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We See These Misogynistic Idiots in Our Inbox Occasionally

Anonymous asked:

not to sound like a prey animal on main but i feel like too many people, men and women both, do not actually understand the extent of the strength difference between men and women. it is actually surprisingly easy for a man to kill a woman, in fact it can be done accidentally

The only people who deny it are either blinded by ideology, or have never wrestled with someone of the opposite sex. I had a girlfriend who was extremely athletic, but had only ever played on all-female teams, and her little brothers were very young so she could throw them around. I’m 6’ 4″, and she honestly thought she could hold her own against me.

When I was fifteen, I had a boyfriend who was extremely athletic, but had only ever played against all-male teams. His sport of choice was soccer and his legs were very strong, so he liked to run around kicking other guys in the groin to resolve disputes. (Sorry, Tumblr, he did not turn out to be gay.) One day, we were hanging out at my house and he decided to hug me from behind. I didn’t realize he was behind me, caught his arms moving in my peripheral vision, and nailed him in the solar plexus with my elbow. I did it automatically, just trained instinct. He bowled over, coughing, for a good minute, and continued coughing for roughly five minutes after that. After I determined he was, in fact, okay, I giggled because it was really, rather funny.

We broke up shortly after that. Fifteen year old me figured my body had the right idea about him. The only difference between my incident and yours is I’d been doing Taekwondo since I was six and had plenty of experience working with the opposite sex. I didn’t apply this singular experience of momentarily paralyzing a young man’s diaphragm as a weakness to all men everywhere.

We get MRAs like you every so often on this blog and, honestly, the only men who are wrapped up in the biological/physical differences in male bodies versus female bodies are the ones deeply insecure in their own masculinity. I encourage you to work on coming to terms with yourself and building your confidence in healthy ways outside of comparisons to others. Truly I do, because there are aspects of your ask which are supremely fucked up. We’re going to go over what you said in detail. Not for your benefit, but for the benefit of others.

“not to sound like a prey animal on main”

You sent this on anon. Maybe this is a Reddit thing, but your name isn’t attached so only you will ever experience the full embarrassment of trying to litigate your break-up with a complete stranger.

i feel like too many people, men and women both, do not actually understand the extent of the strength difference between men and women. 

This isn’t “too many people.” This is about your ex-girlfriend. If you’re trying to AITA this shit, I can tell you, in no uncertain circumstances, yes, YTA. (You’re The Asshole, for those of readers who don’t hang in that subreddit.) 

In the real world, not only do most people genuinely believe there’s a greater strength difference than men and women than actually exists, but they don’t realize that after a specific threshold natural advantages (whatever natural advantages exist and different body types have different advantages) cease to make a real difference. Physical strength is one of those. The general population actually puts too much importance on “natural advantages” over training and practice. That happens when people fail to grasp their own ignorance. (People, perhaps unironically, like the person who sent this ask.)I’ve done martial arts for most of my life, strength differences don’t matter to me because I know how to nullify my opponent’s strength. Violence is a lot more complicated than strength v. strength, and also a lot simpler. Force isn’t generated by the upper body alone and force application has nothing to do with the size of a person’s biceps or what they can lift. If flat strength mattered, bodybuilding would be more than cosmetic. The reality is bodybuilders struggle to draw bows. The reason for this ignorance is simple, as most cops will tell you, most people haven’t been in a fight since high school (if they’ve ever been in a fight at all.) This results in a skewed perspective in a society that already trains a skewed perspective on the gender divide from birth. Gender roles are socially manufactured, sorry.

In the professional field, nobody talks about strength because (surprise!) strength doesn’t actually matter. Martial combat is all about learning to utilize the advantages of your own body while stripping your opponent of theirs. You fight with the body you have. Want to fight? Learn to work with what you’ve got. On a practical level, that’s the end of the discussion. The rest is semantics.

Women do martial arts. They practice against men and women. That’s the end.

“it is actually surprisingly easy for a man to kill a woman, in fact it can be done accidentally”

I know this is going to come as a shock, but it is surprisingly easy to kill anyone accidentally. That’s a human thing. While you may feel otherwise, society actually labels women as acceptable targets for masculine aggression and so they are more likely to be on the receiving end from an abusive partner. This doesn’t mean women aren’t abusers, some are, and the treatment of women by society at large means even fewer female abusers get recognized. Male violence against women is unfortunately common. That doesn’t make women weaker. In fact, it gets us into a discussion about societal training and victim blaming for confirmation bias that I don’t feel like getting into.

I’m really hoping you didn’t accidentally kill your ex though. The fact you chose to include this line in your ask is pretty telling about where your mental state is.

“The only people who deny it are either blinded by ideology.”

People who know what they’re talking about don’t deny it, they say it doesn’t matter if you know what you’re doing. That’s the difference. However, this line is pure projection. You are blinded by your own ideology. I know this because you came here to argue with me, a third degree black belt who did martial arts for thirteen years. You didn’t stop and consider that my lived experience regarding this subject might be slightly more extensive than yours. Also, you’re relying on confirmation bias to support your point.

Your ideology as expressed in the ask you’ve submitted gears itself toward denying that any natural advantages exist outside of those gifted by size and the upper body’s musculature. Which is, sadly, incorrect. Biologically, it is true that male and female bodies aren’t the same. Historically, in Western countries, we haven’t truly explored the advantages gifted by female bodies, we know remarkably little about female bodies in general. This is largely due to the fact that society is geared toward maintaining male as default. Science knows more about how to give you an erection than it does my period.

However, the gap isn’t as massive as some would like to believe. Different isn’t less.

There are quite a few countries outside the West where the concept of women fighting isn’t alien, or even up for debate. Their history is filled with female rulers, female politicians and power brokers, women going into battle, and practicing martial arts. They’ve even founded martial arts. Europe’s is too, they’re just a little more difficult to locate.

“Women can’t fight” is a cultural invention. Pop culture still largely supports a majority white male default, but that isn’t reality.

“or have never wrestled with someone of the opposite sex.”

