#blu whos

[blubushie]

Also I wanna address this but like. To literally anyone. Uh.

Don't do this. And lemme explain why.

Shortly--there's no telling.

Aboriginal Australians don't live in "tribes"--that's a term with racist connotations. They call themselves mobs, or nations for larger interconnected skingroups, and are typically divided into different clans, or familial groups. That's neither here nor there as it's only partial to her question.

The biggest thing is that Fantasynamegenerator usually doesn't take the actual names used by racial groups, especially Indigenous groups, but rather uses the naming conventions to create new names that sound like they could be from that group. This means that Bilay is likely not an actual name specific to any Aboriginal mob, and even if it is, tracking down which one(s) it would be from is nearly impossible.

Names are treated as something sacred amongst Indigenous Australian cultures, and I highly recommend not adopting any Aboriginal Australian name or even creating a character from any Indigenous group unless you do your due diligence to properly represent that group and ensure that your portrayal is free from racism or misinformation. Most mobs of Australia do not allow free teaching of their languages because they're considered "closed languages"--Aboriginal Australian cultures, by and far, depend on oral tradition as none of them have their own alphabet or writing system. Their power is in their words, and so their languages are very closely guarded and are not shared freely. This applies especially to names, which are considered sacred because they hold power over the individual.

If you insist on making an Aboriginal character, you should pick an English name. Most Aboriginal Australians have an English "whitefella" name they go by when introducing themselves to non-Aboriginal people. Aboriginal names are not shared freely, and for most mobs an individual will have up to six names they go by depending on mob, how they're being addressed, who is addressing them, and the context of their addressment, such as whether or not they're even present or if they're being referred to while absent. There is no singular name an Aboriginal person will go by except their English name, and this is used when interacting with white people only. Anything further, unless you have someone who is Aboriginal that you can personally consult, is cultural appropriation.

That's all. Kthxbye

#blu whos #mavisposting #true blu

[blubushie]

What are the things you Like and Dislike about Sniper? (Valve's Sniper and the fans' interpretation of Sniper)

I've got no issue with canon Sniper and love canon Sniper. I'm so sorry anon, you've woken the dog. Ignore me as I proceed to bark angrily for the next half-hour, because I have many issues with fanon Sniper.

But first I'll start with what I like about fanon Sniper. I love how everyone has their own little twist to him, even if most I don't agree with. I love how I can see how authors and artists have interacted with people and the scope of experiences they've heard about off how they write Sniper. I like that I can make judgements on people off how they treat his character (not in a "they make bad things happen to him" kinda way, but in a "how does this person handle Sniper's being adopted" kinda way). I like that I can use Sniper as a looking glass into the author/artist. I'm sure this applies to other characters too, but looking through Sniper just comes easier to me because I suppose I can put myself in his shoes? Iunno.

Now that that's over with, please allow your actual resident bushman and professional sniper to get on his soapbox, thank you.

List of shit I hate about fanon Sniper:

Fandom constantly referring to him as a Kiwi, completely ignoring his entire character arc in the comics where he realises that he is in fact Australian and that the two people who raised him all his life are in fact his "real" parents. The fandom needs to re-assess how they view adoptees/migrants and their relationship to their adopted culture, especially when they show no interest in assimilating into their birth culture and have no knowledge/experience of it. This is such an issue to me that I, someone who emigrated to Australia when I was two years old and grew up Australian despite being born in another country, will just outright block people who call Sniper a Kiwi cuz I already know how you're going to see and view me before we even get to talking.

I don't like how half the fandom twinkifies him. There I said it. On the other hand, I don't like the other half of the fandom often makes him very muscular. Do you not know what lean muscle looks like?

I don't like how the fandom calls him "stinky" or says he's unhygienic. None of the fandom understands how well animals can smell and how much of a successful hunt depends on animals not being able to smell you. You know what makes animals flee fastest? The smell of smoke and the smell of human body odour. If you're upwind of your target they are going to smell you and flee. Sniper, professional hunter for yonks, would not fucken stink considering it'd make him a completely useless hunter. He'd shower daily, wear scent cover (NOT deodorant--Sniper would not smell good, he just would not have a scent at all). Also none of the fandom understands how important hygiene is in the bush. Sniper is not walking around covered in dirt and such. He would be very clean and practise good hygiene because if you don't stay clean you end up smelly (ruining his chances of a successful hunt) and/or end up sick--especially with skin problems.

I don't like how the fandom has generally accepted out-of-characters traits as canon. For example, Sniper being "shy". Reclusive DOES NOT EQUAL SHY. He's a fucken assassin, does the fandom not understand how that works? Shy people do not get hired. No one is going to hire a hitman who's quaking in his boots because a client looked at him a little too long or applied a little too much social pressure. Sniper would be more than capable of blending into his surroundings when needed, such as a crowd, if it means making his hit or getting where he needs to go to make said hit. Sniper would be capable of lying to cover his arse on the spot and making it believable. Sniper would be able to manage being flirted with in public and play it off cooly--though privately is a different matter, so go wild with that all you like. There is a major difference between someone not caring for the company of other people and someone who gets shy or nervous around them. Professionals have standards, and Sniper would keep his shit together for the sake of getting his mark.

He wouldn't smoke cannabis. Whether it's because he just doesn't care for the high, whether it's because it doesn't do much for him, whether it's because THC in particular makes him anxious (you know that man is paranoid, all hitmen are)--the bottom line is that the smoke of cannabis clings to your clothes like nothing else, it takes forever to get the smell out, and yeah sure you can mask it with other smells but the issue is that Sniper, as a hunter, cannot be smelt by anything he's hunting. And you know what scent cover DOESN'T conceal? Cannabis. (Sauce: I have tried.) I could defo see him doing edibles though. But why do you think he's doing shrooms, ay? Because shrooms don't leave a smell.

