Avoid being badly written

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

*I want to apologize for ALSO not doing the promo last night. I’m working through some health stuff, some … extended family bad news stuff. I’m also trying to figure out if it would be better as a permanent page. But still, sorry. – SAH*

My older son had a saying that always cracked me up when he was a teen: “Avoid being badly written.”

What did he mean by that?

Kind of what I mean by “avoid drinking your own ink” crossed with “Don’t make yourself into the kind of character who only wins because the Author is on his side. Because that’s not real life.”

It was an enormously wise and amazingly insightful view for a kid whose hormones were riding him hard, and though he often flung it at public figures’ antics, or his little brother’s more dramatic moments (This is from the time he nicknamed his brother Fidel Comix, so….) I think it was mostly self talk. The kind of talk we all try to do for ourselves and that the left seems to be unaware is even a possibility which is why we read their flounces and flinging about on X and scratch our heads and wonder if the sky is made of cheese in their world.

What brought this to mind today after a spectacularly bad night (Probably allergies, but if you are Catholic and want to pray to St. Jude on behalf of my brother, it would be much appreciated) was seeing the pictures the latest attempted presidential shooter took of himself before going on his “mission.”

My first reaction was to look at that smug, slightly smirking face and think: WTF? What kind of human being has that face before engaging in what they think/hope will be mass murder?

Guys, heaven help me, I can envision a time when I might need to kill people. We all can. We’re normal human beings. If it was the only way to save my husband, say, or one (or both) of the boys or their spouses, I would cheerfully (given the means to do so) mow down any number of people. BUT if I knew in advance I was going to have to do that, I can’t imagine taking posed pictures, much less posed pictures with that kind of smirk.

I’m not a good person — I’m working on it — and there are obituaries (ARAFT’S) I’ve read with distinct pleasure. But if I thought I had to kill a bunch of people, no matter how RIGHTEOUS the reason, I would be horrified, sombre. Because even among the worst kind of humans there’s usually one or two who are if not in there by accident and stupidity, at the very least redeemable. And every human being is “someone’s son, someone’s brother, someone’s father.” At least one of those, and often all three.

But this guy was going into a room filled with hundreds of people some of whom were “just” members of the press. Inevitably, if he had got in, some of the men and maybe a few of the crazier women would be trying to jump him, even supposing he’d got automagically rid of all of the secret service, or thought they were somehow on his side. (I mean, in the situation as it happened, I’d have shut up and moved aside while the experts cleared the room. But if an active shooter had come in, that’s the time I’d grab one of the chairs and charge, trying to smash him. And yes, it’s insane, but I know how I work, and I wouldn’t have been thinking in any sense of the word. I can’t be the only woman who runs with intent and malice towards what terrifies her, either.) So he’d not only be killing his “kill list” however much he thought they deserved it, but also a lot of innocent people.

And he’s POSING, in the style of “the assassin before he undertakes the dangerous mission” even I know, even though I rarely watch movies. And there’s that idiotic smug smirk on his face.

This made me very angry, but then I noticed the knives.

KNIVES, PEOPLE. He’s going into a room where he KNOWS a few of the people are veterans; probably a lot more of them than he knows for sure. And where at least a few of the secret service guys might object to his antics, and yet he’s taking KNIVES. A lot of knives.

What in the name of drunken goats does he think he’d do with those? Okay, yeah, you can run out of ammo (Rolls eyes) and then you take out a knife and…. what? Even if everyone left in the room is disarmed, a knife is a melee weapon that only works if there are a lot of you with knives against a few people who don’t have them. For a lone attacker, he’d be stomped flat under a bunch of boots in no time. He might be able to stab ONE person. he certainly wouldn’t have time to draw a second knife. But he has four, like he’s going to draw knife after knife.

It was then that my son’s phrase went through my mind, and I thought “He’s badly written.”

No wonder he fell for the propaganda about exploding children (which must be Iranian propaganda, yes? Because it makes no sense) and “pedophile and rapist.” This man lived in a mental fictional universe.

I recognized the pose and the stupid name he gave himself in signing his banal and pathetically deluded “manifesto” as “He’s watched a lot of stupid assassin and spy movies.” Where you know, the lone wolf goes on and kills all the bad guys and doesn’t get a scratch, or dies gloriously and “everyone claps.” He missed that in most such cases the “righteous anti-hero” wins because he has super powers, or because he’s trained for an entire lifetime or ultimately “Because the author is on his side and makes it so.” (Which is REALLY bad writing. Occasionally satisfying, but still bad.)