Your only example for this is limited to a singular instance, so we’re going to take this with a grain of salt. I can tell you’ve never wrestled with anyone who knows what they’re doing because you put way too much importance on height, specifically being taller than your opponent. Height is actually a detriment against someone who knows how to manipulate it into a particular disadvantage, one that gives an advantage to the biologically female body, we’ll get to that in a second.

Female martial artists regularly practice against men, usually men of all ages because there just aren’t enough participants to break down evenly by sex/gender. If they start young, they’ve been practicing against larger opponents for most of their life. (The same is true for young boys too.)

“I had a girlfriend who was extremely athletic,”

So, being athletic doesn’t mean jack shit. That’s true for both genders. The type of muscles you develop heavily depends on the type of sports you do. In addition, the vast majority of people are completely reliant on their upper body. The upper body strength contest is where men have a natural advantage, they’re better at building muscles in the upper body where women build up muscle more quickly in their core and their legs. Depending on how tall the man in question is, he’ll also start with a leverage advantage. He’s going down, while his shorter opponent is going up.

Both these advantages are nullified by martial arts and completely non-existent against someone who practices wrestling. I don’t mean “wrestling” as in grabbing someone and hauling them around the yard, or professional wrestling which involves professional stuntmen performing choreographed fights, I mean wrestling the sport. This will be covered in the grappling side of martial arts like jiu-jitsu, judo, etc.

Anyone who practices wrestling will perk up when you say, “I’m 6”4” and rub their hands with glee. They all know it’s the short wiry fucks you’ve got to watch out for.

Glee was my response at hearing about your height, by the way.

“but had only ever played on all-female teams, and her little brothers were very young so she could throw them around.”

I find it hilarious that you and your ex engaged in the exact same tactics when it came to the fake wrestling and you came away thinking there was a real difference between you. All your anecdote proved was two humans engage in the same natural behavior. Which is why we tell our that training matters. Neither you nor your ex have any idea about how to utilize your lower body or attack your opponent’s center of balance. Or, you know, leverage. That’s completely normal for untrained people.

In comparison, every one of my boyfriends except Starke have all failed to hold on to me in any meaningful fashion. I had an ex who always tried to playfight and pin in bed. Did it work? No. The answer to this one isn’t strength, it’s knowledge and technique. I know how to grapple and practice wrist releases, he didn’t. I don’t need to be stronger when I can be bendy and slippery instead. There’s no need to force anything.

“I’m 6’ 4″, and she honestly thought she could hold her own against me.”

So, let me explain what happened with your ex. She played sports, which is a confidence builder, especially if you’re good at it, and she’s gotten a lot of dopamine hits from adrenaline. Adrenaline makes you feel good, it makes you feel strong and tough. Both built an overweening sense of confidence that ultimately proved false. That’s a human thing, not a gender/sex thing. This happens all the time to men too. Plenty of guys who scrap in high school think they know how to fight. They don’t. Hell, in the scenario provided, she’s not any different from my high school ex who liked to kick other guys in the balls. He only kind of knew how to use his legs because soccer, and only in the way soccer taught him. (His kicks were cringe.)

Height is physically intimidating to most people, but only because they haven’t spent most of their life physically tackling taller people. The irony is that tall people have a whole slew of disadvantages that make them more easy to deal with than humans of average size or those who are short. In male bodies, the center of gravity is higher due to hip position. The center of gravity in biologically female bodies is lower, meaning they have an easier time maintaining their balance. 

Taller people have to get much lower to the ground to maintain stability, they’re easier to knock over, destabilize, and throw. Their limbs are also longer which makes it much easier to perform joint breaks. Humans with high levels of muscular definition provide you with visual lines straight to all their pressure points. Pressure points are more difficult to locate in biologically female bodies due to the subcutaneous layer of fat.

If you don’t believe me, I encourage you to join any judo or jiu-jitsu dojo. Have fun learning how difficult throwing a five foot, ninety-pound girl can be. (Damn you, Kristen.)

The sexes aren’t as different as you’d like to believe. The real problem for you is your lack of self-confidence, especially when it comes to your masculinity. 

What does it matter that your ex believed she could overpower you? 

Why does the fact she had confidence in herself and her own abilities bother you? 

Why did it irritate or anger that she didn’t automatically acknowledge your (supposed) superiority? 

Why do you need to feel superior?

Healthy relationships are built on mutual regard, understanding, and respect. You obviously didn’t respect your partner’s passion for sports or see it’s value, so it’s not surprising you broke up. All girls who practice sports have heard the whiny bullshit about how they’re not as good as men, how their achievements are meaningless because they’re not men, and how they’ll always be second class. You’re not telling your ex or me anything we haven’t heard hundreds of times before. Thousands, probably.

You know who I never heard that bullshit from? My martial arts instructors. I’ve trained with a lot of men over the years and it never came up, not once. There was no, “boys are better.” They never needed to put down others, exert their superiority, or exclude in order to feel confident and comfortable with themselves. They didn’t need the clubhouse. And, honestly, neither do you.

Let it go.

-Michi

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We See These Misogynistic Idiots in Our Inbox Occasionally was originally published on How to Fight Write.

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I had always wondered about a certain aspect in martial arts or combat media that features some martial arts, and that is the "evil" or "dark" style that is considered reprehensible and immortal, and the style is... using guns, poisons, bombs, traps, hidden weapons, and so on. Every time there's a battle with such practitioners, they always gets called "dishonorable" or "evil" or maybe even cowardly. But then you also have "if this was a real fight, you'd be dead" trope when it comes to something like a mock duel vs a duel to the death, which often shows how in a "real fight" there's no use for honor and such and would often have the protagonist of such genre be fighting as dirty as possible and be treated as badass. My question then is... well, what exactly is "honor" in a fight? Isn't "dirty tricks" like sands in the eyes to resolve combat as quickly as possible the most desired trick? What exactly should be the balance between "pragmatism" and "honor", whatever the latter is?

Okay, so, I'll have to level with you, I have never heard of a martial arts style that considers IEDs as an important technique. Also, martial arts that incorporate firearms are more of a myth than reality. There are disarms, but there's no such thing as a, "gun kata." That's pure fiction.

Honor isn't about good and evil, it's not about right and wrong: Honor is about threat control. Honor is defined by those in power, and then applied to those below them, to ensure they cannot rise up and disrupt the status quo.

