shoulders have a lot of arteries, but bullets are small and there are plenty of places to be shot that won't kill you. you pretty much want to aim for the heart, lungs, and/or central nervous system to ensure the target is down.

in CQB situations headshots can be necessary and practical, but we are talking about ranges where you do not have space to fully use your iron sights or where a standard rifles zero distance is too far away for the sights to be effective (there are aiming techniques with AR platform rifles for ranges under about 50 meters where you line up the front post with the top of the rear sight ring instead of the center, and aim that intersection at the target's head, but this may only work on full length ARs or with certain sights and gun setups). at extreme CQB ranges the incidental or post-death firing of the person you just shot actually has a realistic chance of hitting you, and operating in CQB you often have to be careful with your shots to avoid hitting civillians or hostages (through walls or in the room) making rapid or automatic fire a poor choice in certain situations. if you are not worried about civillians or infrastructure you simply don't do door-breaching SWAT style CQB, you chuck grenades or a satchel charge into the building or light it up with the .50's from a mile away or call in a mortar strike or something.

however when shooting at someone from range like this, you should definitely aim center mass, unless you are like a GIGN sniper trying to take out a target with a hostage or a detonator, then you aim for the brain stem, but most SWAT style sniping is done at close range, not more than across the street of the target building, and with a scope.

but if we are being real, sniping or shooting at all is a poor way to assassinate someone. to ensure the target is eliminated, the CIA for example recommends explosives deployed from close range (i.e. strap a brick of C4 to them, shove a grenade into their mouth, etc., just throwing or launching a grenade in the room isn't always enough) or blunt force trauma to the head.

i literally just got that text like 15 seconds after reading this lmfao

yes, i definitely feel that as someone that loves offroad vehicles and racing in general

hmm now why might a country like america need a bunch of air support so far from its borders all the time? most other countries seem to get along fine with only one or two carriers or none at all...

thats basically already what they are, most aircraft carriers have at least one other level on the inside where aircraft are stored and maintained, and there is usually a big paved elevator platform to move aircraft between the flight deck and the interior hangars

this seems true for pretty much any male-dominated hobby, men ruin everything they form communities around. its true for games, guns, history, military, sci fi, martial arts, metal music, anime, etc.. how do straight men even stay attracted to straight women, they gatekeep each other out of their hobbies (or rather, men gatekeep both women from 'men's hobbies' and men from 'women's hobbies'), idk how any straight couple survives without shared interests other than fucking. like the stereotypical boomer couple doesn't do anything together except eat.

like any good marketing campaign they have content for every target demographic lol

on the 360 playing battlefield bad company i assumed terrain destruction and stuff would be the norm in the future and maps would be a lot bigger with more people, i was too stupid to realize that the most important part of gaming is that the graphics get un-noticeably, incrementally better over time without any fundamental changes to gameplay or possible art styles, everything must be bland and 'photorealistic' or else it must be Fortnite. I used to assume a good game would get a sequel in a year or two and have significance game improvements, now i wait a decade or more to get the exact same game but with higher resolution and frame rate and new microtransactions

it's like they posted about MGS without ever playing it lol

to be fair Kojima is probably a Trotskyist, there's a whole radio monologue by Ocelot about how 'this flag doesn't mean anything here' if you call while looking at the USSR flag in MGSV

its not so much praised for being full throated communist propaganda as much as for not being full throated imperialist propaganda. its leagues better than a james bond film because in MGS3 they explicitly avoid anti-communist or anti-soviet talking points, the BBEG Volgin is a rogue actor and the USA and international capital (in the form of the Patriots and the Philosophers Legacy fund) ends up being basically responsible for everything that happens. ANY other game in the same setting and themes would take the chance to be super anti-communist and anti-soviet.