None of the fandom knows how sniping actually works. Just. At all. I've seen horrendous fucking takes. He is not "feeling it." He is not cracking off a shot at 1200yd a second after taking aim. That's not how this works, that's not how any of this works. DO ANY OF YOU KNOW WHAT ELEVATION OR WINDAGE IS?

Sniper would not be bothered by the cold. A camper has SO LITTLE INSULATION (I live in one!!) and the outback gets BELOW FREEZING AT NIGHT IN WINTER. Sniper would be well-adjusted to handling extreme temperatures at BOTH ENDS of the temperature range. He might be a little more susceptible to cold because he's experienced less of it, but he would not be shivering at fucking 15c/60f. It's also fucken cold during the day in winter because it's the outback and there's no trees to trap the heat in. Temperatures fluctuate wildly, and bushmen need to be highly adaptable or you die.

Not Sniper-specific but the fandom also doesn't understand jack shit about weapons. You clean them after you use them. That's not a clip, it's a MAGAZINE--yes there is a difference. YOU ARE NOT PUTTING A DIRTY SWORD INTO ITS SCABBARD. That's not how revolvers work. No, that either. That's a double-action, you don't have to cock the hammer to fire it. That's a single-action, you do need to cock the hammer to fire it. Bolt-action rifles don't have hammers. You don't rack a bolt, you cycle it, you rack a slide on a semiautomatic pistol or a pump-action shotgun. I'm hitting you with my old man bitching cane.

Continuing from the above point: people who draw Sniper with his finger on the trigger of his rifle/any firearm when he should not have finger on the trigger of a firearm. YOU ONLY PUT YOUR FINGER ON THE TRIGGER WHEN YOU ARE READY TO SHOOT. TRIGGER DISCIPLINE, PEOPLE. IT SAVES LIVES.

Most of the fandom has no idea what the fuck they're talking about or doing with this bloke (or his job, or lifestyle, or where he comes from) and it shows. There, I said it.

#blu whos #tf2 #sniper tf2 #ok i'm done being angry now. but god it wouldn't kill you fellas to research things. please #i'm not saying i'm the arbiter of sniper. but i am saying that as someone who has a very very very similar lifestyle and job? #it's really bloody frustrating #sniperposting

[blubushie]

can i say something right now or will i be skinned alive. i am sincerely tired of this fandom putting the mercenaries into the same fandomified tropes. valve made some stellar and memorable characters yet i very rarely see any fancontent that genuinely captures the same spirit of the source material or who the tf2 mercs are as people.

It's ok, I'll take the skinning for you cuz you're ABSOLUTELY RIGHT and YOU SHOULD SAY IT.

I'm BEGGING the fandom to re-read the comics and re-watch the Meet the Team videos and refresh themselves on the source material cuz at this point far too much of what the fandom puts out isn't even the TF2 mercs anymore. They're just your common tropes/cliches in media. The uwu shyboy recluse people make Sniper, the young goofy twinkish doctor people make Medic, the abusive alcoholic people make Demo, the racist southerner people make Engie, the dainty little nance who can't defend himself people make Spy, the Russian beefy communist people make Heavy. I could go on and on.

It seems that people are ignorant of the fact that half the whole thing with the TF2 mercs is how Valve rolled with the expected tropes and then immediately subverted them. Sniper isn't a recluse because he's shy, it's because he's a busy professional. Medic is goofy but he's got the Burly Beast and he is not your fandom twink. Demo is fiercely loyal to his family with a heart of gold, and he's not just an alcoholic but also a workaholic. Engie is a sweetheart with southern politeness, and also scary as hell. Spy, despite being thin as a rail, can handle the recoil of his revolver one-handed and is a more than efficient spy. And Heavy, despite being Russian, is anti-communist because his father was killed by the USSR and his family was put into a Siberian gulag because of his father being an anti-revolutionary. There's more examples of course but these are first to mind.

Please please please refresh the source material. I'm begging you.

#blu whos #tf2

[blubushie]

BLU DID YOU SEE THE NEW SNIPER COSMETIC IN THE SUMMER UPDATE

I SAW IT! I SAW IT! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

LOOK AT THIS SHIT ANON! LOOK AT IT! OH THE MEMORIES!

#blu whos #tf2 #sniperposting #any time i see sniper with a crocodile i get stupid happy

[blubushie]

good morning blu!!! you know a whole lot about everything so do you have any mistakes that people make in medicine in like media and stuff??? -leafanon

G'day leafanon, and yes I do!

WARNING: DISCUSSION OF GORE AND MEDICAL GORE INBOUND. ALSO INCLUDES PICTURES OF BLOOD IN SYRINGES.

DEAR AUTHORS/ARTISTS/ANIMATORS

GUNSHOT WOUNDS (GSW) ARE NOT INSTANT KILLS. No, not even if you're shot in the chest. Unless that round completely obliterates the spinal cord (unlikely as it's very small and hard to hit) your victim is going to stay alive and conscious anywhere from half a minute (direct shot to the heart) to an hour or longer (shallow wound to the lung). KNOW YOUR ANATOMY AND DO RESEARCH ON GSWs TO THAT ANATOMY. KNOW WHAT THAT ROUND PENETRATES, WATCH VIDEOS ON HOW MUCH DAMAGE THAT ROUND DOES TO BALLISTIC DUMMIES, AND HOW PENETRATION AFFECTS THE BODY.

YOUR CHARACTER WILL NOT SHRUG OFF A GUTSHOT. Gutshots absolutely suck and are fatal when left untreated. A shot to the pelvis will buckle you--you will not take a shot to the pelvis and stay standing. A gutshot will usually kill within 12 hours, but sometimes it may take days depending on what was hit, where, and how deeply the bullet penetrated. Also on that note, A GUTSHOT FUCKING HURTS AND IS ARGUABLY THE WORST POSSIBLE WAY TO DIE BY BULLET. If it rips through your stomach you're going to die within a few hours as your stomach acid will gradually eat through your internal organs and burn them. It'll feel like a fire from the inside-out. This, coupled with heightened emotions due to adrenaline, will break even the most stoic character. If the bullet pierces the intestine the wound like leak faeces into your abdominal cavity. You will know this has happened by the smell alone.