"The only unfair fight is the one you lose," thought process comes out of the understanding that giving your foe a fair chance to kill you is an utterly terrible idea. Especially against a better trained and better equipped foe, getting into a stand-up fight is suicidal.

It's dishonorable to run from a fight? Who does this benefit? Dying because you wouldn't break and escape just means you're dead.

It's dishonorable to attack someone from behind? Again, this only really benefits your foe. It's about tricking you into putting yourself into a more vulnerable position.

But, why is this a rule? Why is it dishonorable to stab someone in the back, but not to stab them in the face? In the distant past, when nobles fought on the battlefield, stabbing someone in the back meant you didn't know who you had just killed. However, if you saw their face before killing them, it meant you could properly assess whether they were one of the enemy nobles, meaning they should be ransomed back, rather than summarily killed on the battlefield. It made the battlefield less dangerous for the nobility, but no safer for the peasantry, and also helped to further enrich the winning nobles. But, of course, the person who is expected to behave, "honorably," was the conscripted foot soldier, who would see no benefit from, "being honorable," but may face harsh retribution if they killed someone they shouldn't have.

(This, also explains a large part of why guns and bombs can be considered dishonorable. These are indiscriminate, and therefore, a threat to those who set the rules.)

Honor is meaningless to a corpse. However, if you're in a position of power, dishonor is incredibly valuable. Dishonor becomes a tool to politically weaken (or in some cases outright eliminate) a threat. Dishonor can be applied through mere allegations. Dishonor can also apply social stigmas, and if it applies to a family, can be used to undermine entire factions.

Because it's dishonorable to lie, all but your most transparent lies can be used to implicate, and dishonor, your potential rivals. Best of all, questioning the honor of the powerful is often behavior that permits immediate, and vicious, retribution. So, even if someone does realize you're lying through your teeth, it gives you the pretext to eliminate them.

Honor is not, and never has been, about being a good person. It was never about morality or ethics. It is a weapon, wielded by those in power, against those beneath them. The first, and most effective lie honor presents is the idea that this is about being a good person. It is insidious, because, for the person with good intentions, it will lead them to punish themselves, if they step out of line.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to do the right thing. In many cases, that is laudable. However, honor is a about perverting that into a system where you will voluntarily hand advantage to your foes,

This isn't just codes of honor. Laws (both secular and religious) can be used in similar ways. To punish and marginalize potential foes, while simultaneously entrenching your own powerbase.

In many cases, codes of honor can support ethical, or moral behavior. It's something to consider carefully before fully ejecting the concept. However, living to see the next sunrise is more important than being honorable. It may be important to make your actions appear honorable, after the fact, but that's more about political damage control. The most important thing to understand about honor is that its real purpose is not what it appears to be. It was always a lie, designed to get you to put yourself at a disadvantage.

-Starke

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I hope this isn't a silly question... Is it possible to be stabbed and not notice it immediately? It doesn't matter if it's in an extreme condition or not.

Yeah, it happens. Same thing with getting shot or other minor injuries. An adrenaline rush dulls your ability to feel pain, and it's frighteningly easy for someone to suffer mortal injuries during a fight and not realize it.

This is why you see characters depicted checking themselves for wounds. This is sometimes played for laughs, but it is a practical behavior. If you've just escaped from someone attacking you with a knife, (or getting shot at), you need to know if you have an injury you're not aware of.

This also happens with minor cuts or bruises. Those are less important, and you're much less likely to notice them in the moment. (Actually, you won't notice bruises in the moment, because it usually takes a few minutes for a bruise to fully form.) But you're unlikely to identify the injury until after the adrenaline wears off.

I'll do you one better, I remember the hit that caused the scar on my index finger. I wasn't under an adrenaline rush, and I barely felt it. Initially, I thought the blade hadn't connected, as it was just a white line and looked kind of like a welt. Then, after a few seconds, it started bleeding.

So, yes it is entirely possible to suffer a slash or stab from a knife and not realize the severity, or that it even happened. This is especially true if you're in a life threatening situation, and are experiencing an adrenaline rush or intoxicated.

Technically you should feel the hit, but without an associated pain response, you could easily miss it.

-Starke

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Why do characters in fantasy always carry longswords on their back? Then pluck them off to fight like the only thing holding the sword on his magnets or something. I cannot figure out how this works. It seems like it'd be rlly difficult to get a sword in and out of a scabbard that's carried across the back. So how are longswords actually carried? Is the sword on back thing actually real? And if it is, how on earth does it work?

It's real, but it is unusual. Normally, you would carry a scabbard on your hip. This has the downside of the sword hanging off your belt and potentially getting in the way (especially as a longsword is likely to protrude out in some direction, usually to the back), but it is extremely accessible.

As for why it's so popular in fantasy, I'm not completely sure, and I suspect there isn't a single, universal answer. In some cases, I'm sure it's simply chosen because it looks cool. In others (particularly games) it gives the player the opportunity to see the weapon they're carrying and about to draw. It also allows a character to sheathe a greatsword, which would be fairly difficult otherwise.

You can pull a longsword off your back, however it's awkward. If the scabbard is articulated, and can swing away off the back, you can pull the sword forward, directed across your shoulder. In an emergency you could certainly get to it, but it would be less convenient than if you carried it on your hip. Putting it away is a similarly awkward process.

So, why is this a thing? Because in some situations you'd want to keep your sword on your person, but wouldn't need to access it on short notice, and you may not have wanted the scabbard flapping about.

For example: If someone was traveling, they may sling their sword over their shoulder (they'd want it when they got to their destination), but when moving through crowds, having the scabbard bashing into members of the crowd could create an awkward situation. If they expected trouble, they'd be likely to unsling their sword and either return it to their hip, or carry it openly (depending on the situation.)

I know it's real, but I'm not sure how widespread it ever was. I remember running across a historical manuscript which told readers that they should instruct their students not to carry their sword across the back. This sounds like the practice was fashionable at some point, but it could have been a singular example that pissed off the author.

If you were traveling, then you might carry your sword on your back, otherwise, you would be unlikely to do so, unless you were making some ill advised fashion statement.