Apparently I was missing a whole other dimension because I’m definitely not a gamer.

Some things my friends said:

In many video games, knife kills are one-shots, while guns can take multiple hits unless you get head shots. Even against armor.
The notion being that the super skilled fighters and warriors, if they are skilled enough to get close enough to the enemy to USE the knife, are skilled enough to get past any hands thrown etc, and take out the enemy in one hit.

He said call of duty works that way. Another said that:

Also in movies. I.e. Jason Statham’s character in The Expendables series.

Others:

Hell’s bells, look at the Marvel movies. Cap and Bucky both use knives a time or two.

A thrown knife never impacts sideways or hilt first in movies or games

And it ALWAYS hits with enough force to sink the entire blade in

In reality, a thrown knife is a discarded knife.

Not quite that but notable examples, Krauser in Resident Evil 4’s Mercenaries mode is exceptionally dangerous with his knife, letting him set up his most powerful attack easily. It’s also the best weapon Leon can use to fight him in the main game. You can make quick work of The Fury in Metal Gear Solid 3 with one as well; it takes quite a bit longer to shoot him to death (including knocking him out with a tranquilizer gun).

As the hits (there was more) accummulated, I realized he is REALLY badly written. That’s why he went in Leeroy Jenkinsing it, in classical video game manner where you run past the low level NPCs to get at the important players, which apparently (WHO MADE THAT DECISION?) are more easily disposed of with knives than with guns.

And this guy, despite being trained in engineering which involves a certain amount of PHYSICS, despite having lived in the real world for thirty one years, despite EVERYTHING thought he was a game character and things would work as they do in games.

I keep thinking that people are surrounded by story, drunk with it, to the point they can’t see reality, and even I am shocked at this level of insanity.

It would be hilarious if not for what he was intending to do when he posed.

The worst part? It’s not technically insanity because there’s a lot of them like him. A lot of people who never LEARNED reality because they can’t see it past propaganda and games.

If you’re a writer, or a media creator, try not to write badly. Try not to have your characters win just because you say so.

And if you are a consumer of entertainment, remember that many things work in movies and games, and yes, even books, because the creators said so. NOT because it would happen that way in real life.

Above all you must avoid being badly written.

135 thoughts on “Avoid being badly written”

  1. I could make some kind of snarky remark about “journalists” and “innocent people” not having any logical relationship to each other, but I don’t think I will.

    This time.

    But yeah, Mr Baked-potato wanted everyone to think he was bad-ass. Would have been more effective if his suicide-by-cop note hadn’t been so… self-conscious.

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    1. Well, and iirc he notably failed the suicide part, too. He was alive (and did not look like he was kicking) when they stripped him to at least his skivvies and ground his face into the carpet.

      (Rather glad he failed on that too: not only does some poor secret service agent not have to live with having unalived his idiot arse, he now has to live with being mocked for being an utter moron.)

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  2. I hope that the enduring image of Cole Allen (which name — as a wit on an Insty comment thread observed — sounds like a cheap brand on the shelf at Payless Shoes) remains that of him naked and wrapped in a Mylar blanket like a gay baked potato. An image which inspires scorn and derision for years.

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    2. You know, this could be an effective weapon. Any time a would be political murderer is caught–whether dead or alive–take an embarrassing photo of them. Make laughing stocks out of them.

      Among other things, it can make their first day in prison a memorable one. Sadly, it will probably be a federal prison; state prisons are much more violent.

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      1. “I want to be remembered!”

        Yep, stripped and foiled is a good look for history. And maybe we can call all of these loons ‘Cole Allen #x’.

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    1. Kind of like that demotivational quote, “It’s possible that your true purpose in life is to serve as a warning to others,” or however it goes. Maybe his real purpose in this story is to remind others of his ilk that the Author will not reward stupidity with glory. If that’s the case, maybe the writing was good enough to fulfill the intent.

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        1. Drill Sergeant C:

          “Some people, their highest calling in life is to be someone else’s bad example. Don’t be that guy.”

          True Wisdom

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      1. Intimidate does require 10 Charisma. Though he’d need a gun to get it to work and where he’s going that might be difficult to acquire.

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  5. And the soulless Democrats pile on to urge more to kill, the press in their glee repeat the same old mantra. Do not watch them, do not talk to them, to them to go to Georgetown and see what drinking the koolaid really leads to, then pray for their rancid souls. You don’t need the burden of hating them, just leave them to their own damnation.

