't want to ask, but are compelled to. Forced to. 

It's the first time he's felt any sense of control around you. He stretches his wings. 

"Problem?" He echoes, and tucks his hands beneath his arms. Steadying his stance. Preparing for the fight. 

You mimic his pose, but grab the knobs of your elbows between tense fingers instead. There's fire in your eyes. The room fills with smoke. 

"You asked for my papers."

The meagre file tucked away in his cabinet spoke of your accomplishments in the same detached, clinical distance as one of the many façades you adopt. It listed your education, your former employment, and your accolades in Times New Roman, all standard affairs. Impressive, of course, but he found it all to be quite lacklustre. 

It didn't mention the firmness of your fingers when you take his pulse or commandeer him to your liking. It said nothing about the paralysing weight in your gaze, vipers tucked in the corners of your eyes when he meets your stolid authority with his own fiery wrath. 

(Or the softness of your cheeks when you try to hide a smile. The admonishing pinches made in jest when he says something that distracts you from your task.)

"I did."

"Okay," you breathe heavily through your nose. "Why?"

"Is there any reason why I shouldn't?" 

"You just—" another breath. He has the peculiar urge to syphon the next directly from your lungs, to taste your air on his tongue. "You come here, week after week, with some—illness, and just—"

"Just what?"

"If you have a problem," you say at length, eyes flashing. "You could have come to me? One on one. I would have—"

"A problem?" He singles the word out, tossing it back at your teeth. “I don’t have a problem.”

You laugh, but it's scathing. "Are you undermining me? Is this—hazing?"

“Hazing? No,” he shakes his head, chasing the tail end of your derision. “Consider this vetting.”

And there it is—that fissure. Heat pops from the lavascape, spilling down the split of your lips. 

“Right.” You snip, shaking your head. “Well, I hope I met your expectations, Price.”

He huffs, then. The noise is a broken facsimile of a laugh forced through crooked teeth. “Of course you do.” The pinch in your brow wobbles. “Wouldn’t be here if you didn’t, love.”

He rents the air with his admission, splits the seams of this tenuous dance you make each week he shows up, speaking of some phantom pain ripped the pages of the textbooks that sit, worn and well-loved, on the shelves behind your desk. 

You say nothing when he leaves. 

(Or when he rests a piece of himself on the doorframe—a glossy feather from his primary remiges just for you.)

He doesn’t go for the next three weeks, but it isn’t cowardice that drags him away from this oddly shaped choreography. He’s caught in a storm halfway across the world with sand in his hair, and the curve of your confusion nudged between the fibrils of his chest. 

In the softness of night, he wonders what you've done with his clipped feather. 

Price meets you at the beginning, but this time, he stands in the medical bay with firm knees, and a clear head. Searching, seeking. 

The thread vibrates, and he finds you with your back to him, doling out gentle, firm, commands to the medical staff congregated around you. Clinging to your breathy orders with the same listless uncertainty that makes his chest swell with the urge to lead whenever it's rested on his shoulders. 

He isn't sure if you can feel the reverberations through the thread, the leftover sutures from when you weaved a needle over the cut on his forearm, and accidentally sewed a piece of yourself into his skin, or if it's just the heavy weight of his gaze burning brands into your back that draws your attention. 

(It certainly garners enough from the staff around you, their flighty eyes flickering from the mountain of a man seething at your back, to you—feigning obliviousness as he strips you bare beneath his glacial gaze, cutting a path to your membrane where he knows he'll find the piece of himself that you snipped off months ago.)

When you finally turn, you give a peculiar look over your shoulder, eyes clouded over, gaze inward. He watches you for a moment, taking in the curve of your cheek, the slope of your nose. Foreign, of course; but familiar under the cloak of darkness and the hail of gunfire. 

The fire still burns in your unreachable depths, but the embers are smouldering. He feels the heat even from this distance, but when you return from whatever thoughts were racing through your head, he finds the look that fixes itself there to be strange. Pensive. 

A quiet contemplation as you take in the length of his shoulders, the width of his chest. 

His heart hammers against the cages of his sore ribs, leaping to the base of his throat where it pulses like a raw wound. 

The whole of his body smarts like a massive contusion—muscles bending at odd angles, bones brittle—but he knows in an instant that he won't mention it to you. He'll tuck the hurt aside. Let it moulder. Let it rot. 

This thing between you—crafted from the design of his heart—has been pulled and pinched, flexed and stretched too taut. It's ready to snap. To break. 

He waits for that moment, bracing himself for the inevitability of the recoil clapping him against the chest, but it doesn't happen. 

You give a small dip of your chin. 

