fakejohnwilkesbooth's channel

@mariomcp Anime/manga make magical superweapons out of everything from guns to spoons. They've made superheroes out of samurai and ninja - and out of (their interpretations of) western warriors.

Katana are more common in Japanese cartoons for the understandable reason that it's the kind of sword...

@terotolo The "it's entertainment!" argument is made of pure stupid. A movie/game/whatever fight with some verisimilitude could be far more entertaining, if just for the sheer novelty, than the same boring, brutish edge bashing or silly jump-and dance/wire fu the world has been force-fed for the ...

@nickkraw1 All the attacks in this video go for the head or throat because they're drilling a specific set of techniques. It's not free-play. The swords are flexible to enable safe thrusts (they're not flimsy though, they can probably stand up to more repeated abuse than actual fighting swords). ...

@RadarFinsR Modern soldiers are probably in better physical condition than and at least as disciplined as all but the most dedicated individuals among ancient aristocratic warrior castes.

@KnightofAshes Metal greaves were actually pretty uncommon. They're about the most burdensome kind of armor to wear (besides a very heavy helm). They do tend to show up on warriors we know to have used cross-gripped shields (or no shields at all), fought on horseback, or both. Classical hoplites,...

@fakejohnwilkesbooth For that matter, a bear couldn't care less if people laugh at it. It's all just monkey noises to them, if they even hear it and register it.

@thecloakandblade Lifted far heavier objects than modern bodybuilders? Far better genes? Better nutrition? You're joking. They mostly did gymnastics for conditioning, and had nutrition perhaps on par with modern athletes. They weren't bigger or bulkier than modern bodybuilders, though they were a...

@Dre020 If generals from back in the day were stuck with officers who are as dumb as the undirected unit AI, they'd have sold their souls for a pause button.

@Venethor How is kicking someone in the groin more cowardly than sticking him with a rapier? Or cutting him down with a longsword? Or punching him in the face, for that matter? Any attack that is effective is going to overwhelm or outmaneuver an opponent's defense, ruin their body, and keep them ...

@Halofreakanoid Well, longer one-handed swords have more reach (and shorter ones can be used to stab around a shield) and one-handed swords often have two edges (most one-handed axes are single-edged). Maces improved on this second point by having multiple 'edges', but bashing an unarmored man pr...

@mattw2114 Yes, actually, the classical Greeks seem to have favored lower-leg protection far more than other ancient infantrymen (or other warriors in general until late medieval Europeans started using, wait for it, arm-strapped shields, and two-handed weapons).

LARP has never been my thing, but for the life of me I've never understood the stigma attached to it (or other nerd/geek hobbies). It's at least as athletic and social as getting together with some friends and playing baseball or soccer or whatever, let alone billiards or darts or . . .

So laten...

@fakejohnwilkesbooth This is of course all irrelevant to the topic of half-swording. Arguments and evidence stand for themselves.

@Iamnemo1994 Some would say the reason is that it has symbolic or romantic value, but in truth it had to acquire that symbolic and romantic value somehow, and the spear was around a long time before the sword.

The sword is not less effective than a spear in all circumstances. Probably not even i...

@IAmTheStig320 Chivalry and bushido are remarkably similar (though bushido is more ritualistic and insanely suicidal, whereas chivalry is more pragmatic and individualistic). It's true that chivalry was an ideal to aspire to - the thing is, that ideal permitted and in some cases lauded atrocity, ...

@NIKOLAKION Also, cavalry are sometimes described as being in a phalanx, which works against interpreting a phalanx as some kind of special formation involving overlapping shields (more likely it just means any disciplined close-order formation, where men can deploy and maneuver in blocks and are...

The presenter here is responding to certain myths about the borderline magical cutting power of the katana. To be fair, these myths aren't really propagated by honest practitioners of Japanese swordsmanship - but the presenter has nothing but respect for earnest practitioners, as far as I can tel...

I suppose a double-bitted axe might be handier for reaching around an opponent's shield or greaves. Of course a two-edged sword is much better for this sort of thing; with an axe, you hook your man's shield, weapon, or limbs. A single edge suffices for this, and if you have a "false edge" bit you...

Maybe in some situations the pikes went up because some men were pushing opposing men's pikes up (to avoid being stabbed by them, naturally), and as more men engaged and pushed each others' pikes up, the formations closed on each other.

@TheLoyalOfficer Dude, from the very start you're arguing from a false premise. Nothing in the actual oaths they actually swore forbade robbery and rapine. Those were part of their job. Warriors - which is to say professional robbers and racketeers - in all places and all times have been fairly ...

@Unwardil

I think it's more likely that the reason shields went out was because a guy covered in mail, partial plate, or full plate is so damned hard to kill in a stand-up fight. You need to take him down so he can't move and defend himself, and then you spear him or pin him down and stab him wi...

@XomegaZ

If you pay attention, the man in the video (I'm not in the video) says: "Yeah, in a fight you might grab a sword real quick, but the purpose of doing that is to show hey, I can grip my own sword, and bind..." In other words, he's grabbing a sword and having someone else pull on it to pr...

As for using the phrase "in my opinion" as a rhetorical move to appear less threatening, more diplomatic, etc. there are much better ways to indicate tentativeness or epistemic caution or humility (where it is actually warranted).

I agree though that DnD discourages role-play (at least where game mechanics are involved); anyone who's ever rolled a Diplomacy or Bluff check will have to cop to that. In 4th Edition in particular, the combat mechanics, and especially the written "fluff" involved in many powers, makes combat le...

Perhaps that's why the rapier become so popular for civilian combat but wasn't favored on the battlefield, as in battlefield conditions it's more important to incapacitate your opponents quickly than to ensure they die hours or days after they've taken your sword into their ribs and promptlty cri...

The only good cop is a dead cop. Full stop.