#sniperposting

[blubushie]

Why is the TF2 fandom incapable of understanding how sun damage works

"Waaah there's no way Sniper is 30" he looks like literally every fucking 30yo outback Aussie I've ever met. That's what 15+ years of labour in the Australian sun does to you. That's just how sun damage works.

I'm convinced it's because at least 50% of this fandom is teenagers who never go outside but still

[j1998v]

catboys fortress honhon

[blubushie]

10am and back on my bullshit in light of Recent News.

So I'm gonna bitch about Sniper's camper a little (such as things it realistically would and would not have), and explain some things!

...While using Tilly of course. Camper anatomy course!

For comparison, this is Sniper's camper.

Now, for my issues and corrections with this...

The biggest thing that I notice in canon camper is the extreme lack of windows. Sniper's camper, given the timeline, would be a 60s-era model. Most 60s-era campers did not have air conditioning as their roofing wasn't strong enough to support the weight of an aircon. As you can see by looking at the roof of the camper, his does not have aircon. To make up for the lack of this, you need AIRFLOW or the camper becomes a dangerously high-heat oven. This means his camper would have multiple windows with flywire, not vents, to allow for airflow, and also a greater number of windows than is on the canon model. I will note that the venting front nook window is pretty cool though, and I've never seen one.

Sniper's camper would probably not have a shower, as there's not enough room for one. See how little it hangs off the tailgate? It has a toilet though. ALL campers that hang off the tailgate like that have a toilet. Also, despite Sniper's camper defo having a bathroom, it lacks a bathroom vent for some reason.

Sniper's camper lacks jacks?? I assume this is an oversight due to modelling reasons for SFM, and not that he took the jacks off. The jacks are necessary for maintenance purposes.

The tops of campers are always flat and I don't know why his Does That. I'm deciding it's stylistic reasons cuz otherwise he wouldn't be able to get in bed.

On that note—Sniper has a queen-size bed. I know it doesn't look like one, but trust me, that's a queen-size bed. No I don't care about the internal model that they never planned for anyone to see. It might be a bit cramped in the length department because he's a tall cunt, and it might be a bit cramped in the height department (there's not even a metre of headspace off the bed), but it's not cramped in the "If I roll in any one direction I will fall out" department, I assure you.

I'm not gonna fuss about the water fill hole or the heater or nothing, or the lack of LPG signage. I assume the lack of them is the same reason as the lack of jacks.

Ok, now for some general notes for people who don't know much about campers...

Campers from this era are entirely powered off the vehicle they're attached to. There's something called a pigtail, basically a long bundle of wire, that connects the truck to the camper and provides power, lights, etc. Some modern campers have space, usually under the sink, for a car battery to attach so you can power the camper off a separate battery without the use of a vehicle, but all campers from this era are powered by car battery through the pigtail only. THIS MEANS THAT IF YOU RUN YOUR BATTERY TOO OFTEN YOU WILL BE STRANDED AS YOUR CAR WILL NOT START. Ever leave your headlights on? A lot of people would get around this by using deep-cycle batteries (which are rechargeable), and they usually kept a spare. Or two. Some vehicles, like the Ford Camper Special line, allowed room for two car batteries in the engine bay to specifically get around this. Ideally one battery would be your starter, and the other would be a deep-cycle that everything ran off of. This would prevent you from draining your car's battery, and as deep cycle batteries recharge while you're driving, this works great. Other people (like me) use deep-cycles ONLY, and recharge the batteries by cycling them out as needed.

To use your stove you have to go outside, open the LPG panel, turn the valve on your propane tanks until it's loose, then go back inside, wait a few minutes, turn on the propane ON THE STOVE, and then light your pilot light (if you have a pilot light, most campers from this era do not) or light your burners individually. When you're done cooking or wharever, you have to go back outside and turn off your propane. If you do not do this your propane will leak while you drive.

You have to turn on the water by turning on the water pump, this requires electricity. Most campers have an overhead panel somewhere near the kitchen to do this. Others have it under the sink.

Most campers can be powered without battery as long as you have an electrical source!! See the "camper city power" panel—this allows you to plug in an electrical cord directly into the camper to power it off that instead of off your truck. Downside—this requires an electrical outlet. It's really only used when a camper is home and someone is living out of it, or when someone is camped at a powered campground (like an RV park), which are extremely rare because most RV parks do not allow jack-on campers. I've only ever used this plug at home. 😅

Campers run on fuses. Given the era, Sniper's camper would probably run on old SFE glass fuses, likely 20As (mine runs on SFE-20As across the board).

There will be a part 2 to this showing the interior layout and what that's like when I get around to it later today.

[blubushie]

biggest pet peeve in sniper art?

Oh boy. A few of these actually. (I'm assuming you mean Sniper TF2 and not general snipers in art...)

Under the cut cuz it's long.

His rifle drawn improperly. The anatomy is very simple and if necessarily, just reference instead of butchering it—even if you're doing realistic art, he uses a Remington 700, and there's more than enough reference photos online for the most popular sporting rifle ever sold. I've seen people draw it like a handgun. On a similar note–

Him shouldering his rifle incorrectly. Or just handling it incorrectly in general. Rifle slots in just above the armpit—when your stretch your dominant arm forward while leaning in and bracing your muscles, it forms a pocket at the shoulder just above your armpit between the head of your humerus and your pectoral muscle. This creates a firm pocket that the butt of a rifle will slot into. If it's not in this pocket, you're gonna have a bad time.