MGS2 and 4 and PW are actually super based though.

the alpha dominates, sports players only follow their coach/alpha's orders. the alpha is the guy that owns the team, not the guy playing for it

i hate this pseudoscience ideology and that i understand it

hes fantasy batman crossed with forest gump, a mary sue 'the best ever at fighting' character and master detective who 'tries to stay out of politics' but ends up being involved in every important thing that ever happens anywhere, and gets the opportunity to fuck every woman mage in the land. every person in the setting that isn't also a witcher or a mage rightfully sees him as an inhuman monster, it does the x-men thing where it portrays the superhuman monster-people as 'oppressed minorities', meanwhile accidentally justifying their oppression by making them actually materially physically very dangerous to those around them. early in the 3rd game these 3 human guys will team up on the witcher for making a politically controversial statement, expecting a bit of a scuffle or fist fight brawl, and he decapitates them all with his superhuman sword skills. they were unarmed.

EXACTLY

i've never gotten 'fun' or 'satisfaction' out of beating a difficult videogame, even when i beat MGS3, which is one of my favorite games of all time, on the European Extreme difficulty, i just get that 'thank goodness i don't have to do that anymore' vibe like i got done with a particularly unpleasant chore.

i will never beat a dark souls game. i could, but it would be (and has been so far) a joyless slog of grinding for resources so that i can make any new weapons or armor i find actually worth using. getting new items isn't fun, it only means awkwardly travelling to whatever region has enemies that drop the most titanite shards and spending hours battling enemies in a region you finished hours ago just so that the new item does more than a pittance of damage. plus i really really expected elden ring to have any kind of climbing, even a simple ledge-clamber, after sekiro's ninja-parkour, and instead all we got was a useless crouch button and a less flavorful jumping mechanic. they've essentially been re-releasing the same game with a different map since demon's souls. overrated trash series, from software should have stuck to armored core games imo and i'm only partially saying that because i am obsessed with mechs. i would rather play EVE online and i hate spreadsheets.

idk about you but i would actually find it horrific if they kept tissue from a human arm alive (say, a bicep) and made it do stuff with electrical signals (say, lift something) for 'research purposes', that's actual Strogg behavior, we are approaching the Quake 4 future the fascists dream of

lmfao 'it was already cured just in a way where they couldn't eat normal food still' like what the actual fuck am i reading how is this man a doctor

'your broken leg fully healthy, you just can't ever walk on it again'

i also hate the 'chosen one' stuff, especially if its related to aristocracy or feudalism. its possible to do it well, if characters are aware that the 'choosing' is more or less arbitrary. i thought Dune handled this well by making the destiny/fate a mere generational feudal conspiracy

Dune spoilers that will hopefully be covered in the next movie

the results of which so horrify the protagonist at the time, Paul Atreides, that he burns out his own eyes and wanders the desert as a mad prophet rather than become emperor of the galaxy

also:

-i don't like when gods or deities exist in a literal physical sense, like as a Strong Person with Powerful Body. imo anything like a god should be inhuman and impersonal, normally discorporate unless 'presenting' to humans, difficult to fully comprehend, and more or less uninterested in individual mortal affairs and concerns except in aggregate. Obad-Hai shouldn't just be an old man wandering the woods who can cast powerful spells, the woods ARE obad-hai, the trees and earth are his literal instantiated presence. Fharlanghn isn't just some human wizard walking around on roads doing tricks, the roads ARE fharlanghn, the street lights are his eyes, the pavement his body and prison and definition of form, the movement and flow of traffic his consciousness and thoughts.

-i don't like when magic in fantasy requires overly specific material components, like DnD's insect legs and feathers etc. this kind of thing almost works for slower paced rituals or magical crafting, but a mage during combat whipping out a spider leg to break while they chant and dance just to summon a fireball seems all around less convenient and efficient than making a primitive grenade/petard or rifle/cannon. magic in fantasy or sci fi should upend one's understanding of reality, it shouldn't just be a cheat code activated by arranging garbage and trinkets. a wizard casting a fireball is old hat, passe, boring, a true master of metaphysical arts should make the need to cast fireball irrelevant, locking the enemy in warped spacetime architecture or turning them inside out with a glance and a gesture or instantly transmuting their brain into gold. i want less of the simplistic 'its a weapon attack that uses unique ammo' style of magic attack and more 'my sword has become an incomprehensible fractal of steel and folded spacetime as i try to stab the wizard' or 'the master of secret arts has plucked a beam of sunlight from the sky to use as a blade'. I hate the videogamey trope of 'elemental damage types' and mages-as-bombardiers. the wizard should consider using a sword or bow if they want to just kill people, it doesn't seem worth the violation of causality to do a mere 1d6 damage with a fireball at a mere 50 meters one time when you can likely throw a powder charge farther and for more damage and without manipulating the fabric of reality. instead the wizard should like, teleport in the midst of the opposing army and kill their general with a knife, or less overpoweredly might set his sword to fight on its own accord as if it were held by an invisible man, or illuminate hidden enemies for his allies, or manipulate weather to his advantage. A wizard should be a force-multiplier more than just a better-version-of-a-guy-that-kills-things, a horde of angry drunks clad in steel should always be the best option for 'just killing a bunch of people', a wizard should be doing things that can't be done efficiently with mundane physical means.

