Have to get this off my chest, because I see Sam called Major a lot.
Pararescueman (Sometimes called Parajumpers or PJs) in the USAF, which we’re told Sam was, is an enlisted position. Sam Wilson was a non-commissioned officer – I’m gonna guess he was at least a Sergeant and given the level of specialised training, probably a Staff Sergeant.
Pararescuemen have officers – they are called Combat Rescue Officers. They have most of the same training (though not all in as much detail) plus officer/strategic training. The idea is that the PJs are the detail guys (concentrating on individual casualties) the CRO keeps a wider, coordinating view, so doesn’t (or at least tries not to) get tied down with his hands stuck in somebody’s guts. I don’t think it is very likely a CRO would be strapping on a wingsuit, but in any case if Sam says he was Pararescue that means by definition that he was an NCO.
(Why does this bother me? Because while I think for most writers it’s a well-meant ‘well he was brave and important, must have been an officer’ that’s ignoring the many highly trained and skilled people who can be found among the NCOs. Making Sam an officer may feel like valueing him up, but it’s also kind of valueing NCOs down)
From what my googling’s turned up (sorry, away from my notes right now) a Pararescuemen in that kind of position (regardless of what equipment he’s using) would probably be an Airman First Class or Senior Airman. But yeah, definitely not an officer.
our enlisted ranks are Airman Basic, Airman, Airman First Class, Senior Airman, Staff Sergeant, Tech Sergeant, Master Sergeant, Senior Master Sergeant, and Chief Master Sergeant
I asked my father about this, and his response was that the air force only had one rank: Badass. Everything else was just a matter of degree. This is much more helpful.
LOOK at this fucking gorgeous masterpiece that I commissioned from @willietheplaidjacket. I’m crying, it’s so beautiful.
I asked her to illustrate one of my favorite scenes in one of my favorite fics, the Letters series, by @earlgreytea68 (I did get permission). Here is the excerpt, from the Letters, Resolved section, chapter 7:
John thought that he wasn’t sure he could ever get Sherlock to understand how humbled he felt by being given the gift of Sherlock the way he was with John, the way he was with no one else, Sherlock in all the vulnerable simplicity at the heart of his complexity, and John lifted his arms and tightened them around Sherlock, pressing him as close as he could get.
“What’s wrong?” asked Sherlock, surprised, wriggling a bit in the new grip.
“I am going to love you for the rest of our lives,” John promised him, roughly. “I’m going to make you laugh. I’m going to make sure you’re never bored. I’m going to keep you safe.”
Sherlock was silent for a moment beforeshaking off John’s grip just enough to pull himself up and align them so he could look down at John’s face. He spent a long moment just studying John, and then he repeated back, “I am going to love you for the rest of our lives. I’m going to make you laugh. I’m going to make sure you’re never bored. I’m going to keep you safe.”
John flickered a smile at him. “Well, that’s that then. All settled.”
The drawing is the bolded part. LOOOOK AT ITTTTTT.
I’m so fucking done, I don’t even know. The eye contact, my god. I’m a puddle.
Willie’s art is so freaking gorgeous it makes me tear up just looking at it.
With all Torchwood gets into situations they’d be needed and with all the things Torchwood stamps their logo on… would there be Torchwood logo condoms?
I would guarantee that at some point someone got Torchwood condoms made as a practical joke.
Jack swiped the box. Or maybe Owen.
Owen and Gwen conspired and left them on Jack’s desk. Jack thought that it was the funniest thing in the world and asked Ianto if they could use them, which was where Ianto drew the line.
Yes.
I also like to imagine Jack wearing boxers with the logo on it. And Ianto either laughing until it hurt or rolling his eyes.
i just want to say to fic readers that big long rambly comments on fics, where you say the things you loved about it and sometimes get capslocky and squeal and use exclamation points and quote parts and praise the smut or the characterizations or the world building or the chemistry or all of the above, comments like that are fucking incredible and every fic author loves you, thank you
(I just had a conversation with Katie @therealmartinsgrrrl that is fucking me up so hard right now.)
John Watson is a man who is a study in contradictions. He’s a soldier and a doctor, yes, we all know that. But he’s so much more complex than that shorthand lets on.
He’s a man who has a deep seated compulsion to care for and nurture others, yet has studiously avoid forming deep personal connections well into his forties. He’s pleasant and polite on the surface, but scratch past that and he’s a bit difficult, a bit salty and surly and not always a very nice person. He’s a friendly person that doesn’t have any friends. Not real ones.
The caretaking bit is an ingenious move. It’s a control thing, it’s a way of being in charge of every situation, of never being at anyone else’s mercy, of never being the vulnerable or needy one. I know this because I do this. I literally have made a career out of it, of never ever revealing myself yet focusing my attention and caretaking on many others. People like me, we like to see ourselves as the good ones, as the tireless givers, maybe even sometimes as martyrs.
We’re not always good people, though. Not necessarily. What we are, are people deathly afraid of being vulnerable, of being on the other end of that equation. Because needing others is a surefire way of getting hurt, and hurt badly.
Somewhere along the line, probably early in life, John Watson got badly let down by someone he depended on. Fanon often lays the blame at the feet of alcoholism running through the Watson clan (and as the adult child and grandchild of alcoholics, I personally tend towards this view.) Perhaps is was poverty, not of the grinding sort but the everyday, not-enough-money, working-two-jobs sort that tends to let kids’s needs slip through the cracks. Perhaps it was just a combination of a sensitive temperament and a home life that just didn’t have room for those kinds of needs.
Whatever happened, it made John Watson shut down the parts of him that needed, made him sublimate that basic desire for connection into caretaking, into doctoring, into healing the wounded, and in a war theater, no less, an arena that cranked the stakes up to do-or-die and left no room for emotions or vulnerability.
(Insert “And whatever the hell happened with John and Sholto” somewhere in here.)
But then…Sherlock. Why Sherlock? Why anyone, honestly? Whatever the reason, something about this strange, strange man awakens something so long dormant in John that he probably thought it didn’t even exist anymore. A feeling of needing. Of wanting. Of a desire for connection so deep and terrifying it hurts to much to contemplate.
John dates all these women in the interim. He probably sleeps with most of them at some point. But none of them are Sherlock. None of them reach that deep place of needing, of wanting to be understood. Not even close.
(And then Sherlock goes and does the worst possible thing and leaves him behind. Good God. No wonder John is traumatized and wounded and still angry as fuck three years later. Just think of the magnitude of that betrayal, of the one person you allow yourself to need wholeheartedly leaving you behind. It’s hard to even think about for too long.)
And even after all that, John’s need for connection to Sherlock is so great he doesn’t even hold out a week before he’s back in his orbit.
And that, I think, is what John is running from, what he can’t yet deal with, why he marries Mary even after Sherlock’s return. He’s not hiding from his sexual attractions. Well, maybe he is, just a little, but much more than that he’s hiding from the enormity of his own confusing and overwhelming emotional need, and the power it gives Sherlock over him, the way it takes away John’s control and ability to keep another at remove.
At the end of it all it’s not his orientation, but his desire for love and acceptance and true companionship from Sherlock Holmes, that are the actual skeletons in John’s closet.
(Am I projecting? God yes. It’s late and it’s tumblr and I’ll ramble if I want to.)
