Credit: 21Draw
The mood today
Prologue The gunfire was deafening. Bullets ricocheted off the outer and inner walls and the explosions of grenades shook the apartment complex as the Canadian soldiers and American marines stood their ground against the oncoming onslaught. The walls have long began to crumble under the constant hailstorm of bullets. Four casualties in the squad of ten. One dead, two barely conscious and one still fighting. The medic was trying to two of the injured soldiers while avoiding derbies and bullets ricocheting in the room. Staff Sergeant John Nash of the U.S marines sat against one of the walls below a hole an RPG impact made. He was frantically changing the magazine in his rifle. He hit the bolt release with the heel of his hand while watching the bolt carrier snap the ejection port closed. Quick as a flash, he sprung to his feet and rested the handguard on the lower edge of the hole, he lined up the iron sights on a target and pulled the trigger. The small red sprays from the body uneased him, but it meant that the shots hit their mark. Firing two rounds at a time on semi auto, he cut down one enemy down after another. “They're coming up the the stairs!” shouted a voice over over the radio system. John ducked back behind his cover to give the order. Someone link up with Foley and hold the stairwell!” John ordered over the radio. “Drenth!” John shouted, catching the attention of one of the Canadian soldiers as he was helping the medic put a splint on the leg of one of wounded soldiers. “Finish up helping Clarke and take position here to cover the courtyard!” Drenth replied “You got it!” to John as he primed a grenade and threw it out the hole. The sergeant rose up and fired into the street, taking a bit of pressure off the courtyard of another building across the road. The Canadian soldier slipped up behind John and patted his shoulder to signal he’ll take watch. As John made his way to the balcony, Drenth rested his rifle on the ledge of the hole and fired into the street. John rose up and aimed the underbarrel grenade launcher on his rifle towards the entrance of an alley where two or three men ran into and fired. The 40mm grenade detonated as it hit the wall just inside the alley enterance. “Bobcat 2-1, Bobcat 3-1! Do you copy!” The call was from the sergeant of another squad in the lobby of the building across the street they were covering. John ducked down behind the concrete barrier and pressed the talk button on the mic for the radio. “Go ahead 3-1!” “We planted the fireworks, but we can't leave, break! The AO’s too hot and we have multiple casualties, break! We need CASEVAC and reinforcements, now! Over!” John switched his radio frequency to contact their command base. “FOB Matrix, this is Bobcat 2-1! Do you copy, over!” John shouted into the mic. “Bobcat 2-1, FOB Matrix. Send traffic, over,” the radio operator replied. “Bobcat 3 planted the noisemakers, but we've got multiple wounded and at least two KIA, break! We’re heavily outnumbered and outgunned with about four snipers taking pot shots at us, break! Over a dozen and a half foot soldiers with automatic weapons are still kicking and have already breached the crows nest, break! Requesting air support at our AO! How copy, over!” John waited for about fifteen seconds for a reply, in till he heard what he didn't want to hear. “Uh… negative Bobcat 2-1. I say again, negative. RPGs have already shot down two transport choppers on the other side of the city and convoys have been mobilized to evacuate any survivors, break. All chopper support has been grounded until further notice, break. Will send info if situation changes, over.” John angrily hit the heel of his boot against the floor at the news. “Where the fuck is that air support?!” shouted a marine as he reloaded his rifle. John switched his radio frequency back to the closed comms for the squad. “Bobcat, be advised! The RPGs are too big of a risk for the choppers! Two transports were already shot down! We need to hold out on our own!” John said over the radio. “Sonofabitch!” a marine swore to himself as he pulled a pin from a grenade and lobbed it into the street. He then leveled his rifle on the ledge and started firing again. The exchange of bullets and explosives escalated as more hostiles flooded the streets below and fired their automatic rifles at the squad's position. As one of US marines continued firing his light machine gun at the oncoming targets in short bursts, he saw a single greater danger than the dozen plus human targets. A pickup truck had rounded the corner with four more gunmen and one man on a heavy machine gun. “We’ve got a technical rolling in!” he shouted as the gunner opened fire. The men and women of the squad hit the deck as the half inch diameter bullets hit the thick reinforced concrete walls inside the room. Most of them made it, except one. As Ben landed on the