Is it “Deep Thought”, or more like “Derp Thought”?

You may have heard of a term called “resting bitch face”. It’s the idea that a person, relaxed and with their face normally at rest and with minimal expression, just naturally looks like they’re grumpy about something.

I seem to have “resting concentration face” because people who see me seem to think I’m concentrating on something or thinking about something important, when to be honest nine times out of ten I’m chasing some mental squirrel into a meaningless oblivion.

In this comic I bring back Lieutenant-Colonel Wesley Fassbender, who is the affable but slightly clueless senior leader of the 213th Battalion. He has been with the Battalion in his position since the earliest days of the comic, when it started in 2013. In reality, a commander would never stay in a position this long– you would be required to rotate out to other duty positions over the course of time, rarely staying more than two years at any one position.

The reasons for this are many: it prevents a commander from “digging in” and creating a personal empire of cronies within a command;; it also exposes officers to a variety of different types of commands and staff positions, and so on.

However, for entertainment purposes, it serves the audience poorly. Audiences like seeing a regular character and developing a regular sort of “relationship”” with that character, knowing what to expect and having a familiar face. If BOHICA Blues reflected reality 100%, we’d have already had a rotating cast of several different officers come and go, and frankly it would be hard to keep up or invest in those characters.

So while I’m frequently one of those people that complains about movies and TV shows “not getting military stuff right”, there are some things about Hollywood military portrayals I am willing to give them a lot of leeway on. Having characters stay for longer periods of time without transfers, rotations, or “promoting up and out” is one of those things I overlook because the reality of it would actually make for poor entertainment.

My deep thought of the day, I guess.