-i hate spaceships that have artificial gravity, especially in settings where this technology is mostly unused for any other application (dead space at least gives you a 'stasis module' and 'telekinesis module' that work similarly, whereas Halo simply never explains ship gravity and the humans still use wheels on their vehicles and 5.56 bullets in their guns despite seeming to have better tech available) additionally, i hate spaceships that are overly spacious on the interior, they should be cramped like submarines and it should be impossible to be far enough away from a wall to be stuck free-floating in zero G. The command bridge should never have people standing in it like at a podium like in mass effect, the crew must be strapped into their stations in zero G or maneuvering with safety handles and harness to prevent flying away.

-hover tanks should have to land temporarily to fire accurately, even more stable modern tracked tanks cannot accurately shoot on the move. hovercraft should have helicopter-style landing skids or something similar.

-the taller a mecha is, the longer it's range of combat should be. Mobile Suits should not be sword fighting except when the tactical situation has gone very awry, they have the height to act as a watch-tower and the weaponry size to engage at extreme range, large mecha should basically be using the horizon as cover and making extreme range artillery strike attacks during terrestrial combat. It's ridiculous in the mechwarrior videogames for example to be piloting a 50 or so foot high robot whose gigantic weaponry have less range than a modern infantry assault rifle. the 'long range missiles', the longest range weapon except maybe an ER PPC or ER L Laser, max out at like 900 meters in MW5, while many current day infantry assault rifles have effective ranges of 1500 or more meters. This is a general gripe with all fictitious combat, real warfare in the modern age often means you literally never get a good look at the enemy, mostly shooting at distant silhouettes and movement, whereas in fiction, whether movies or games, the scene must be easily 'readable' and all characters must have an explicit up close presence for the audience.

-additionally mecha should NEVER have their entrance/exit hatch on the front of the torso. In an emergency this will open directly into enemy fire, or worst case you fall on your mech's belly and are stuck. putting the hatch on the top, side, or even the back is a better call, ideally with at least one backup exit.

-most sci fi vehicles should have more than a single crew member. I realize that technology improves over time, but even modern jets often have a separate crewman just for operating the radar equipment while the other flies and controls weapons. for example something the size and resource cost of the Gundam should absolutely never be put in the hands of a single person, AT LEAST put another guy in there as a spotter/support systems operator. it should probably have a direct line to an off-site support staff consisting of military and legal advisors as well.

-Laser weapons should have difficulty with penetration of armor or cover, they heat and explode/melt the surface instead of immediately piercing through. even foliage and leaves should offer temporary cover to lasers until they can burn through.

-i hate when sci-fi appears to grapple with big philosophical topics without really engaging with any specific issues. for example, in the movie The Creator, the message is that the robots are analogous to oppressed people, minorities, and victims of imperialism, but doesn't really engage with any of the actual debates about artificial intelligence. They show robots performing religion as if to say that this makes them more genuinely human, when to me it just says that they accurately mimic our behavior. they could have easily established some kind of specific sci-fi technology to justify this attitude (like Isaac Asimov's positronic brian) but instead they simply do not engage with the ideas at issue in any way and focus on the immediate story and characters with their presuppositions of robot-personhood in mind.

and we definitely don't have enough tanks for all of our tankies to crew...