Using the wrong arm to support the rifle vs handle the trigger. I've seen horrors. While Sniper is implied to be ambidextrous, he shoots right-handed. This means the rifle slots on his RIGHT shoulder, and his RIGHT trigger finger is on the trigger. His LEFT HAND is used to support the weight of the rifle at the forestock. On a similar note–

Ambidextrous Sniper is cool and I love seeing left-handed Sniper when it's done properly. Downside—his right eye is his dominant eye, so unless his right hand is injured in a way that he can't pull a trigger with that hand, he would not be shooting left-handed.

Speaking of dominant eyes—you look down the scope with your dominant eye. The eye NOT looking down the scope is called your off-eye. YOU DO NOT CLOSE YOUR OFF-EYE WHEN SHOOTING. OFF-EYE STAYS OPEN. Firstly it's for safety, because if your off-eye is closed you can't see what's happening in your immediate vicinity. Two, it's for performance. You can't change targets as easily with your off-eye closed. Any sniper worth his salt, especially a professional, is keeping his off-eye open. This is hunting 101 and something Sniper, former outback hunter of dangerous game, would know and practise religiously.

Speaking of scopes—eye relief. You do not put your face right up to the scope. There should be 10cm or about 4 inches between your face and the scope. Otherwise when you fire you're going to get a black eye when the recoil makes the scope hit you in the face. You'll take your eye out, kid.

People who draw him with his comics hair and call that a mullet. Almost none of you know what a mullet it. A little tuft of hair at the nape of the neck isn't a mullet! Those who give him an actual mullet when you say that shit, I love you

People who draw his scars incorrectly. They make them look fresh—with the sutures still present. Sutures aren't permanent and are removed after a week to a few weeks, depending on healing and how deep the wound is. Once SCARRED he wouldn't have horizontal lines through the scars. He'd just have long scars and dotted scars alongside where the sutures used to be. And looking at my own scars, in most places you can't see the dotting from the sutures since the holes heal easy and don't often scar.

Skinny twiggy Sniper that looks like he's about to drop dead of malnutrition. Have you not read the comics? Do you not know what lean, functional muscle looks like? Fuck's sake.

Ok reckon that's all of them for now.

[blubushie]

I just wanna say.

I don't know who did the dialogue for the comics but they're pretty good at Intuitively Aussie Things (outside of spelling "cark it" wrong).

The amount of times I've hauled arse while chanting "bugger" under my breath is too goddamn many. I once cleared a click on foot with a 20kg bluey on my back and a rifle in my arms because a VERY angry pig was chasing me (when I got back to Matilda he tried his damnedest to pop one of my tyres but that's beside the point). Screaming "BUGGER BUGGER BUGGER BUGGER-" while being chased by the wildlife is just part of the bushman experience. I don't care if it's outrunning magpies, outrunning pigs, outrunning a bushfire, outrunning a tornado, outrunning hail big enough to knock you out, outrunning a perentie, staring down dingos, waking up to a venomous snake in your swag, seeing a shark while swimming at a beach, blowing a tyre on a rough bit of track, or wading in waist-deep water and seeing the bubbles of a crocodile submerging a few metres away. If you live in the bush you will chant "bugger" like a prayer at some point in your life.

On that note, if you're ever somewhere and you see an Aussie running away from something while screaming "BUGGER" it's a good idea to trust his gut and follow him because 9/10 times whatever's chasing him will end up chasing you instead. If he's running he's got reason.

[blubushie]

what's something you wish more people knew about sniper's camper? (the setup or the car, iirc you mentioned they're separate?)

Yeah they're separate. That's a jack off camper so he can take the camper off and just drive the car without it.

You have to go outside to turn on your propane to use the stove or oven (or fridge, if your fridge is set up for propane cooling—most camper fridges are). You don't drive with your propane going. That shit is dangerous as hell (you risk leaking a very flammable gas).

He would have an oven in the camper. It's a small oven but it's an oven. That said temperature control is shit. The temp gauges read "hot → hotter". You need to leave a thermometer in it and then dick around with the dial so it stays at the temp you want, and it takes all fucken day to oven prep for any kind of baking. Also it's a bitch to light the pilot light for the damn thing. You need a torch to even see it.

His camper has a bathroom (and possibly a shower as well). The camper extends almost a metre off from the back of the Land Rover. That extra space is because there's a bathroom in it. That's where the bathroom is.

He drives a 1965 Land Rover Series IIA. You can tell it's not a Series II because the Series II had a branching attachment off the steering column that had the button for the horn on it. The Series IIA had the horn in the centre of the steering wheel like most cars do. Sniper's has the horn in the centre of the wheel, so it's a Series IIA.

Since Sniper's car is a Series IIA, like all Land Rovers from the 60s, it has an alternative crank-start engine (which basically means that it has an electric starter like regular cars—turn the key and car starts—while also having a manual crank starter like cars from the 1920s and earlier). These cars were built to be able to go anywhere, and recovery is hard if you're in the middle of nowhere, so if for any reason your engine wouldn't turn over (dead battery, anyone?) you could manually start it by attaching a crank to the engine through the grille and then cranking it really hard to provide enough power to the crankshaft for the engine to turn over. This is a blessing when your battery's dead cuz you left the fucken lights on.

That looks like this, btw. It's really cool and I genuinely wish more cars did this because it'd be a lifesaver in low battery situations, especially if you're somewhere where you can't recover a vehicle easily and have no one to jump it (such as while off-roading somewhere).

If you feature this in art or fic or something you gotta include the part where the crank whips back and whacks him hard on the shin though. For my sake. A little treat for Blu. Send him to the infirmary!!

(I don't know why the fuck they never made the shaft a locking ratchet like a socket wrench so it can't whip back... Would saved a lotta broken bones.)

[blubushie]

I can actually answer this!! His rifle is modelled after a Remington 700, it's just heavily cartoonised! :]

[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.