-Starke

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A Friendly Little Stabbing

So we know that there’s no 100% non-fatal or “safe” place in/on the body to shoot someone. (That one scene in the first Divergent book where Tris shoots someone in the shoulder to get him to reveal information without killing him makes me cringe every time) What about stabbing? Where is the “least fatal” place to be stabbed, if there is any at all?

Very lightly.

Okay, so, deep penetration has a very high likelihood of hitting something you need to continue functioning. Again, getting stabbed in the torso is worse than the limbs, though this does depend on exactly what gets cut.

Your bones are slightly better at handling an object trying to impale you than stopping bullets, which isn’t saying much, but it can stop a light blade if you’re lucky.

Cuts to the limbs are less likely to be life threatening, and your arteries are somewhat better shielded against slicing and cutting trauma. That said, if someone drives a knife into your inner thigh, you’re (probably) already dead.

The rule of thumb I was introduced to is, “three inches,” if the strike goes deeper than that, it’s probably going to hit something vital. Also, it occurs to me, that does nicely cover most places where you’re not likely to suffer a vital hit. For example, you can get stabbed through the hand with minimal risk to your life (though, you are going to lose the use of that hand, at least, until it heals.)

That’s a larger problem you should remember. The muscles on your body are not (as a general rule) vital to your continued breathing, however, they are necessary to move and function. So, if you get a deep gash on your upper arm, it won’t kill you, but it will impair or weaken some direction of movement as those muscles are responsible for controlling your limb.

The real danger with stabbing is (usually) blood loss, and the further the injury is from your core, the lower the risk of bleeding out. Again, taking a hit to an artery will end you, and this can even happen on your wrists (though the bleedout will generally take longer, as the volume loss per second will be lower.) The nature of the cut matters, because in some cases it’s relatively easy to staunch the blood flow. As with gunshot wounds, the lethality of a given injury isn’t really about how “lethal,” it is, it’s more about how quickly you’ll lose blood.

There is an interesting caveat with getting stabbed or impaled: Do not remove the intruding object unless you absolutely have to. If someone gets stabbed do not pull the knife out. In some situations, the blade (or other object) will be preventing further blood loss, and pulling it out can be fatal. I’ve been told this is especially true of situations where someone’s been run through with rebar, to the point that it’s actually better to cut away the rebar if possible and bring it along, as the texture is exceptionally good at digging into the wound and limiting bleeding. (Obviously, cutting rebar for transport to a hospital is going to require construction or other lifesaving equipment, and not exactly a do-it-yourself solution.) The result of this caveat is, you can take a knife to the chest without dying, so long as the knife stays where it landed.

As with getting shot, there isn’t a great place to get stabbed, but it can be survivable if you can get medical attention before the blood loss is fatal.

-Starke

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A Friendly Little Stabbing was originally published on How to Fight Write.

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[howtofightwrite]

I have multiple fighter characters who are also poor and sometimes starving beggars. How would this less than optimal physical health affect what a fighter might need? My story is sort of fantasy but there isn't a lot a magic at least when it's about people.

Disastrously.

So, any extreme physical activity will require a pretty significant caloric intake. Meaning, if you're fighting, you need to be well fed. There are countless aphorisms and clichés about the importance of logistics to military campaigns (such as, "an army moves on its stomach") and there's a truth here: It is vitally important that your fighters are well fed.

So, the big problems from chronic malnutrition for your characters are: an impaired immune system (meaning they'll get sick more easily and have more difficulty fighting it off), generalized fatigue and weakness, cognitive impairment (difficulty thinking and focusing), and a slowed healing rate.

Slightly less severe, but they'll also have increased difficulty maintaining their body temperature, meaning they'll frequently feel cold. This has some real applications if you're needing to wait overnight somewhere watching for someone.

If your character is underage, chronic malnutrition is catastrophic, as it will permanently impair their physical and mental development.

So, the short version is, your characters will be weaker, slower, more prone to injury and illness, less able to recover from injuries taken, and less able to focus on the fight in front of them.

You really cannot win a fight if you're not getting enough to eat.

In a larger context, if you're leading a group, and you can't feed your fighters, your group will scatter. It's one of those Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs things, if you literally cannot keep your people alive, they have no reason to follow you. If you can keep them fed, but can't keep them safe, they may stick around until that illusion is shattered, but then they'll be looking for something better. If you can do both of those things, then you need to worry about keeping them happy, and need to worry about giving them a purpose.

One place where shoddy writers will manufacture drama is in these kinds of survival situations, but, because they didn't consider Maslow's Hierarchy, the whole thing will feel a bit, "off." They'll have characters who are facing a lethal threat, but they'll be upset about accommodations, or engage in political infighting. Things that are, absolutely, not a concern when characters are being hunted, or facing starvation.

So, the short version, you need to feed your fighters. Following that, unless you're setting up some kind of authoritarian cult, you need to feed your other members as well. After that, your fighters need to be able to protect the other members of the group (to some degree. And, there is a reasonable tension in their difficulty with that point.) If they can't protect the group, then the group will hemorrhage members. If they can't feed the non-combat members, they'll leave, and if they can't feed anyone, the group will splinter and the individuals will go looking for someplace where they can avoid starving to death.

-Starke

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The Myth of Forensic Science and its Consequences

I don’t think ballistics analysis is as effective as they portray it on TV though…

greater-than-the-sword

It’s not. I’m just putting that one out there as a universal statement, without doing additional research on ballistics analysis, because I am that confident that this statement is correct.

The issue isn’t ballistics, it’s the presentation of forensics as a whole. Forensic Science enjoys an extremely unrealistic presentation in popular media. This isn’t unique to forensics, but because the field is far more esoteric, a lot of people get their only primer on Forensics from shows like CSI. This is a very real problem.

TV frequently presents forensics as infallible. This should not be surprising. Most fiction works off some variation of protagonist/antagonist conflict, and if your fiction starts is building off of the framework of police hunting, “the bad guy,” then forensics becomes a convenient form of deus ex machina. One that is completely socially acceptable in modern media. Of course the hair samples collected can put the, “bad guy,” at the scene.