Then, you're gone. 

You've been moulding him between form hands since the beginning, moving him around however you please. 

So, it just feels natural when he follows. 

This time it's his chest. 

You go through the same dance, steps known. Ingrained in muscle memory. Your hands are firm, authoritative as you lead him on this little chase, pushing and pulling, tugging on the threads that keep him sewn up and whole. 

But an incipient path is born. A new routine. The hand on his cheek, as you read his temperature, lingers, thumb brushing over the dividing line that separates skin from wry curls. 

The touch is familiar. You’re no strange to feeling around the phantom aches and pains he presents to you, but this is an electric shock that rattles through his nerves. The trail your thumb leaves behind as it strokes idly at his skin prickles and burns. Goosebumps rise, creating cresting hills and peaks along his topography. You map it all with nimble fingers, firm and sure. 

You take the thermometer out of his mouth after a moment, not even pretending to read the results (thirty-seven degrees, always), and it’s tossed back on the tray quickly before your hand returns to his skin, drawn there by that same innate pull he feels in his iron bones. The warmth of your palm threatens to suffuse his skin, mated together in ferromagnetism. 

His chin rests, plinthed in your palms, and there’s a sudden swell, a rush, that gorges on his heart. The façades fall, clattering to the ground. The broken pieces lay in remains by his feet. 

Price doesn’t spare them a glance. 

Can’t, maybe, because in azimuth he finds that solidary feather he plucked for you resting between your teeth. 

Wonderment. Awe. He feels the surge of something ripping through his body—a paroxysm—but he can’t look away from the shapes of your bare face; the imperfect asymmetry, the wrought iron lines, the convulsing atoms. It’s mesmerising. 

And maybe it’s an electrical phenomenon—no let go—but he doesn’t spare it a single thought, even as the current burrows deeper into his chest, igniting his tissue until red-hot, blistering, charred. Even then, even with the scent of smouldering, necrotising flesh brimming cloyingly into his scenes, the absolute apathy he feels for himself at that moment is a testament to the unshakeable draw, that primal magnetism that glues him to you; met in perfect equilibrium in the middle.

It’s you who moves, who splints the poles until they fall apart when you let your hand drop.

But you’re not finished. The tips of your fingers move, a long peregrination down the twisting, sloping topography of his visage; snaking down his temple, the dip of his nose, the rough bushel of curls, the soft pout of his lips, the ulotrichous hair along his cheek and jaw, the long decline of his check, the ridged of his collarbones, the swell of his chest. It’s there where it lingers, fingers spreading like webs along the birdcage of his thundering heart. 

Price watches you, rapturous and nearly choking himself on the avarice that spills from his heaving lungs. 

You rest the flat of your palm there for a beat; lost in perambulation. Feasting on the thud of his heart. 

He thinks you’ve had your fill. Quenched yourself. 

But when you look up from the slight tremor of your hand, pulsing in time with his hurried beats, the look in your eyes is distinctly unslaked. 

(—and he can’t stop the rumble from spilling out of his chest at the sight.)

Price isn’t sure how long you stay like that. Minutes, seconds, hours. Aeons might have passed since you let your mask slip. Since he plucked at threads keeping it upright. But he shakes back into cognisance when you pull away, cutting through space and time, and filling the gaps once more with the heavy weight of your presence. 

“You’ll be fine,” you say over your shoulder, reaching for your clipboard. “A little rest is all you need, captain.”

There’s an insurmountable number of things he can say, but you press on his throat, and he swallows them down, nodding at your back instead. 

The cloven strands fall around him, broken with distance. There’s an urge in his bones to sew back into his skin, to press them like drying flowers into the folds of his heart where they’ll say, nurtured on his blood and suffused into his being. He rests his laurels on it for a moment, feels the weight of his want, his desire, and compares it to the fraying wisps dragging along the linoleum. 

But he doesn’t reach for them. 

He is wing clipped and flightless. You hold the only feather that gives him lift between the monoliths of your teeth. 

A fine place to keep it, he thinks and turns around, ready to leave on unsteady feet, but—

"Seven," you say, firm and sure. No nonsense. But when he turns, he catches the pallor of your knuckles gripped tight around the clipboard. You hold it to your chest like a shield. The vipers in your eyes quiet their hissing, tongues lashing out to scent the air. "There's this place in Manchester that makes the best Beef Suya."

You're not asking him. 

(But you don't really have to, do you?)

His lips pull up. He catches the drifting threads in his bare palm. "Manchester, mm?"

"I hope you like a little bit of spice."

"I can handle the heat." 