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  6. On the “exploding children” thing, absolutely Iranian propaganda. That was the “girl’s school inside the IRGC compound” thing.

    The only of his examples I couldn’t place immediately was the “killing fisherman without a trial” thing, which is even more evidence of his idiocy and lack of knowledge of reality.

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      2. That’s what I figured. They were real big on the “they didn’t get a trial!” part. Um, you don’t kidnap soldiers in a war zone and bring them into your own territory to put them on trial for…being soldiers. That’s not how that works. That’s why the cartels were designated as terrorist organizations. It changes the ROE.

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          1. The Author clearly chose the Right and the Wrong as is supposed to happen in Trial By Combat. Taking a stand against a falling SDB, Hellfire, or several GAU-8 rounds is pointless. Unless of course it is a hellfire R9x (aka the Flying Ginsu) in which case there will be points a plenty.

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    3. Yeah, it was the drug boats.

      That was one of the items where I went ‘this is important to you?, and you did not check, or you are very bad at checking’, because I cannot understand why he didn’t at least find out ‘the republicans are saying drug boats’.

      The boats shipping drugs north has been hearsay for at least twenty years, it should not be hard to find someone, somewhere, to at least say maybe it is drug boats.

      If he had just tried to find out what Republicans said they were thinking, that might have informed him enough to be capable of asking ‘what if they are correct’.

      It is just appalling what he did, and I feel embarrassed to have this asshole as such a high profile example.

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      1. The Dems never denied that there were boats sending drugs north to the US. They just claimed that there was no way to know that the specific boats that we sank were running drugs. And as a result, we must be killing innocent fishermen.

        And then they pulled the “Nanananana! I can’t hear you!” move whenever people pointed out things that suggested the targets couldn’t possibly have been out fishing.

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          1. With not one, not 2 but four high power outboards worth several thousand dollars US each? I suppose it might be to get the catch back to the dock REALLY fresh, but unless that fish is sushi quality tuna you aren’t paying for those engines or the fuel to feed them.

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        2. Well, now, the bundles of drugs might just be a hint. Along with the complete absence of fishing tackle, and all the guns. Were they fishing with AK-47’s?
          ———————————
          Sue: “What were you doing out here?”
          Crocodile Dundee: “Fishin’.”
          Sue: [picks up empty .30 cal case, one of many] “Fishing.”
          Dundee: “Baramundi’s a bloody big fish.”

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      2. A very minor justification on the not knowing if the people on the boats are actual fishermen or drug runners– it is flatly common for most of the drug runners to at least start with, “take this money to deliver these drugs, or we kill you, and your grandma who lives right near us.” A lot of the deals for drug runners are because they’re stupid college kids who really don’t have an option.

        The reality kicks in against the idea in that fishing boats are “safe” for moving drugs because they’re invisible. If you are stopping suspected drug boats, they’re really easy to stop.

        So they get stuff that is hard to stop, and that is run by their guys. At most you can claim they’re sports fishermen….who are running like heck from legal intervention….

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  7. He had that expression because he was convinced that he was one of “the good people”. Filled with leftist lies and video game fantasies where he could take on “the great evil” and be a glorious hero. Didn’t matter to him if innocents got hurt or killed, like so many on the left they aren’t real people to him. And now a number of leftists have found themselves trying to decide to mourn because he failed or claim it was a false flag. These people are really sick and twisted.

    As a side note Larry (The international Lord of Hate) Correia had a great post on his blog about this idiot. Lots of good comments on there about this clown and his fantasy world.

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  8. My sons and I have had an ongoing disagreement about first person shooters even before I read On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society  by Lt Col David Grossman so I’m not surprised this clown thought it was just larping.

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    1. Thanks for giving me another Must Read book. I’ve just put it on my For Later list on my library account, since all copies are checked out and I don’t want it to come on hold for me right while I’m on an upcoming two-week business trip. (Once I. have some significant time at home, I’ll put a hold on it and read it).

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    3. Funny. We never needed video games previously to produce competent, even enthusiastic killers for military service. Nor are they something particular new in that respect.

      I assure you, they are not.

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  9. What in the name of drunken goats does he think he’d do with those? Okay, yeah, you can run out of ammo (Rolls eyes) and then you take out a knife and…. what? Even if everyone left in the room is disarmed, a knife is a melee weapon that only works if there are a lot of you with knives against a few people who don’t have them. For a lone attacker, he’d be stomped flat under a bunch of boots in no time. He might be able to stab ONE person. he certainly wouldn’t have time to draw a second knife. But he has four, like he’s going to draw knife after knife.