This has real world consequences, because juries; real world juries in America today, are very likely to accept forensic evidence as absolute proof, even when they shouldn’t. They’ve been primed by decades of TV to accept anything a forensic scientist says as factual, and in the vast majority of cases those experts are testifying on behalf of the state.

There’s, also, an inverse, where cases which lack forensic evidence are much harder to convict, with juries skeptical of prosecutions which lack forensic support.

But, hey, you got hair and fiber, right? Turns out, the FBI’s elite hair and fiber techs were full of shit the entire time. For over 20 years, the FBI presented an image of forensic hair and fiber matches a new method in crime fighting science, but in reality it was only slightly more advanced than looking at the materials and going, “yep, looks similar.” It was entirely subjective, and not even remotely scientific, but this resulted in convictions (and more than a few executions.)

It’s also not the only story like this, with bite matching as another highly subjective and un-scientific form of forensic matching. You can get lucky and have a very distinct bite pattern, but it’s not a definitive, “oh, yeah, this was definitely this individual,” unless it’s something distinct to that person’s mouth.

One that might be a surprise is fingerprint matching. Fingerprint matching is shockingly subjective. We’re all told that, “every fingerprint is unique,” but that’s never been confirmed. It’s unlikely that you’ll find duplicate finger prints, but when you’re only looking at partials, the chances of a duplicate is much higher. Modern forensics uses a point matching system of identifying specific “features” in the print itself, but that system is entirely subjective. So, when someone is reporting that they have a 10pt match, what they’re also saying is that there’s possibly large parts of the print that do not match. But, the forensic tech is the sole arbiter of that decision.

Combine this with the fact that most forensics labs are directly affiliated with law enforcement organizations, and you have a very clear conflict of interest.

In the case of ballistics, it’s entirely subjective. There’s no point system. There’s no procedure. Just a forensic tech looking at two bullets and saying, “yep, looks similar.” However, thanks to a generation of loyal TV viewers indoctrinated by prime time crime dramas, they’re ready to accept that the forensic scientist speaks with authority.

Still probably shouldn’t use the same firearm for multiple assassinations, because if that tech decides your assassin’s weapon was the one used, the jury’s going to be entirely too happy to convict.

-Starke

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The Myth of Forensic Science and its Consequences was originally published on How to Fight Write.

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[howtofightwrite]

you mentioned it in another post, so: do you perhaps know *where* your "how to pick a weapon for a character" post(s) is? i've used a bunch of keywords and searches and cant find it. thank you for your time!

It took a minute, and there are a couple associated posts.

Your Character's Weapon is also a Character is probably the post you were looking for.

There's also How Do You Choose A Martial Art, which isn't about weapons but does go into more detail on the process of selecting a combat style for your characters, and by extension, the advice here will apply to your characters' weapon choices.

There have been some more recent articles, like Weapon of Choice, but that's a lot more focused.

If you have a more focused type of weapon in mind, (or set of weapons), then you may simply want to ask about those directly.

-Starke

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[howtofightwrite]

If you're a profit-driven criminal like an arms dealer, what's your motive when you align with insurgents against a government? Unless they're on the verge of collapse, doesn't it always make more business sense to side with the people running the country?

The problem with selling to the nation itself is two-fold. First, the nation already has an arms dealer, and second, you don't have enough stock to keep them happy.

The first problem is a function of geopolitics. If you pick a lesser developed country on the map, chances are extremely good that the established government already receives arms from an outside source. The three largest arms dealers in the world are the United States of America, The Russian Federation, and The People's Republic of China.

For example: if you're trying to arm a small country's military, and they have about 50k standing troops, you're not just looking to sell them 50k rifles. You need to sell them several thousand rounds of ammunition per weapon, and suddenly you're looking at needing to move at least a hundred million rounds of ammunition into the country. On top of that, they need heavy equipment, tanks, aircraft, and replacement parts for all of those systems. So, even if you do find a way to obtain all those resources, it turns out the nation's already buying ex-Soviet hardware from a foreign nation.

A brief aside about Soviet designs (the AK-47 is the poster child for this, but it's, mostly, true of nearly all Soviet era military hardware), they're incredibly easy to build. People can joke about the quality of Soviet era trucks, or the merits of the AR15 pattern rifle, but you can (almost, literally) start commercially producing functional AK47s in a shack out in the wilderness.

So, while the real world example I just cited does buy their arms from the Russians and Ukrainian governments, it's not that unreasonable for any nation with a marginally developed industrial center, to be able to start turning out cheap, but effective, firearms.

In contrast, as a freelance arms dealer, you've got, maybe, a couple thousand Rhodesian FALs. That's not going to interest the legitimate government, it's not enough, the quality is too low, and you can't ramp up the supply to match the demands of an ongoing military conflict. But, if the rebels pay you up front, you can give them enough arms to get started... at that point, it's not really about arming them for the long haul, it doesn't matter if they succeed or die, and if they do succeed, maybe, hopefully, they paid you enough to kick some more hardware their way. Or, they die, you got your money, and when the dust settles, you can bribe a few soldiers to hand over a few crates of confiscated arms, wander into the next nation, and start all over again.

Except, that's not the only possibility. Because it's quite possible you're not selling Rhodesian FALs, you're selling something a little more modern. Maybe they're M14s, almost factory fresh. When anyone asks where you got them, you give the same answer you would have given with the FALs; you bribed some soldiers to lose a few shipments, but that's simply not true. What you have is already bought and paid for by another foreign nation, who wants you arming these rebels, wants you stirring the pot, and handed the shipments off to you to start some fireworks. You're not, "a spy," that's far too classy, you're what you say, "an arms dealer," but you're also covertly working for a foreign government's intelligence agency. Your handler wanders in and tells you who to sell to, and off you go to strike up a new deal.

Freelance arms dealers go to the people who will pay. Rebels with no funds to purchase arms aren't getting anything on credit. Governments don't often need arms dealers, and may also be unable to pay.

Arms dealers with backing in the intelligence community aren't interested in supporting the government; they're in country to help start and support a proxy war.

When you want to sell weapons to governments, the solution is to get into weapons manufacturing, not gunrunning.