You swallow thickly, and he thinks the action on anyone else might be easily mistaken for nerves, but the livewire that pulls taut between you thrums with a heavy sense of anticipation. 

"I hope so, John," he startles at the mention of his name. It makes your lips curl back, and he shouldn't find it so mesmerising when can't tell if it's a smile or a sneer. "Otherwise I'd be quite disappointed." 

His chin dips to his chest. It renders his voice to little more than smoke and ash, but you shudder from across the room at the growl. 

"Wouldn't want that, now, would we?" 

It isn't breathless when you speak, but he licks his lips and tastes the pulsing excitement that sparks in the air. It curls in his lungs. Saltwater on burning coals. 

"Don't be late." 

It's a promise, he thinks; a warning, too. A threat. "Wouldn't dream of it, love."

He turns away from you, shielding the growing smile from your searching gaze, but your voice stops him short at the door, fingers curled around the frame.

“And Price?”

“Yes, love?” He calls, featherlight in a way he hasn’t felt since he was eighteen and free. Ready to soar, to fly.

"You know," you say, brows knotting together. Despite the severity of your expression, there's a note of playfulness between your teeth. "If you wanted to see me, you could have just asked." 

After dinner, they fucked so nasty that Qadesh could be heard gagging across the aether.

[dykedvonte]

Ulysses obsession with the Courier is a special type of sad to me cause the Courier’s part was so important but so unwitting. They had no idea what was in the package they delivered and neither did he. Neither had an idea of what it could’ve done and the Courier was only caring out their job (mind you the Courier could be killed via notes in the express contract if they don’t). To them it was just another regular delivery to the divide and one that they likely thought would help, just like all the ones before.

It’s so tragic for Ulysses to hold so much ire to the Courier when it really was the case of it could’ve been anyone. Anyone could have delivered that package but they did and so he focused the blame on them and it destroys what he is trying to instill in the courier on a fundamental level.

[quietwingsinthesky]

it ever hit you out of nowhere that castiel is living in a dead guy's body and the show just does not care. it does not care. jimmy novak might as well not exist the moment he or claire is out of sight. cas stole a guy's body and his face and his life, and we can't ever talk about it or discuss it in detail because of how fucking horrifying it is that sam and dean's best friend just walks around in a dead guy suit. there's not even a human soul in there anymore. it's just a corpse. stone-cold body snatcher indeed.

[thedaythatwas]

it's crazy how arcane makes you forget that jayce is an academic. like you gave an engineering post-doc a large share of your government and you thought that was going to end well?

(this is a joke post, but also, with how built the guy is I think it's easy to forget that he's a scientist first. he's not a fighter. he's not a leader. so when I watch season one and I say oh my god jayce. fuck! that's such an ignorant move, jayce why would you do that?! I just remember that he's an engineering post-doc who was thrust into power right as his city was tipping into outright class warfare. he's privileged, and definitely sheltered, and he should probably educate himself on that (have some nice pillow talk with his lab partner about class struggle, maybe) but those flaws wouldn't be so dangerous if he weren't an engineering post-doc with a significant amount of sway in an oligarchical government!)

[natjennie]

I do genuinely think fantasy high will stay with me the rest of my life.

[owestwind]

something something pacifism as a privilege of the company you keep something something

[myreia]

✦ B A R D

She does not consider herself an archer, but the bow feels slick and powerful in her hand. She settles on the peak of the roof, unbothered by the fog and the rain, leather coat unfurling around her. Like the skill it takes to learn an instrument, hunting is as much about patience as it is about precision. Her breath stills. Her fingers flex, the bowstring taut. They will not see the arrow coming. —level 90 compendium

[historyofguns]

In the article "Trigger Training Tips: Have You Been Doing It Wrong?" by Clayton Walker, the author explores the difference between target shooting and defensive shooting, emphasizing the importance of adapting trigger techniques for different scenarios. Initially approaching firearms as a target shooter, Walker discusses how traditional target shooting habits may not be effective for defensive shooting situations. The article critiques conventional "perfect" trigger press techniques, which prioritize slow, precise movements, suggesting they may hinder speed and practicality in self-defense contexts. Walker shares his personal evolution in shooting methodology, adopting a more straightforward and rapid trigger pull approach to enhance performance in defensive training. The content highlights the significance of understanding different firearm uses, balancing precision with practicality, and constantly evaluating common shooting advice to improve effectiveness and adaptability.

[vamp5]

Was looking for color palette inspo and got so disappointed. posting ai images to pinterest should be grounds for getting your account banned.

[potato-cerealkiller]

feeling physically ill over batman reborn dick grayson and his obligation to damian. like their early relationship is built on circumstance and responsibility, not any inherent love or affection. they’re ultimately close bond is honestly more of a byproduct than a specific concerted effort.