    Given that there’s 1) military, 2) politicians who don’t want to die, and 3) reporters who actually go to “places where someone will kill you,” you are correct.

    My guess is that in his head it was a giant room of NPCs about as worthless as himself, so they definitely weren’t going to throw wine bottles, chairs, and tables at him.

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    1. Note, this isn’t an exclusive list, either. This is just the folks where their “picture what you do then this happens” is definitely not going along with the “plan.”

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      1. Way back when, a pro photographer taught me how to weaponize a camara and strap.

        Pentax is very popular for hostile environments, cheap and dang near as good as Nikon. Often used when they expect to have it taken or expect to wield it offensively.

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      1. Eh, while it’s giggle-worthy– if it’s been opened and left on the table, they can’t take it back. They have to throw it away.

        And after that bit of excitement I don’t begrudge needing to chug a bit…..

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        1. Or the staff takes it home. BTDT.

          But, Oregon Pinot Noir! I realized a couple years ago I didn’t really like PN, which,in the Willamette Valley, is kind of a handicap.

          Then I dug out a couple from my cabinet that were 9-10 years old. THOSE I liked.

          Whitehouse is listed as serving a Penner-Ashe 2022 PN at the state dinner for Charley3. That’s listed as retail around $48, so the $76 for the WCD wine (negotiated down) was either older, or more likely a more limited release.

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          1. Yeah. Not liking Pinot Noir while living in the Willamette Valley (McMinnville, worked for Evergreen) had me feeling like I should walk about shouting, “Unclean! Unclean!”

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          1. Saw a pic of someone chugging from the bottle, so at least some were opened. Having done that gig briefly *many* years ago, it’s easier at a banquet to open all (or substantially all) the bottles ‘off-stage’.

            Story from long ago: we lived in a small town in Michigan when either the town or the state had a ‘blue law’ that stores could not sell alcohol before noon on Sunday. Wife was out, and had to go use some time to get past noon. When she got back to the checkstand, the (evidently very young) clerk opined ‘This must be a good wine – it has a cork!’

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            1. Fort Irwin, Mojave Desert, California. 1987. Task Force Gimlet is engaging in various brigade sized simulated mayhem with Threat Forces. Brigade Commander has birthday in mid exercise. Brigade staff throw field party complete with cake, wine, and ice cream on dry ice. (“Its 120F in the shade!….. What shade?”)

              As I walk up preparing to salute, seeking to pick up the mail, the BC, COL F holds bottle of wine. Shakes head.

              “You cheap bastards finally buy a bottle with a cork, and no one brings a corkscrew?”

              “First to fight sir!” (pulls Swiss knife and opens corkscrew.) “Will this do?”

              (thunderstruck)……”Can you open this without corking it?”

              (takes and deftly opens bottle, hands back) “Happy birthday, sir.”

              (thunderstuck) (glares at the whole assembled very senior staff) “Son, you sit down there, get yourself a bowl. Heap on ice cream until your arm gets tired. We eat when you finish.”

              (very swiftly self-serve one scoop each of the three flavors. Devour. Salute in departure “Happy birthday. First to fight. sir…” (PFC goes into warp drive, away)

              As I return to my unit somewhat later, I am greeted with “A corkscrew?”

              Best. ice cream. ever.

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    3. LOL!

      I unfailingly include a fighting knife in any “Going to a fight” getup. (Randall #1, thanks Pop.) Yes, especially when that includes a rifle. It is attitude crossed with utility. Never Quit. If I manage to break it off in the enemy, I will beat him to death with his own helmet or whatever thing comes to hand.

      I don’t -expect- to use it. I expect to fire another rifle round while they try to think “What just happened?”

      Throwers are amusing toys. Especially little ones. And I can throw axe or knife. Again, prefer a .30 caliber or better for throwing stuff.

      If it is really time to fling poo, nothing beats a radio on the DIVARTY channel. (grin)

      Sigh. My days of that crap are long gone. But I can still do some hurtin with a cane and “ordinary pocketknife” Buck 110.

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  10. “Moderate power is shown in violence. Extreme power is shown in levity.” —GKC

    The smirk is the pretension of superior power or position, with a dash (or a half pound) of contempt thrown in. It’s saying I’ve won this game.

    I leave it to someone else to examine the mindset that treats Death as a game to be won, rather that (at most) a game to be played grimly.

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      1. It’s the cluster B smirk of “I am about to get away with something Naughty, and you can’t stop me.”