Also on that note: WHILE A GUTSHOT WILL KILL YOU, A GUTSTAB PROBABLY WON'T. Knives move a lot slower than bullets and have much less kinetic energy on impact. When you're stabbed in the stomach with a knife it's actually pretty rare for the blade to perforate your bowels, as usually the bowels will move aside as the knife passes through. The most dangerous part of a gutstab is removing the knife, the subsequent bleeding, and the risk of infection by foreign bacteria entering the wound (either from the knife itself or just entering the open wound from the surrounding environment).

WHEN SOMEONE IS SHOT IN THE HEAD THEY DO NOT JUST DROP. They fall and extend their limbs, arch their neck back, go slack-jawed, tip their toes down, and they will start twitching. Depending on where they were shot, they may exhibit decorticate posturing indicative of brain damage (even though they're most definitely dead once the bullet pierces their skull). The bottom posture with the wrists curled is most common. If someone was running when they were shot, they will fall and their legs will continue kicking for a few seconds before their body exhibits decorticate posturing. They will release this ungodly sigh that will haunt any character who's never heard that sound before.

Also on that note: YOU CAN STOP INVOLUNTARY MUSCLE SPASMS BY HITTING THE CORRECT PART OF THE BRAIN. Make a T-shape from the outside of your left eye socket to your right, and then down the bridge of your nose to your upper lip. That's the T-zone, which is what police and military snipers aim for in hostage situations. A headshot causes involuntary muscle spasms and when your target has a firearm or knife on someone, that could mean they hurt the hostage by a simple twitch of their arm or trigger finger. A shot to the T-zone causes flaccid paralysis as a result of taking out the medulla oblongata, an organ what connects the brain to the spinal cord, and renders the body completely paralysed. The target will drop and will not experience spasms or decorticate posturing. Snipers call this an apricot, named for the shape of the medulla, and IT IS AN INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT SHOT TO MAKE. I can shoot kangaroos at 1200yd but I've never gotten an apricot.

A DEFIBRILLATOR WILL NOT RESTART A STOPPED HEART. Nothing but a fuckton of epinephrine, a fuckton more chest compressions, and a metric fuckton of luck will restart a stopped heart. Defibrillators are for correcting or preventing an arrhythmia, which is an abnormal heartbeat (too slow, too fact, skipping beats, etc). IT WILL NOT RESTART A HEART IN ASYSTOLE. In fact, defibrillators work by actually forcibly stopped the heart so that when it resumes beating, it does so on a normal rhythm.

DO NOT MOVE WITH AN ARROW WOUND. You have a razor blade on a stick in your body and the more you move, the more you're ripping yourself apart. Your character is not going to be walking around with ten arrows in them as that amount of pain is crippling, not unless they have a constant IV supply of Enough Morphine To Kill An Elephant.

DO NOT HAVE YOUR CHARACTER REMOVE A KNIFE UNLESS THEY'RE PREPARED FOR MASSIVE BLEEDING. When you're stabbed, the muscles clamp down around the knife and the blade acts as a "plug" that seals the wound shut. Stab wounds with the weapon intact will often have very little if any bleeding. THAT WILL CHANGE ONCE YOU PULL OUT THE WEAPON.

FOR ARTISTS AND ANIMATORS: RECOGNISE WHAT KIND OF BLOOD YOUR CHARACTER IS SHEDDING. Superficial blood from a flesh wound is dark. After a few minutes, blood starts coagulating and turning a dark maroon colour. YOU WILL NOT SEE BRIGHT RED BLOOD IN THE ENVIRONMENT UNLESS SOMEONE IS ACTIVELY BLEEDING. If your character has been shot in the heart, lung, or artery, THEY WILL BLEED ARTERIAL BLOOD. Arterial blood is bright red due to being freshly-oxygenated to the point that it almost appears pink. The two syringes on the right have deoxygenated venous blood that was travelling back to the heart when it was drawn. The three syringes on the right have freshly-oxygenated arterial blood.

IF YOUR CHARACTER HAS BEEN SHOT/STABBED IN THE CHEST AND THE OTHER CHARACTERS DON'T KNOW WHAT WAS HIT, CHECK THE BULLET WOUND. LUNG SHOTS WILL BUBBLE.

THINGS VOID THEIR BOWELS WHEN THEY DIE. You'll know when something's dead by the smell.

CRUSHING INJURIES TO THE EXTREMITIES CAN KILL. When someone is pinned under rubble by a limb, that limb can form blood clots. Once the person is freed, those clots can loosen and then travel through the arteries until it clogs one (arterial thrombosis). The primary concern in victims of crush injuries after they're freed is strokes. The second killer is traumatic rhabdomyolysis, or muscle breakdown. This releases toxic muscle components into the circulatory system that can poison the body. This poisoning is called crush syndrome.

A MODERN ECG DOES NOT "BEEEEEEP" WHEN A HEART GOES INTO ASYSTOLE (FLATLINE. IT WILL ANNOUNCE. ECGs made before 2000 typically had a continuous beep to announce a disconnect from the heart (either the patient is in asystole or the ECG's lead detached from the skin or the machine itself). ECGs made after 2005 will say something along the lines of "check patient/no pulse detected" on repeat. If your scene occurs somewhere between 2000 and 2005 when announcing ECGs were being implemented then what you choose is your discretion.