(was looking through stuff from this era and what do u know he explicitly says it). the roles of Batman and Robin chafe against them both, the costumes literally and metaphorically do not fit. dick is trying his hardest to prevent gotham from ripping itself apart at the seams right now and the added pressure of custody over a murderous ten year old is not fucking helping. so the evolution of their relationship just gets me, going from this

to this

dick (and damian but in a different direction, bleeds the need to be accepted etc etc) are so desperately trying to maintain a fire through damp kindling. they have no idea what they’re doing as a duo and it shows. but I think that’s what makes the evolution of their relationship so interesting here. dick still extends a degree of patience towards damian despite everything, he affirms him when he can and damian begrudgingly develops a respect for him. damian’s robin was developed in loss and uncertainty, not only did he have to navigate unlearning the toxic values instilled in him from his childhood abuse, he also had to navigate losing a father he was just barely getting to know. even if he wasn’t perfect, dick earnestly tried with him, he didn’t just write him off as unredeemable demon spawn or a nuisance.

damian is initially just another obligation from bruce, a consequence of inheriting his legacy. but eventually he brute forces his way into his heart, just a little. the small glimpses of damian’s innate humanity and kindness that weren’t stamped out of him during his insane childhood become more apparent and the sheer amount of effort he exerts in being ‘normal’ and just himself beyond the bloodshed is painfully obvious. (he straight up comes out and says it).

damian is far from a diamond in the rough, more like bort, but dick is willing to work with that. even if it makes him want to tear his hair out initially, he can’t just throw the kid to the curb or ignore him. he doesn’t give up on him, not because he even necessarily believes in the kid but because he can’t give up. and eventually he warms up to him. he develops that sort of brotherly, almost paternal relationship with him. they never had to do more than tolerate each other really, and yet they did.

[quietwingsinthesky]

of ten’s companions, if the doctor couldn’t handle losing them and crossed his own timeline to trick them into traveling with future!him instead of past!him so that he’d have a little more time with them:

rose would do it. first because bless her but she has the situational awareness of a rock, and legitimately would not realize this isn’t her doctor until his facade starts to break down and he starts bleeding grief-laced love for her at every turn. but once she does realize it, she’s both deeply sympathetic and a little scared that she could make him into this. it’s a lot to be confronted with having that much power over someone, to break them so thoroughly. rose would try to get back to her doctor, but while she’s with the future version, she tries to do what she can to ease his pain. (she also tries to figure out a way to subvert her fate. she fails.)

i think martha would be harder to trick. she can smell desperation on the doctor like a bloodhound. she is so tapped into the fact that this man wants to off himself so bad and that she’s 90% of his self-restraint, so present her with a doctor who is lacking that and she’s onto him immediately. however, assuming he gets her to come with him, explains why he’s doing this, there’s like. a minute where she’s kind of. not flattered exactly, but surprised, giddy with the realization that he’d come back for a little more time with her, especially if this is early season 3 martha. which would all come crashing down around the time that he reveals that he wasn’t pushed to this by losing her to some tragedy or her death or anything- but that she chose to leave. that is the point at which martha goes ‘oh i need to get the fuck off of this tardis right now’ and ghosts the past!doctor that she was also traveling with because holy shit, man.

donna, like rose, is easily bamboozled into following the wrong doctor home, provided that he shuffles her along into his tardis too fast for her to argue. but she catches on far quicker than rose does. like, three minutes tops of watching the doctor move through the tardis in a way that’s definitely not enthusiastic piloting and looks more like guilty panic. and then she yells at him for lying to her. and she yells at him for kidnapping her. and then she stops yelling because he’s gone sort of still and quiet and his eyes are just broken. and he doesn’t explain himself, he confesses. donna is going to try to stay with him after this btw. because how do you go back to looking your best friend in the eyes when you know he’d take everything you’ve become away from you, even to save your life? and this is still the doctor, he still did that to her, but he regrets it. regrets it so much that he can’t live with it, he’s breaking time and space just to hear her say his name again. and donna doesn’t want to lose him anymore than he wanted to lose her.

[hirazuki]

Me: *plans a Maeglin shoot for this weekend*

Weather: *immediately shoots up to the 90s f/30s c, with haze and smoke from nearby wildfires, from today through Tuesday* "I got you."

[honeycantskate]

I feel like our boys would benefit from… *checks clipboard* shooting the puck…?

[always-a-joyful-note]

There really is something special about stories where how ultra talented people decide that rather than shine above the rest, they would rather be a spotlight for those they love