        Seriously, you see that smirk, immediately check where the exits are, where’s the nearest thing you can brain them with, and have they gotten an Authority on their side to wreck your entire day.

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  11. Take that collage and the pic of him after the fact with the labels “How the plan looked/How the plan worked”.

    It’s not simply that he’s badly written, it’s that he’s a minor character in a dark comedy.

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    1. This whole thing is such an absurd farce that I’m kind of hoping that he gets embarassed into conservatism while he’s in prison. It would be the perfect epilogue to the affair.

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    2. theater bro winning applause from his most loving audience/theater bro after having tried real communism

      kamala harris in her own mind/the harris campaign in reality

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  12. I am glad that the whole thing turned out to be such a nothing burger, no one killed or even seriously injured, including the perpetrator. I know some people are upset that he’s still breathing, but the fact that he’ll have to deal with that carpet munching photo for the rest of his life strikes me as funny.

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    1. I much prefer the “lives with embarrassment” option. Firstly, our max security prisons are good, so the need to remove folk from society permanently is fulfilled by them. Secondly, there’s no foil-wrapped-burrito option in the “Martyr” column.

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    2. Live idjit can testify to his idiocy.

      Dead people can get efficiently converted into hagiographic just so stories.

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  13. Oh, I completely agree. However, if I wrote in the woman stealing the expensive bottle of wine in the middle of the scrum, I would probably also be mercilessly castigated.

    (So far as I have seen, the idiot hasn’t been identified yet. Almost certainly one of the alphabet media figures, though.)

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  14. I was really interested in the wine thing; it underlined that the country is a collection of micro-cultures. It’s not shocking at all when your formal dinner has been cancelled mid-event to grab the wine bottles. They’ve been paid for. As Foxfier pointed out, open bottles can’t be reused. That’s why restaurants offer to sell wine by the glass, not the bottle. It’s very rare for dinners to have enough wine on the table for people to get drunk, and wine would at that point have already been poured, so I’d expect them to be at most half full.

    I’ve never done it, because the wine is usually not that good. And where the wine was that good, it was definitely not the setting to grab a bottle. An event selling tickets for a dinner at a hotel, though is very different.

    Event organizers often encourage people to take the centerpieces home with them, to cut down on the labor cost and disposal cost of dealing with dozens of bouquets.

    As to the attack, I once shocked a PTA meeting. The speaker was talking about “modern safety standards,” which at the time called for decreasing the “points of entry.” I shocked the meeting by pointing out that in the event of a mass shooting, the people who manage to flee have much higher chances of surviving. And entries are also exits.

    The scary part of the banquet was that the tables were so close together, essentially pinning guests in place. The security forces sweeping through the ballroom had to walk over tables and chairs. It would have been very challenging to flee.

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    1. Event organizers often encourage people to take the centerpieces home with them, to cut down on the labor cost and disposal cost of dealing with dozens of bouquets.

      That’s how I found out– the caterer at an event my uncle was helping to host had new guys who decided not to do the extra work of going back out to pour regularly, so he had a LOT of bottles and very little patience for dealing with it.

      (The point of the story was that the open container laws in Oregon are hilarious, it was “legally sealed” by… a caterer applied bit of tin foil.)

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      1. We have had bottles of wine sealed with tinfoil for the drive home from a restaurant, on occasion.

        As a practical matter, with open bottles of wine, what are the odds someone would slip something into the wine, as a joke? Probably not, but any hotelier who served wine from those bottles would be running an enormous risk.

        In our state diners are legally required to use a new plate each time they go to the buffet, on hygiene grounds. I frequently see people take their plates back to the buffet, but technically, they’re flouting the law.

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        1. Oregon’s the same way, though my experience with buffets is several years old; stopped at the Asian buffet when I saw wheat noodles in the no-noodle soup. I object to food that tries to kill me. (Said buffet went toes up at the very beginning of Covidiocy; it was slowly failing already. I was surprised it lasted as long as it did.)

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        2. “state diners are legally required to use a new plate each time they go to the buffet“

          –

          Same in Oregon. Not that there are a lot of all-you-can-eat buffets now. A few with salad bars. 2020 eliminated all the buffets, regardless of type.

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  15. I’m actually offended by his sheer stupidity. I live saturated in unrealistic fiction, and it would never in a million years occur to me to try to take on dozens of people with my nonexistent knife skillz. Us daydreamers need better representation than this delusional dork.