STOP HAVING YOUR CHARACTER CAUTERISE WOUNDS THAT DON'T NEED IT. Cauterisation is a last-ditch, life-or-death treatment. It burns the wound (obviously) and leaves you incredibly prone to infection in that wound. IT IS NOT A TREATMENT TO BE TAKEN LIGHTLY. I know that having some badass Rambo type dump gunpowder into a wound and light it up with a match is really cool but it's a terrible idea and does far more damage than what it's supposed to fix.

Most of you are probably already aware of this but IT IS LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO SUCK VENOM OUT OF A BITE. It's injected and immediately disperses into the tissue around it. You can't suck venom out of a bite wound. If you want to help a snakebite victim, keep the bite wound below the heart so that gravity helps with keeping the venom localised to the wound. Apply a cool compress. Get a marker and make a ring around the bite mark so you can track inflammation and redness. Every hour after the bite, apply another ring along the edge of the redness. Get the victim to the hospital ASAP. Also, it's antivenin, not antivenom. Professionals say antivenin.

If I think of anything else I'll add it later.

As always, if you have questions or something feel free to send me an ask!

#blu whos #bushman #writing tips #art tips #code blu

[blubushie]

i love your bullet/casing post so much i jumped up and down and squealed upon reading through it do you have any more cool gun facts that people often get wrong

So I wrote a long spiel and accidentally closed my tab so now I'm pissed. Let's do this over lmao

FOR ANIMATORS/AUTHORS/ARTISTS

While the sound of a pump-action shotgun being cycled is really cool and very intimidating, YOU'RE WASTING YOUR AMMO WHEN YOU DO IT. Every time you pump a shotgun, you're ejecting a spent shell. If there's no spent shells, you're ejecting perfectly good ammo.

You rack a slide. You rack a pump-action shotgun. YOU DON'T RACK A BOLT ON A BOLT-ACTION RIFLE. You CYCLE a bolt. If I see one more person say they're racking the bolt of a bolt-action I'm gonna shove my boot so far up their--

Recoil is a bitch. You can always tell who has never fired a firearm in their life because of how they write/animate recoil. Do you know what makes fully automatic weapons dangerous to the user? The bloody recoil. It's hard to control. Your aim will move up, and especially in fully-automatic handguns or SMGs like Tommy guns which are smaller weapons, there's not much gun to brace against your body to steady it. That means it's harder to control. That makes it dangerous and puts you at risk.

THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS A SILENCER. They're called suppressors, and they don't make the gun silent. They only bring the volume down by a few decibels so (usually) you won't have to wear ear protection when firing. This is especially useful in combat scenarios like what military and police experience when you're firing in an enclosed space like a building where sound reverberates, or just firing in an indoor firing range. If you have a larger calibre firearm, bring your suppressor because the bloke in the booth next to you will thank you for it.

Handguns usually aren't very accurate, and perfecting your accuracy with them takes a LOT of time that most people don't have to put in. I guarantee you that unless your character is a notoriously skilled marksman and has trained extensively with handguns, they're not shooting that guy in the forehead on the first try.

THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS BULLETPROOF, ONLY BULLET-RESISTANT. Even the USA's ACH (Advanced Combat Helmet) is NOT DESIGNED to stop bullets. You know what kills people most in war, more than bullets? Shockwaves from blasts. That's what helmets are designed to protect against: shockwaves from explosions (which causes brain trauma) and shrapnel. The ACH can protect against handgun-calibre rounds, but don't rely on it to protect you against rifle-calibre rounds. Bullets will penetrate basically everything and half the time what characters use as shields (couches, tables, furniture, metal plates) are things bullets will penetrate with ease. VESTS WILL NOT PROTECT AGAINST HIGH-CALIBRE ROUNDS. Hell, vests often don't even protect against handgun-calibre rounds. The reasons one of the rules of firearm safety is identifying your target is because bullets will penetrate people and strike whatever is behind them. Sometimes that's another person. Also, bullet-resistant vests don't protect against knives.

People don't shrug off bullet wounds unless it's something like a graze, and even then you have burning to the skin. Rounds are fucking hot when they're fired---both as a result of air friction while travelling through the air, and as a result of being propelled from the barrel by hot gunpowder.

YOU CAN MOST DEFINITELY DIE FROM A BULLET TO THE SHOULDER. In your shoulder is an artery---worst case scenario, if it hits above your collar bone it ruptures the subclavian artery. Second worst case scenario, if it hits where your arm meets your shoulder it ruptures the axillary artery. You're going to lose an extensive amount of blood, probably go into shock, and the wound will be singed from the heat of the bullet. The impact alone can break bones without even touching them. When I hunt deer and I get a neck shot (not what I aim for, but mistakes happen) I don't usually hit the vertebrae. The vertebrae is severed simply by the shockwave of the impact.

Guns don't click when they're empty. That click you hear is the firing pin moving forward to strike the primer of the cartridge. In handguns, the slide will move backwards and lock when the magazine is empty. It will not click. The only firearms that "click" when empty are double-action revolvers, as pulling the trigger of a double-action will pull the hammer back. A complete pull makes the hammer strike the back of the firing pin, which then strikes nothing because there isn't a round in the chamber of the cylinder. Unless you're pulling the hammer of a handgun back yourself and pulling the trigger, you will not hear a click. It just won't fire. This is why you keep track of how much ammo you're using, folks.

Most modern firearms don't have a muzzle flash. It's something you see more in things like a muskets. Handguns, military-style rifles, and machine guns don't usually have muzzle flashes, and military and police specifically use low-flash gunpowder so that their position isn't given away by the muzzle flash. For firearms that do have muzzle flashes (for example, some bolt-action rifles) that's what a flash suppressor is for!