ground, he swore he felt something wet splash on the right side of his face. He brought his right hand to his face. He removed the gloved hand from his face to see that the liquid didn't just dampen the fabric. The substance coloured it… in crimson. “NASH!” The marines and Canadians on the floor turned their heads to see their XO’s body. John had taken a direct hit from a 50 calibre bullet just below the collarbone, blowing apart his upper torso. He died almost instantly. Ben still laid on his stomach at the gory mess that was Sgt John Nash as the world went quiet. All he could hear over the silence of his mind was blurred voices and muffled sounds of rock hitting rock as his eyes tried to take in what was happening around him. A young American marine was on a knee against an inner wall looking like he was hyperventilating with panic. One of the other marines near the balcony wall lobbed a grenade over the wall, trying to lighten up the heat so the squad could fire again. Clarke and one of the other troops jumped on top of the wounded men to protect them from the flying debris, still staring at the dismemberment. Then, Ben’s eyes fell back on John's corpse as the pool of blood still stretched from his body and began to dampen Ben's uniform under the armour. In his eyes, it felt like he was lying there for hours. His mind was completely blank. He felt frozen, as if every joint in his body locked. He had forgotten how to breathe, his lungs started to panic for oxygen. Within his mind, there was only one question running through... What now?
This here is my method of creating a character. If anyone is looking to develop a character of there own, the best piece of advice I would give is to make sheets of different head shapes, nose, eyes, eyebrows and chin designs and use all that to plan how you want your character to look. Then, depending on what gender your character is, you would us the body shape sheet to decide if your character body shape is trapezoid, rectangular, oval, triangular or an inverted triangle. Next, you get to draw your character at different angels using the character sheet and draw your character's pose beside their rotation.
The Blues Brothers (1980)
some rwby school au
This would be freaking epic!!!!!!
Winter Maiden Winter
Hey everyone, I know it's going to be a busy day for a lot of people, but Google enrolled everyone over 18 into their AI program automatically.
If you have a google account, first go to gemini.google.com/extensions and turn everything off.
Then you need to go to myactivity.google.com/product/gemini and turn off all Gemini activity tracking. You do have to do them in that order to make sure it works.
Honestly, I'm not sure how long this will last, but this should keep Gemini off your projects for a bit.
I saw this over on bluesky and figured it would be good to spread on here. It only takes a few minutes to do.
As a physiologist let me say a few words.
I don’t care about sports. I don’t give a damn about the Olympics for other reasons I won’t talk about. But I’m pissed now.
If we are to disqualify the people from the Olympics, we should be 100% fair. No biological advantages allowed!
2-meter-tall basketball player? No way, that’s unfair.
That gymnast with hyper-mobility? BOO. Unfair.
Usain Bolt with the gene ensuring the composition of his muscles? How dare he?
Believe or not, the professional sport is based on anomalies and mutation. That’s the selection. It sucks and it’s not fair but it is what it is.
Also, having these mutations doesn’t mean you’re automatically great at sports - I’m shit at gymnastics while being hypermobile as fuck. So it’s still unfair even to us expressing these traits, lol.
There are XY AFAB women!!!
This happens during the pregnancy if the child has male chromosomes but there is not enough male hormones in the development of the baby resulting in the baby being assigned female at birth. It’s a form of intersex, but there is literally no physical difference between such child and XX AFAB baby.
Those are cis women. Not trans men. Not even trans men.
The people screaming about the Olympics being a disgrace and the proof of collapse of the society are literally the people who are usually like “there are two genders based on what’s in their pants”. Now it’s the chromosomes you’re checking?
Maybe you are an XY-woman, maybe your sister is. You don’t know.
Stop using biology for spreading misinformation about intersex people, transgender people and women in general.
Even if we die on this hill, it was the right fight to have.
I know it’s not hard to point out reactionaries hypocrisy when it comes to like safe spaces or hug boxes or whatever but genuinely how much of an echo chamber do you have to exist in for you to think this is a reasonable thing to say
There's two kinds of people... 🐝
I wasn't planning to make this a full rendered piece at first, but I kinda like it