    Regarding knife kills in video games, I thiiink it’s a game balance thing. Having low-damage knives in an FPS would make them basically worthless, since you can just use guns instead. (Unlike real life, you can’t be tackled, grappled, or disarmed, so the 21-foot rule doesn’t really apply.) Meanwhile, having a short-range instakill opens up some interesting tactical options and forces players to manage spacing.

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    1. I carry a knife every day. It is there to cut things I want cut. That’s its job and it does it well because I maintain it. As a tool, it’s useful. As a weapon?

      Ye bogs and leetle beetles, there’s dumb and there’s Mr Mylar Potato Man. These are not serious people. Granted, they are trying for serious ends. Sometimes they may succeed in that, sadly. Nobody wins in that case. Not even the fools that think, briefly, that they have.

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      2. Yeah. My Victorinox Swiss Army Explorer knife is a wonderful tool. It can accomplish most of the daily inspection of a Huey helicopter. As a defensive weapon, meh. I guess in the gravest extreme and my only alternatives were teeth and nails, okay, but please give me something (anything) else.

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    2. Well, there is a ton of magical thinking in my cohort about katanas.

      I do not recall seriously thinking that if spree shooters would just get katanas, they would kill so many more people.

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      1. Note, katanas did do a lot of damage in the final gasp of Shiroyama… because that was samurai trained in the sword versus a bunch of commoner army soldiers who often barely knew how to shoot, much less fight. And the samurai still lost.

        I do not think it would go how the magical thinkers think it would go.

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      2. There are spree stabbers in China, who get some unfortunately high casualty numbers. Based on the few I’ve heard details about, they tend to be at least as bad as what we see in the mass shootings here. Unfortunately –

        1.) The Chinese government heavily censors reports about any and all such incidents, so we don’t know the details in most of them, and

        2.) The Chinese civilian population is completely disarmed, so they have no way of fighting back when someone starts slashing everyone in arm’s reach.

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        1. Amok is how several cultures do spree shootings without having guns.

          If a population’s culture is basically sane, private gun freedom is overwhelmingly effective at defensive ends.

          If a population’s culture is basically homicidally insane, you get a lot of violence with few mitigating factors no matter how disarmed people are.

          PRC’s policy is mostly that the government is homicidally insane, and doesn’t want friction limiting internal mass murder.

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          1. Sometimes, yes. Sometimes the victims are adults. As an example, one of the stories that got out into the wild was an incident several years ago in which a guy went nuts with a knife on a train platform and killed a bunch of people. Also, during one of the China Show episodes that covered the topic, they brought up an incident in which several nurses were killed. They also pointed out that due to censorship, they never would have known about the attack if it weren’t for the fact that it happened near to where they were living at the time, which meant they heard about it through word of mouth.

            The danger in a knife attack usually isn’t going to be an instant kill. Instead, it’s getting slashed somewhere where it’s difficult or impossible to stop the bleeding. That’s what happened to Yrena Zarutsky.

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  17. For some time I didn’t think the injunction to pray after all the discussion on arms and armor (you know the one I mean) was a little out of place, then I thought about that line about calling in artillery from a Harold Coyle novel, “The Ten Thousand,” that goes something like —Naw, we been looking for these guys [enemy HQ] all day. Let’s not mess around with the little stuff; hit ’em with the 203mm. {Please note that is a bowdlerized paraphrase.} The analogy that’s fit for church is the supposed WWII way to determine the identify of unknown unit: Send two guys out a ways—say a 1,000 yards. Have them fire over the heads of the unknown unit. {And run away.} If the response is rapid, well-aimed rifle fire, they’re British. If the unknown unit responds with a ridiculous amount of machine fire, they’re German. If nothing happens for five minutes, then the spot the two guys were shooting from is blown up by artillery or fighter-bombers, they’re American. Same idea.

    I didn’t make it to PLDC so I didn’t get that class, but regarding your brother, I believe the correct response is “Splash.”

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    1. *Snrk* I ran across the version supposedly from the German side. Basically, fire into the woods.

      If they run away, they’re French.

      If fire comes back in disciplined volleys, they’re British.

      If there’s silence… they were American and you had less than 3 minutes to find cover.

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      1. No problem, S. That stuff’s more important. Gonna be a while before ready to go anyway. Still have plenty of questions about self-pub.

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  19. Side note when I first saw the title of this post I was still thinking about how to tell my plot diagrams from actual stories. Because the last one blurred the lines a bit. I really need to schedule more writing time for when I’m not sleep deprived or sick.

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  20. Look, my frenz, I am not terribly sane and have mainlined quite enough fiction and video games.