-Starke

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[howtofightwrite]

What kind of advantage, if any, would a swordfighter (specifically one with an arming sword) get from being ambidextrous? I've been thinking of revamping a story I wrote as a teenager and to 16-year-old me the ability to switch sword hands mid-combat was one of the main ways to show how Extra Special Badass my main character was, but I figured I should check before I bring that over to the (heavily) rewritten edition

A few things come to mind, with one being distinctly more artificial than the others.

The artificial example is that your character can continue fighting even if they lose the use of one of their hands. The reason I'm calling this artificial is because, chances are, any injury that took their arm or hand out of use, will probably also be serious enough to impair their ability to fight, beyond just that limb. (Blood loss and pain are likely to be the major issues here.)

One, very real, advantage is architectural. Medieval castles and fortifications were specifically designed with right hand dominance in mind. Many were built so that an assaulting force would have their right arms pressed against the wall. This manifests in the spiral of staircases, where an ascending assaulter is moving clockwise, and their right arm is against the center axis, while a defender above them will have their right arm free to strike from the outer radius, giving them more freedom of to attack. You'll also see this pattern with some straight stairways along the sides of walls, so that the assaulters will have their arms pressed against the fortification, while defenders have their right arms over open space.

Somewhat obviously, if you're ambidextrous, you can swap hands and ignore this kind of restriction. While it's highly specific to the spaces you're fighting in, being ambidextrous (or even just competent with your off hand) can help when fighting in very cramped spaces. (This is even relevant in the modern era, and it's a good idea to learn how to shoot accurately with your off hand, even if you don't expect to do so. If you're left handed, this is borderline necessary, because you will encounter firearms that are specifically contoured or configured for a right handed shooter.)

One thing that ambidexterity doesn't really help with is dual wielding. The best recorded historical example of dual wielding is, probably, the sword and shield. Now, being ambidextrous would help your character flip their sword and shield to the opposite hands (this would still require a bit of fumbling with switching the weapons over, so, not something to do in the middle of combat, but the option is there.

Ambidexterity is one of those character traits that sounds like this was a character you came up with as a teenager. There's no shame in that, and this isn't at your expense. We have all made some questionable writing decisions when we were younger, and in this case it's not that bad. There are ambidextrous people. It's real, and it's realistic for someone to have some degree of ambidexterity.

Roughly 1% of the population is truly ambidextrous, with a much larger portion of the population who have some degree of self-trained ambidexterity.

Self trained ambidexterity especially common among left handed individuals who need to use everyday items that cannot be used left handed, and it is much cheaper to learn to use a pair of scissors with your right hand, rather than buying special, and expensive, left handed scissors, only to have the things disappear after a month when someone else, "borrows," and loses them.

Ambidexterity has applications (more, a range of general utility, like being able to write with either hand, or being able to easily work a mechanism while holding something heavy in their other hand. Ironically, with characters, it's the kind of trait you don't really need to call out and say, "yeah, my character is ambidextrous." Either they can perform acts proficiently with their "off-hand" or they can't, and most readers won't notice, unless the limitations (which your character doesn't have) are called out.

Ironically, for the combat applications mentioned above, your character will come across as more of a badass if they're not ambidextrous. If they have to switch hands, fighting on with their off-hand at a disadvantage, and still soldier on to victory, it's more impressive, "more badass," for them to overcome the limitation than to have a custom curated, "oh I don't face this adversity," token to play.

Hand dominance is weird, when it comes to fictional characters. Clearly they should have it, but most of the time, it's not commented on. It's not really relevant. Even in live action media, most of the time, characters will inherit their hand dominance from the actor playing them. This is why, focusing on ambidexterity as a combat advantage is a little strange to me.

The up shot is, I'm not saying, "don't do it." It's your character, it's a credible characteristic, it does add some unusual flavor to them without straining plausibility. My gut impulse is to say that it doesn't really benefit the character, but it's not detrimental, and it could certainly add texture.

There was a piece of advice from a roleplaying guide I read years ago; remember to design your characters so they have a mix of combat and social options available to them. You don't want to be in a situation where one of the players has focused exclusively on combat, and then when the party is in a town, they will have no meaningful ability to participate in the story. (I'm paraphrasing, this is from first edition Exalted's core book.)

I think it's good advice in general, but in relation to ambidexterity, this is something you can use to fluidly flavor a lot of the character's non-combat activities. If you can find ways to reliably incorporate into their everyday activities, it will make them unique (without feeling like you're trying to make them special.)

-Starke

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[howtofightwrite]

How much does hunting resemble fighting in a real battle/duelling/etc?

Movies about noble people makes it look like it's just a sport that doesn't tie into real life fighting, but real people I know (tho mostly macho men) that go hunting treat it like it's a manly man thing to do, only one step away from going to war.

Thank you! Have a good day.

So, this may come as a shock, but the number of deer who shoot back at hunters is shockingly low. So, that's a significant difference.

Hunting skills can be repurposed to track and execute other humans. It's not analogous to duels or battles, but you can hunt people. Some of the skills can be repurposed. Precision shooting, stealth, and tracking are all useful. However, humans are much more likely to turn on you, and and lay effective traps or ambushes.

Under normal circumstances, hunting is inherently an asymmetrical activity. The hunter enjoys almost insurmountable advantages over their prey (when they're not hunting sapient beings.) That doesn't mean it's, "safe." Deer in particular, can be quite dangerous, if sufficiently provoked. Of course, hunting predators (like bears or wolves) comes with the inherent danger, of the animal deciding to hunting the hunter.

So, of course, you end up with the guys using high power rifles to hunt an animal at long range. At that point, the macho element is just cultural norms, and it's entirely possible that someone (particularly an individual who is somewhat insecure in their masculinity) would attempt to associate it with other stereotypically masculine behaviors. Like going to war, or mistaking Coors and Budweiser for beer. Using those behaviors as affirmation that, yes, they can open every jar in the fridge. Though, why they may view asserting dominance over a jar of pickles as proof of their masculinity is an enigma.

Also, some people like to go out in the woods and get lost for a few days, or weeks. It's weird. I had my fill of sleeping on the ground when I was a teenager. At that point, some of it is just the trappings of the activity that gets you out of the house and away from the rest of the human race. Hunting and fishing are good excuses for that, especially if you think, "hiking," sounds like, "mobile mosquito feeder."