MODERN FIREARMS WILL NOT FIRE WHEN THEY'RE DROPPED. Firearm manufacturers go through EXTENSIVE testing to ensure that this doesn't happen because it's a safety risk. In Ye Olde Days (1800s) companies would go bankrupt for putting firearms on the market that are susceptible to accidental discharges. Nowadays, THEY GET SHUT DOWN. The only firearms that CAN fire when dropped are VERY OLD revolvers without a safety mechanism that modern revolvers have, and even then that's only if they fall at the perfect angle directly onto the hammer. Just to be safe, that's why you keep your revolvers half-cocked! (There's some exceptions to this rule with older firearms but it's a general rule of thumb.)

SNIPERS WORK IN TWO-MAN TEAMS. If you're shooting over a thousand yards, most snipers will have a spotter who does his calculating for him. ALL MILITARY SNIPERS WORK IN TWO-MAN TEAMS REGARDLESS OF RANGE. I can do my own spotting up to 1100yd, but anything beyond that requires the assistance of a spotter. There's a lot of maths that goes into sniping. Wind direction, wind speed (what we call windage), bullet drop, trajectory of the Earth, and the Coriolis effect when shooting due north or due south. If you're in the northern hemisphere, the bullet will shift right. If you're in the southern hemisphere, the bullet will shift left. I have no idea how it works at the equator.

When fired at night (and ESPECIALLY in snow) rifles don't make a "BANG" sound. They crack. Sound carries differently at night, which changes the distinctive "bang" of a rifle to a cracking sound, like what you'd hear when ice is breaking on a lake. The best example of this DONE RIGHT is when Sniper fires his rifle in the SFM Art of Justice. You can hear that sound at 3:05.

If I think of any more later I'll add some.

As always, if you have any questions feel free to send me an ask!

#blu whos #bushman #firearms #art tips #writing tips #blu pew

[blubushie]

hihihi can we get a part 2 for gun mistakes??? -leafanon

G'day leafanon!

FOR ANIMATORS/AUTHORS/ARTISTS PT. 2

SNIPERS WILL NOT STICK THE BARREL OF THEIR RIFLE OUT OF OPEN WINDOWS. Best case scenario is you’re sat in a mildly-uncomfortable chair while your spotter stands or sits next to you in an even more uncomfortable chair with a rangefinder. Before rangefinders were introduced (1990s and earlier) you were merely going off estimates (“That building is 50 yards, the next is 25, etc etc”). You never put the barrel out a window because it’d give away your position and put you AND YOUR SPOTTER in danger.

MOST MODERN SCOPES HAVE AN ANTI-GLARE COATING AND/OR A SUNSHADE TO PREVENT GIVING AWAY YOUR POSITION. This is especially useful when hunting as many animals (deer, turkeys, pigs) are incredibly vigilant and will bolt if they see the glint off a scope. This also helps with the sunlight hitting your scope and nearly blinding you from taking your shot. There are some cases of this still happening in “modern” times (notoriously the sniper duel between Carlos Hathcock and Cobra, a North Vietnamese sniper during the Vietnam War) but it’s very rare and scopes that are currently used by police, military, and most hunters don’t glint. This is what a sunshade looks like.

BULLETS DO NOT PENETRATE WATER WELL. Water density is much higher than air and the shape of bullets means they don’t travel well in water. Most bullets will fragment or fold upon hitting the surface of the water and their speed is greatly reduced. Supersonic rounds (such as rifle-calibre, up to .50) fragment within a metre (~3ft) of the water’s surface. Slower sub-sonic rounds (such a pistol-calibre) can travel up to 3m (~10ft). Once you’re a metre under the surface, however, it’s unlikely for any round under .50 to even penetrate you on contact as it loses most of its kinetic power. Arrows however are very aerodynamic and may maintain their kinetic energy up to 2m (~6) and perhaps twice that if you're shooting straight down.

RESEARCH. RESEARCH. RESEARCH. Know the weapons you draw/animate/write. It might not matter to you, but it will make or break it to your viewer. Is the weapon single-shot or does it use a magazine? What is the magazine capacity? What is the recoil? How do you reload? What do you do in case of a jam? Does your character know the weapon well? YouTube is your best friend in this regard.

CLIPS AND MAGAZINES ARE NOT THE SAME THING. These are clips vs magazines. Clips are open and hold the cartridge by the bottom. Magazines fully enclose the cartridges. Clips only hold rounds together to make them easier to feed into a magazine.

BLOODY TRIGGER DISCIPLINE. If your character is waving a firearm around with their finger on the trigger I am personally coming to kick your arse. You keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot. YOU DO NOT POINT YOUR MUZZLE TOWARD ANYTHING YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO SHOOT.

PROPANE TANKS WILL NOT EXPLODE IF YOU SHOOT THEM. Also, handguns are rarely powerful enough to pierce propane tanks. CARS WILL NOT BLOW UP IF YOU SHOOT THE PETROL TANK.

IF YOU FIRE A FIREARM IN AN ENCLOSED SPACE IT IS GOING TO TEMPORARILY DEAFEN YOU. GUNS ARE BLOODY LOUD. That’s why we wear ear protection. This applies less in intense combat situations as (in my experience) tinnitus doesn't happen if you start shooting after your adrenaline starts pumping.

MAG-DUMPING. Not only is it very dangerous because of the recoil, it’s a stupid waste of ammo as the recoil buggers up your aim so you’re rarely hitting your target. Unless your character is in a panic and/or holding down the trigger out of rage, they’re not going to mag-dump because you’ll empty your entire magazine in only a few seconds (stupid in a combat situation) and rarely hit your target. Fully automatic weapons are fired in short bursts of 2-5 rounds at a time.

IT’S INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT TO HIT A MOVING TARGET. IT’S EVEN HARDER TO DO IT WHEN YOU’RE THE ONE MOVING. Rounds fired while moving are typically just suppression fire—basically shots fired to make your enemy take cover so that they have no time to shoot at you. You are not aiming at a specific target. It’s spray-and-pray.