    On paper, maybe I should not be better than this guy at reality testing the important parts of my plans.

    So I do routinely make plans that have major problems. I certainly can’t say that I fix all of them, my drafts folders alone testify to that.

    (I acted today, on a plan where the start of it was prepared half assed on an earlier day. There were some problems, but I learned some things, and the learning is the point that I am really going for with this set of tasks. )

    What I have is a history of problems that I knew about, and the knowledge that I a) need to reality test b) sometimes just need to wait and to not do things. When the metaphorical error or corruption detection bits show enough problems, then I should not do the new idea that seems really cool.

    Engineering coursework does not teach reality testing. The reality testing was done previously, by other engineers and by the PhDs teaching the courses. The PhDs try to pass on the fancier skills as well, but all they can really check for is doing the problems. And there are major challenges, including fairness, in how extensively you can test students. (I understand that a lot of faculty design their tests and homeworks to have a certain difficultly, and then immediately find out that they have not achieved that.) You can learn reality testing in engineering. But, there are basic limits to how much you can give remedial training to someone who was f&cked badly enough in their earlier ‘education’.

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  21. I guess he should have been a boy scout and tried throwing knifes at summer camp. I was always appalled at how poorly my blades stuck in the target, let alone how often I missed the target completely…

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    1. I was at a ‘Frontier Days’ exhibition and one of the booths was Throw a Knife (or Axe) At Our Chunk of Tree Trunk. I picked up an axe and nailed it in the bullseye first try. Swiped my hands and walked off to a smattering of applause. I expect I couldn’t do it again in a score (or (many) more) of tries . . .

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      1. I went to a summer camp last year where I was trying to complete a checklist thing that included sinking a certain number of hatchets into the target. The guy told me my wrist was moving too flexibly, so I put the wrist brace on and hilariously started getting them to stick.

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    2. Hatchets!

      Seriously, after last of the Mohicans I think it was, my brother and I tried knives and hatchets.

      Discovery: the thing literally designed so even the worst of them is somewhat balanced (so you can chop) is pretty easy to throw so it’ll hit the target, like 3/4 of the time it would stick in the tree and not “dummy strong” style.

      The knives we were lucky it hit the tree, even after tips about how to choose a throwing knife. (Weirdly? Butter knives are least bad– relatively smooth, and you can check the center of balance.)

      While it’s scary as heck, it’s not a very good weapon.

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  22. Glad some of my gaming knowledge made the cut for this post! Cole Allen, I know Leon Kennedy, and you are no Leon Kennedy! Much less Jack Krauser or a young Big Boss.

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  24. My first thought when I read about this guy was, “He’s watched too many movies and TV shows.”

    My next thoughts were to be grateful he *wasn’t* a professional or part of a team.

    The last thought was to wonder if he was a distraction for something else.

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    1. “My first thought when I read about this guy was, “He’s watched too many movies and TV shows.””

      Yes, and he’s watched all the WRONG movies and TV shows.

      This is that thing we were talking about yesterday, how the DEI weenies came for all the writing jobs in Hollywood. So all the nerds got fired and DEI geniuses like this guy got hired to write for Star Trek.

      That’s how we ended up with StarFleet Academy. Nerdrotic’s empty chair livestream got more views than episode 1 of SFA when it aired. They would have been better off making a pile of $200 million dollars and setting it on fire for a Youtube video.

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  25. I’m unsurprised by this would-be assassin’s unserious attitude towards atrocity. Just a few months back, the Oscars were swept by a movie glorifying leftist political violence and the people who commit it. I’ll be just as unsurprised by the next one our media radicalizes and sends forth to become the Left’s new murder heartthrob.

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  27. Knives in video games that I see typically only come out with the “stealth kills”, where you sneak up behind the target and get him with the knife in a particularly vulnerable spot (depending on the game). In that case, a one hit kill makes sense. Of course, from the report of what happened, this guy didn’t do much sneaking around.

    While not directly related, I came across something earlier today that I think is of a similar theme. As most of you likely already know, X recently started auto-translating Japanese posts into English, and vice versa, and directing a greater than normal number of Japanese and American posts into each others feeds. The result has been a lot of excitement as citizens of both countries get greater exposure to each other.

    Well, *mostly* excitement. It turns out that as a result of this, the nut jobs at Reddit have discovered that *gasp*

    … the Japanese aren’t woke!

    Quite the contrary, in fact.

    And apparently the redditors aren’t taking it well.