-Starke

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[howtofightwrite]

The Self-Delusion of "Good in a 'Real Fight'"

Hii how are you both? I like your blog’s tips as a fan of fantasy fiction, but I thought you could answer a real-life question. I do HEMA (im not good at it but its good fun!) and something comes up every now and then that i thought you could weigh in on with more authority.

Theres a big guy who isnt the best, but whose refrain is that he would win in a real fight since he wouldnt be holding back. He says its not a gender thing, just a size thing.

Since everyone has to hold back so we dont injure each other (and we still get plenty of bruises) he’s right, it’s an artificial environment.

Does he have a point that everyone’s restraint disadvantages big guys more, or is he being a bit of a poor sport?

Thanks!

rub-the-rest-with-yellow

He’s deluding himself, in a variety of ways.

Generally speaking, size doesn’t help, especially not in armed combat. It just means you’re a larger target for your foe’s weapon. Sword combat isn’t about being bigger and stronger than your opponent, it’s about opening your foe up and filleting them.

It’s important to remember that being bigger does not make you tougher, and no theoretical biological advantage makes you tougher than steel.

The entire point of using a blade is cutting your foe, not bludgeoning them. The emphasis here is to point out that you do not mindlessly hack away with a sword, trying to brute force your way through your foe’s armor, you look for openings and either slice through them, or thrust through them.

Now, if you’re using blunted edges, it is true that he could cause some misery if he didn’t hold back. However, that’s true for pretty much anyone in your group. You’re not competing to hurt one another.

Even with blunt weapons, like warhammers, maces, or mauls, you’re not relying on your strength, you’re using the inertia of the weapon to cause harm, so being a big guy still doesn’t offer any real advantage there.

Guys like this aren’t uncommon. They’re convinced that they’d be good in “a real fight.” In actual combat they would, inevitably, go down with the first hit, and then whine about how the fight wasn’t fair (if they survive.)

This is may be a bitter pill, and I’m not judging you for this, but there isn’t a single member of your group that would be okay in a real swordfight. The defect is in HEMA, not in you. HEMA, like many martial arts, is a revived art. This means, at some point in the past, the last person who was properly trained in your combat style died without passing that knowledge on. Someone in the 20th Century found surviving training manuals and manuscripts and did their best to rebuild the martial art from scratch.

This isn’t a case where the best techniques survived and have been codified, instead the only filter on which techniques survived is which texts survived the following centuries.

More than that, we know our reconstruction is wrong (or at least, incomplete.) We know this because of Polish Crosscutting. Unlike HEMA, this is not a revived art. It was (at least partially) preserved. It does a number of things that HEMA preaches against, and it decimates HEMA practitioners in competitive bouts. To be clear, Polish Crosscutting is not some incredibly effective set of sword techniques, it’s just better preserved than HEMA.

The end result is, our understanding of Historical European Martial Arts is extremely limited, with serious gaps. Against someone who actually knew what they were doing, any one of you would be screwed. And that’s not the point of the exercise.

This is going to somewhat duplicate the previous point, but, as you said, you’re training recreationally. This is for fun, and there is nothing wrong with that. However, if you’re training recreationally, or for sport, you are not training to use your skills in, “real,” combat. Again, you’ll find guys who are studying other recreational or sports martial arts and hold that up as their ability to handle themselves in “a real fight,” and they’re also deluding themselves.

If you want to train for combat, you train to kill people, not to, “fight.” It’s not fun, it’s not recreational, you’re not doing it to prove you can fight. It’s about ending another person’s life as efficiently as possible.

The idea of, “a fair fight,” (or in this case, “a real fight,”) is an illusion. It’s actively dangerous to both participants. In a real life or death, situation you’d want to take him out in as few strikes as possible. Realistically, we’re talking about ending his life in less than a second. Ideally, before his brain even realizes he’s in combat, and can react, though that’s bit harder to do reliably. If he is aware he’s in danger, neutralize his weapon, then end him. Again, the goal is for combat to be over in under five seconds. That probably won’t happen, but it should give you an idea of just how fast this would need to be. The longer you’re in combat, the greater the risk of you taking a hit, and in real combat, that’s a risk you cannot afford to take. Any injury means you’re at a disadvantage when you’re facing your next foe.

Killing someone is an entirely different discipline from recreational martial arts (and even from competitive sport combat.) If you train to kill people, you’re ready to kill people. If you train to have fun, you are not. If you’re in a real fight with real weapons, you’re not fighting to, “win,” you’re looking to end your foe.

To be fair, he may not be a poor sport about this. He probably, genuinely believes he can take any one of you. But, if he believes it’s because, “he’s holding back,” and he’s not one of the better duelists, yeah, he would not survive.

-Starke

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The Self-Delusion of “Good in a ‘Real Fight'” was originally published on How to Fight Write.

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[howtofightwrite]

Hi! I was wondering if you'd be able to tell me about some hand/arm injuries that could permanently prevent someone from wielding a sword? Sorry if this is a weird ask..

It's not so much weird, as vague. There's a lot of range on this. I mean, a severe CTE could prevent someone from effectively using a sword, though, obviously, that would come with some other, more significant, symptoms.

So, the most obvious answers are:

Loss of the hand or arm. If you don't have an arm, you can't pick up a sword with it. This one is kinda self explanatory. Worth remembering Götz von Berlichingen. He will come up, basically ever time we talk about lopping off a hand. A Bavarian mercenary, he lost his right hand to cannon fire in 1504, and had prosthetic replacements made, which he would continue to use while campaigning over the next 40 years.

While less dramatic, the loss of fingers can leave you without the ability to hold a sword. Also, I suspect, the loss of the thumb. I won't rule out the possibility of custom modified blades specifically for individuals who've lost digits, but, generally safe to assume they can't just pick up a sword.

Nerve damage could leave the hand or arm partially paralyzed, resulting in the inability to effectively wield a sword, without complete loss of the arm. These can originate from relatively minor injuries, if they damage the nerves. I had a friend who had lost sensation on a patch of their palm because of a (non-poisonous) snake bite. (The snake had damaged the nerve connection to that part of his hand.) Though, this didn't affect his overall usage of the hand, you could easily end up with a penetrating wound like this either disabling some fingers, or the hand entirely.