HIPFIRING IS SPRAY-AND-PRAY. It’s EXTREMELY difficult to hit a target while hipfiring and hitting any intentional target while doing so requires EXTENSIVE practice. For this reason most hipfiring is spray-and-pray—spray, and pray you hit something.

SHOTGUNS ARE EFFECTIVE AT MUCH FURTHER THAN ONLY A YARD OR TWO. Most stay clustering within 50yds. That’s this distance. If you're firing a slug it can be accurate to up to TWICE THIS DISTANCE.

SHOTGUNS WILL NOT THROW THE VICTIM ACROSS A ROOM. They don’t have that much kinetic power, and even if they did, they’d throw the shooter across the room first because they’re taking the brunt of the kinetic energy in the form of recoil.

BULLETS WILL PEIRCE CARS. Car doors will not protect you from bullets, not even the door of a police cruiser. THE ONLY PART OF A CAR THAT WILL PROTECT YOU FROM BULLETS IS THE ENGINE BLOCK. The rest is just concealment cover and will not protect you.

MOST CRIMINALS IN THE USA WILL NOT HAVE FULLY AUTOMATIC WEAPONS. This is less applicable to scenes that occur before the 1980s when there were more full-auto weapons on the streets, but even then were INCREDIBLY expensive and even your most notorious gangster would be unlikely to have them. Unless your character is a top-of-the-line 1920s-1940s Chicago/NY mobster, they probably won’t have that Tommy gun unless they’re filthy rich or the weapon was given to them by someone else who's filthy rich.

YES, YOU CAN MAKE RUNAWAY GUNS (FULL-AUTO) OUT OF SEMI-AUTO FIREARMS. NO, I WILL NOT TELL YOU HOW TO MAKE THEM. The issue with runaway guns is that once you pull the trigger THEY WILL NOT STOP FIRING EVEN IF YOU TAKE YOUR FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER. THEY WILL KEEP FIRING UNTIL THE MAGAZINE IS EMPTY OR UNTIL THEY JAM. For this reason no one in their right mind is making a runaway gun.

STOP HOLDING YOUR HANDGUN SIDEWAYS. YOU DON'T LOOK COOL, YOU LOOK LIKE AN IDIOT AND THAT'S HOW YOU GET JAMS. Having a character do this is a great way to show they're all bluff and an idiot, though.

YOU CANNOT PUT A SUPPRESSOR ON A REVOLVER. Well, technically you can, but it won't work. There's a gap between the cylinder and the bore and in this space is something called the forcing cone. There's a gap between the forcing cone and the bore which allows gas (and sound) to escape from the cylinder, which renders the suppressor absolutely useless since the sound and gas just escapes anyway.

FOR VISUAL CREATORS SPECIFICALLY: REMEMBER EYE RELIEF. YOU NEED TO BE A CERTAIN DISTANCE FROM THE SCOPE TO GET A FULL PICTURE. IF YOUR CHARACTER HAS THEIR EYE TO THE SCOPE THEY ARE GOING TO GIVE THEMSELF A BLACK EYE WITH THE RECOIL. My personal eye relief when shooting my .30-06 is 10cm (~4in). Higher calibre means more kick, which means more eye relief.

As before, if I think of any more I'll add them later!

As always, if you have any questions feel free to send me an ask!

#blu whos #blu pew #bushman #firearms #art tips #writing tips #not tf2 again but w/e

[blubushie]

Are there some things you dislike about fans' interpretation of the other mercs?

Yeah uh. This is long so it's under the cut. Whole TF2 fandom boutta be like 2Fort on my arse.

I hate how people make Medic "evil". He's fun and goofy and likes doing experiments and he'll betray the people paying him for the sake of his long-time coworkers who he's mates with. He's not evil, he's not manipulative, outsmarting the LITERAL DEVIL doesn't make you a bad person. There is literally nothing in canon to point to Medic being evil except MAYBE stealing a bloke's spine (coulda been dark humour for all we know) and turning a criminal into a sentient pumpkin, which is something that Engie HELPED HIM DO but no one goes around calling him evil. Medic is chaotic good or chaotic neutral, he is not evil.

The amount of people who are downright racist about Demo, or the amount of people who reduce his addiction to the butt of a joke. There's a lot of shit that I notice. They act like Demo isn't fiercely loyal—look at his relationship to his mum). They act like he's lazy because he's an alcoholic—HE HAS 3 JOBS AND WANTS MORE, HE WASN'T LAZY IN THE COMICS HE WAS DEPRESSED BECAUSE HE LOST ALL HIS MATES. On the other end of the coin, you have people insisting that Demo's alcoholism isn't as bad as it actually is, as if substance abuse is a fucking moral failing and they can't have their blorbo be a bad person by just letting him be the alcoholic he's shown to be in canon.

As an intersex man: do not get me fucking started on the amount of intersex+NB headcanons I've seen of Pyro. People need to realise that like the rest of the human population, most intersex people are cis, that gender is not equivalent to sex, and that EVERY intersex character being non-binary promotes a harmful stereotype. Actually I'll be honest—I side-eye EVERY intersex Pyro headcanon what's made by a perisex person. Most the time they give off massive virtue signal vibes and I really don't like how the second you can't clearly determine someone's gender people immediately go "ah, intersex" like we're all visually androgynous. I also don't like how the person MOST OTHERED ON THE TEAM is always given the intersex headcanon. It doesn't make me feel represented, it makes me feel like everyone already seems me as an other and that's all I'll ever be.

People who act like the pronoun police and insist Pyro's pronouns are they/them. Canonically Pyro is always and consistently referred to as he/him except when he's being dehumanised by his own team and called it. It's cool if you headcanon Pyro as using they/them, just remember it ISN'T CANON and you shouldn't be getting on people's arse about non-canon pronouns. What are you a cop?