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    1. I remember one Japanese person on X excitedly realizing that the Left wasn’t just Japan’s shame, they were the world’s shame. Those stupid people were everywhere, fucking everything up. 👏 👏 👏 👏 brilliant post.

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  28. It’s all costume drama to them.

    Wear the right thing. Have the right accessories. Express the right opinion.

    If you do all of these things, you can’t lose.

    (And Dear God In Heaven, if I ever become so brain-rotted that I do that kind of thing, please just put me out of my misery. I’ll even give previous permission in writing if I pose in front of a mirror like some crappy “C”-grade Amazon Prime action movie with clearly inadequate kit.)

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    1. The behavior emulated is exactly the training data that they were told would be successful.

      The slop came from inside the building.

      But, it is fairly likely that I am making far too much of bad educational practices and standards.

      The smirk argues for evil that would likely have predated a lot of the crap he loaded into his mind.

      But my own attempts to by rote mimic success, and to navigate reality using the insides of my head do make me feel a bit apologetic to some of these idjits who have been so badly served.

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      1. “Fake it ’til you make it” but without the second step of trying to make it?

        Assuming that faking it is the same as making it?

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        1. Left is practically defined by a theoretical choice to value book learning in aggregate models over any direct observation of individuals.

          The theory tends to filter out observation, by putting it in a framework of conspiracy epicycles.

          Normal people learn about success and failure by observation of individuals.

          Communists learn success, which is a distant abstract thing to them, by watching movies. The media is the only truth model for them, because they chase a goal that ‘was never tried’.

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  30. Somewhat contrary opinion:

    Good choice of the shotgun, and type. Works well for minimal skill at the expected ranges. Somewhat limiting on ammo and reloads, but in practical terms, the fray is decided on mag #1.

    (Open challenge: find a -civilian- shooting where the life of the shooter was saved by a rapid tactical reload, one not done in a pause in the fighting. You likely wont. Pop did not in 40 years of looking.)

    Good choice in sidearm, and type. When the long gun runs dry, transition to the sidearm. fastest reload is gun#2.

    Knife is pure attitude. A KBar or clone is handy but not cumbersome. And all attitude with good reason.

    Throwers – lost me here.

    Photo: You narcissist idiot.

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    1. “Good choice of the shotgun, and type…”

      …for home defense. Different application here. Because body armor, as I mention below. I hesitate to mention the right choice, given the imbeciles I know are scouring these comments for ideas.

      Also, one-man Naruto run? Genius.

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  31. “What kind of human being has that face before engaging in what they think/hope will be mass murder?”

    The kind that chooses a shotgun as their main weapon when they know they’re going up against cops in body armor…

    Bro thinks he’s the Main Character. I can nearly read his tiny little mind just by looking at that loadout he’s got there.

    Seriously, where’s your katana little bro? Every anime hero gotta have a katana. And no ninja stars?

    In other words, intellectual Leftist from California. Long on theory, short on experience.

    And this idiot nearly managed it, which tells you everything you need to know about the Secret Service in 2026.

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  32. Bumped into a January tweet (quoted when talking about the would-be assassin) that sums it up pretty well:

    “If leftists cannot document themselves they lose their will to act. Every single “legal observer” and “protestor” is filming themselves and writing about their actions not to collect evidence but because they are the star of a live action movie about their heroics. When you take away their audience or their ability to film or talk about themselves they simply give up and go home.

    “This is also why they all talk the same way. You’ve all seen the dialect. “Hey so this is fascism” “Actually you’re literally a Nazi” “Wow so you’re just a racist” they all speak in this manner. They speak like they are breaking the fourth wall. It’s as though they’ve turned to the camera in the middle of their sentence, looking to an audience with some sort of “gotcha” expression or otherwise. “Are you seeing this?” “Yup… that just happened”

    “Once you notice this you cannot unsee it. They all behave this way. This again is because these people genuinely believe they are the star of a movie about how amazing and righteous they are. When they can no longer be perceived or observed they cease to exist entirely. EMP Minneapolis”

    https://xcancel.com/joeybeastmarket/status/2017340248875728980

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    1. Much like what I was going to say, but you said it better. He had to take the photos so that he had them for his InstaReel for later, after the glorious battle. I’m actually surprised that he didn’t have a GoPro, on as well.

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  33. Yeah. Dumbass clearly thought he was a video game protagonist. (Or John Wick. And nevermind that, skills and training required to make it look good on camera aside, that was still a choreographed-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life-film designed for rule-of-cool…)

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