On a similar vein, the amount of people who infantilise Pyro. Pyro was literally the CEO OF A COMPANY who was responsible for RECORD PROFITS OF THAT COMPANY. Pyro is an adult. People assume that because Pyro hallucinates or enjoys "childish" things that it means Pyro's a child. Please be fucking normal about mental illness, my god.

People who make Scout transfem for the sole purpose of shipping Scout with Pauling, worse even if they outright make it so that Scout transitioned SPECIFICALLY to hook up with Pauling. You realise that you're enforcing TERF "all transfems are predatory and transition just to get chicks/transfem lesbians are just straight men" rhetoric right? Please tell me you're aware. People who make Scout transfem for reasons beside this (ie you just like transfem Scout) and still hook her up with Pauling for fun, I love you and this post is not about you. <3

People who ignore Medic's likely bisexuality in favour of writing him as a strictly gay male. Bi erasure is fucking real lads. If you have the view that Demo was talking out his arse and didn't actually shag Medic's wife cuz he's not even married, cool ok. I'm talking about the people who insist Medic's wife was his beard.

People who act like the ship police with Pauling's sexuality when her being a lesbian was something mentioned in one tweet on Twitter by Jay, not approved by Valve, and never referenced in the source material (outside of MAYBE how she stared at Zhanna while she was fighting robots, but that facial expression could also be interpreted as impressed or "so horrified she can't look away". Especially when she outright agreed to go on a second date with Scout in Expiration Date. If you headcanon her as a lesbian, cool! Just don't enforce it on other people and give them flak for shipping her with non-women characters. This applies to people aggressively enforcing Medic's sexuality as well. What are you a cop?

How the character people trans the most is the white skinny twink, white skinny otter, or white wolf. Why not Demo? Trans people of colour exist too. I can count the trans Demo headcanons I've seen on one hand. Why not Heavy? Why not Heavy? You know fat trans people exist too right?

My family is southern and half the time people don't know what the fuck goes on down south. Tell me you've never been to a cookout without telling me you've never been to a cookout. They either write him as too northern/coasty and only enforce the "stereotype" southern aspects of him, or they write him as racist/homophobic/transphobic/etc because he's southern. Luckily the latter gets a LOT of pushback on Tumblr so I haven't seen it much, but it's more prevalent on Twitter and fanfic sites.

People conveniently ignoring how Heavy's father was killed and his family was imprisoned by the USSR so they can call him a communist. Lol what. I get that you hate capitalism but you realise there's more options than just capitalism vs communism vs socialism right? That you can hate/dislike communism without also being a capitalist? Heavy would not support communism after what the USSR did to his family in the name of communism because his father was a counter-revolutionary. Also people ignoring WHY Heavy's father was killed, and how his father having different politics got his whole family, including innocent children chucked to a GULAG IN SIBERIA where they were starved and constantly abused by the guards, and how even after their escape the government continued to hunt them with the intent of killing them. He would not be a communist. He probably sees a hammer and sickle in his fucken nightmares.

Spy being evil and an arsehole. You know his schtick is the suave gentleman right? He's cool but he also has to be cringefail. And arsehole is a far cry from a gentleman.

People making Soldier a bigot. Har har I know it's funny to joke about the bloke obsessed with America being a bigot, but do you honestly think he cares enough? He's xenophobic at worst. Everyone is assumed to be American and his best mate is a black Scottish cyclops. Half the time I'm convinced you people want Soldier to be a bigot so you can write bigoted shit and not cop shit cuz it's coming out of his mouth.

Carrying on from prev, the amount of people I've seen use the time setting as an excuse to be bigoted towards the characters. This is ESPECIALLY prevalent where it seems like every story-focussed fic of Demo has a scene where someone is being racist to him and he Heroically Sticks Up For Himself or someone else sticks up for him to show How Much They Don't Care About Being Seen With A Black Man (usually it's Soldier, sometimes it's Sniper). You realise everyone knows racism is bad, right? That that's really not necessary? It wouldn't be an issue if it wasn't in EVERY FIC but it's like the author always needs to proudly claim themselves Not Racist while writing REALLY RACIST SHIT directed at the ONE CONFIRMABLE MAN OF COLOUR on the team just so they can yell "RACISM BAD but here's me jumping at the opportunity to call a man of colour a racial slur".

Well, reckon that about covers her...

#blu whos #abad #tf2

[blubushie]

I generally agree with medic being Jewish, but something I don't ever see is heavy being Jewish.

I mostly started with this hc because of a video where Gary is just like... doing the voice and sorta being in character and then says "I have not had so much fun since my bar mitzvah" as heavy. I also just think some other things about Heavy's family could make sense if they were Jewish. but idk, I feel like a lot of people would disagree with this hc

I've never heard this but I love it. Blu approved

#blu whos #tf2

[blubushie]

THE KIWI THING IS SO TRUE because he was raised Australian from infancy, he identifies as Australian, he speaks with an Australian accent, he has zero emotional connection to either New Zealand, his birth parents are horrible parents who were about to let him die, he doesn't care about the culture, and a whole bunch of other stuff. But being born in New Zealand and being a baby there for like. A year. is somehow enough to just complete override any of that?

Literally. I CANNOT UNDERSTAND people who constantly insist Sniper is a Kiwi especially when his entire character arc is him realising that his "real parents" are not the birth parents who never cared about him, but the loving parents who adopted and raised the boy who crashed on their property. They didn't have to keep him, but they did. He's not a Kiwi. He's an Aussie. Australia is all he's ever known.

#blu whos #sniperposting #tf2 #sniper tf2

[blubushie]

i genuinely do believe that zhanna is demo's ideal woman and he would be smitten the moment he laid eyes on her. demo and his boyfriend both having the same taste in women is a well of untapped potential.

FUCKING OATH. Zhanna joins and everyone's relationship has literally never been better. Demo loves Zhanna love Soldier loves Demo loves Soldier loves Zhanna loves Demo. Everyone is so happy together and they go to firearms expos and Zhanna insists on buying a giant axe and everyone's in awe of how fast she can split logs and when they go fishing it's Zhanna hauling in fish and both her husbands have never been happier and neither has she. They all love each other

#blu whos #tf2 #abad

[blubushie]

I hate that Miss Pauling gets so disrespected by the fandom, like people forget how much of a silly billy she was in the contracts (my fav interpretation of her character)

IF I EXISTED IN THE CANON I'd be killed by the Admin cuz Pauling would be so distracted by all the firearms expos I'd bring her to. Every day off she got would be the time of her life and she'd be the happiest always and I'd help her dispose of bodies cuz the smell don't bother me and I'd let her read through my firearms catalogues and fangirl all she likes because she deserves it not just because she's Pauling but also because of how shittily the fandom treats her. I would make it my mission to single-handedly make up for how much shit she's been given and how neglected she's been.

And I'd tripsit for her and Sniper while they get blasted out in the desert <3

#blu whos #miss pauling #tf2

[blubushie]

ngl, the tf2 fandom really is the man fandom. so much of the misogyny i've seen slips under the radar. i once saw a popular (???) artist whose art i enjoy say that they won't draw female characters and they don't find miss pauling and zhanna particularly interesting and that just.... sits horribly with me.

Oath. I don't have much to add cuz you hit the nail on the head. It really is.

I can understand the focus on the teams because our main characters are all men (excepting Pyro, we don't know what he is to be sure) but the fandom can still do without the misogyny. And we do have compelling female characters even if we don't know too much about them.

It astounds me because I've seen people swoon over Sniper's character of a devoted professional and praise him for the level of focus he has to maintain and how professional he is, but then turn around and call Pauling boring and a stick in the mud because she's ALSO a devoted professional—moreso than Sniper even. The woman gets one day off a year. I don't see how you can praise a male character for one thing and then scorn a female character for the same thing unless you're a misogynist.

#blu whos #sniper tf2 #miss pauling #tf2

[blubushie]

i have many thoughts about the vegan racism thing, id like to know your opinion if you'd like to talk about it

Yeah extreme vegans always end up being racist and VERY much stuck in their first world problems. They would've seen my kid and his mum die of starvation because the area they live in is is cut off from the rest of the continent for 4-6 months out of the year with little food supply so most of the nutrition they get is from bushmeat during that time. There's no food in the shops and what little there is is junk food and does not have the nutritional value for a pregnant woman to sustain her own life or that of her unborn child.

- "Waaah dietary supplements-" Privilege. Not everyone has access to or can afford them.

- "Waaah vegan food-" Do you know how much organic food costs? You slap a fucking "organic" label on it and it triples in price.

- Free range does not mean what you think it means. You want "grass-fed"

- "Your hunting practices aren't ethical" we've had them for 50,000 years. I think we'd know a little more about sustainability than you do Ms Deforest Old Growth Forest To Grow Your Soy. Fuck off. It also MASSIVELY ignores the intersection between hunting, community, and culture. Telling us to stop hunting or stop hunting via the practices we've used for FIFTY THOUSAND YEARS is just another form of cultural genocide

- Extremist vegans would rather you starve if you have SIBO/autoimmune disorders/etc that make a plant-based diet difficult/can't afford a work-around diet that excludes meat/simply want to enjoy food for once that isn't a powdered mix of a dozen different fucking supplements that make sure you don't die of starvation

#blu whos #veganism #racism

[blubushie]

One thing that makes me want to smack a lot of tf2 artists with a rolled up newspaper is how they won't stop ironing them! Put that skin texture back so help me! Most of these men are 50+ but they all draw them with the skin of a 19 year old who has a 12 step moisturizer routine

I saw someone draw Scout with mild acne once and I've never seen something so fitting for Scout. Acne and freckles. That's Scout. He has to look perpetually 16 and at the tail end of puberty acne.

The ironing is worst for Sniper, who has extensive sun damage because Aussie, and Medic. People make Medic look incredibly youthful while ignoring that he's greying. This man is anywhere from his late 40s to his 50s. Let him have some wrinkles.

Engie too! And Heavy! Fat doesn't smooth out every facial wrinkle! Stop youthifying these old men!

I blame the beauty industry for insisting that old is unattractive and wrinkles are ugly

#blu whos #tf2

[blubushie]

ngl, sometimes i look back on tf2 blogs that were active ten years ago and it really seems like the fandom was more fun and less stressful back then. nobody cared about characters' sexualities as much as they do now and they just shipped whatever! now people will give you a side eye if you ship anything that isn't the top most popular ship on ao3.

This is a general fandom problem. Fandom climate has massively shifted from what it used to be a decade ago and fandom police are much more strict. They used to just be the loremasters—someone who'd (sometimes aggressively) check other people on lore and such when they'd promote something noncanon as canon. But now it seems like most people in a fandom appoint themselves fandom police. You get fans of popular ships harassing people who don't ship their ship, you get wars between who can ship what characters even when it's not a case of extreme proship (you know what I mean). I've seen people refer to MedicScout as borderline paedophilia despite Scout being twenty-seven years old.

Everything has to be looked through a lens of "is this problematic or not", everything has to be consumable and marketable, and we wonder why fandom is dying. People treat fandom like they're selling something. You can't tell a story anymore without someone getting up your arse taking issue with it. What ever happened to Live And Let Ship?

Again, this isn't even restricted to TF2. This is unfortunately just the general climate of all fandoms now. In my experience, it gets worse as fandoms get bigger and new media for that fandom stops being made. People have nothing to consume so they start going a little stir crazy. Unfortunately policing other people is how some people feel they Do Their Part.

#blu whos #tf2