Probably worth knowing, that some animal venoms can result in tissue atrophy, or necrosis (meaning, the meat literally rots off of the body.) It's pretty horrifying, and, yeah, get the wrong spider bite on your hand without access to modern medical resources, and you could easily lose it.

Improperly healed broken bones in the hand could impair the manual dexterity enough to limit, or outright prevent the use of a sword. I'm a little fuzzier on exactly how this could happen, but because the bones in your hand are pretty delicate, it's not a short list.

Somewhat obviously, this isn't an exhaustive list of possibilities. I'm still thinking of other things that could potentially mess up the hand to the point where you wouldn't be able to use a sword. Likely, the answer is as simple as it getting stomped on by a horse, or losing some fingers to someone else's blade, but there are a lot of ways the human body can break.

-Starke

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[howtofightwrite]

Hello. I don't know if this belongs here but y'all know about weapons so maybe you've got ideas?

I'm writing a fantasy story that's got some anachronistic elements but it leans towards futuristic or modern. However I have characters using swords even though logically they should be using firearms. There's no lack of technology or resources limiting them from using guns so how can I explain the absence? What makes it trickier is certain firearm/projectile weapons do exist, like an arm cannon that shoots fire.

How can I make this work without implementing a system like the character job classes you find in RPGs?

Thanks!

So, the problem here is that firearms are, in their design, incredibly simple. At the simplest level, a firearm is just capping a tube, dropping something "chemically energetic" in, adding a projectile, and igniting the propellent.

If you have a setting with reasonably functional metallurgy, and flamethrowers, you have guns.

If you have a setting with the internal combustion engine, you have guns, because it is the exact same method of power generation, the only differences are in the chemicals used and the ignition method. After that, there is a difference in how the power is channeled and used, but they operate on the same intermingling of physics and chemistry.

This gets even worse when you start digging into chemistry. Gunpowder has been around for over a thousand years. The development of very basic powders came from the use of sulfur and potassium nitrate in early alchemical experiments. While modern accelerants are quite sophisticated, basic black powder can easily be produced with bronze age technology. In fact, it is easier to make gunpowder than a gun barrel that can withstand the resulting pressure.

Now, you might have guns that look very different from what we're used to. Moving beyond a basic 14th century handcanon, there is a lot of iterative technology that has gone into firearms. Being able to open the breach, prepackaged cartridges, barrel rifling and replaceable magazines, are all quite modern innovations. We've had the gun for nearly a millennia, but those are (mostly) less than two centuries old.

How can I make this work without implementing a system like the character job classes you find in RPGs?

This would not work. I trust we're all familiar with that scene from Indiana Jones. The problem with the firearm is it effectively negates other weapon options. In RPG terms, it hard counters nearly every non-gun build.

It doesn't matter if your ageless swordsman has spent a thousand years studying the blade, they can't stop a bullet, and very few people can continue to operate after you've pumped a couple rounds through them.

So, here's where things get a bit more complicated. In fantasy you may have enemies who simply aren't susceptible to gunshots. Vampires and Werewolves are the normal urban fantasy examples, though there's certainly options for things like golems, demons, and other flavors of undead to simply not care about bullets at all. This is before you get into edge cases that might not be susceptible for other reasons, such as mages who are able to cast effective shields against gunfire, and creatures such as dragons who are supernaturally resistant to injury. I mean, if you're going to go hunting dragons, taking a Glock is a phenomenally poor choice.

This leads to another possibility that probably shouldn't be overlooked: Gun control. Just because the M82 exists, doesn't mean you can get your hands on one. Even in the US, getting your hands on military hardware such as automatic firearms is prohibitively difficult and expensive. It's not difficult to envision a society where even access to handguns is excruciatingly difficult. I say it's not hard, because there are real-world examples like Japan or the UK, where private firearm ownership is excruciatingly difficult. Ironically, both Japan and the UK also heavily regulate possession of ammunition (not, only the firearm itself.)

Something that flies in the face of a lot of popular fantasy literature is how foundational the firearm is in our technological history. I don't mean the effects of the gun, that caused massive sociopolitical changes, but how the technology itself contributed to overall technological advancement. Something that can be deceptively difficult when writing a fantasy setting, is understanding how one technological innovation lead to another, and the rather startling way that all of this advanced science as a whole.

You may also want to check out this article on warmages from a couple years ago, as it covers a few concepts I skipped over for this post.

-Starke

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[howtofightwrite]

we're getting to speculation on a fantasy scenario, but what would be the logistics of a giant army? like what would be their main strength and weaknessses as a force? I'm making a campaign villain with giants as the main enemy faction but I don't see much depictions of them as an organized forces with plate armor and such instead of dumb primitive brutes, let alone how they would fare in melee combat against enemy combatant that is about a third of their height on average

The first example that comes to mind is Warhammer's Ogre Kingdoms. Technically, they're, "only," slightly under twice the size of a normal human, and they're in a setting with other armies that incorporate massive units of their own.

The Ogre Kingdoms do illustrate what is, probably, the single largest consideration for an army of giants: Food. Getting enough food to feed a significant force of massive fighters is going to be a serious problem. Warhammer being Warhammer, that setting ramps this up to cartoonish caricature, but if you're wondering about the weaknesses of an army like this, keeping everyone fed comes high on the list.

There's a couple solutions, and they have different implications.

The first is taking what they need while raiding. If you have a trained squad of giants rolling into a village, the local farmers aren't going to have many options to stop them from grabbing whatever livestock they want and wandering off. This is especially true if the giants have no qualms about eating the villagers. In which case, a relatively small, giant army could easily wipe out most of the outlying villages before marching on major cities.

This confers some major advantages for the giants. They don't need a coherent logistical base to support them, so if they've gathered in sufficient numbers, they don't need a war machine. They can travel (nearly) as far as they want without their logistical chain breaking down (because there isn't one.)

The trade-off is, if they're operating without any permanent bases, they'd be extremely vulnerable to sieges. Unless they have massive food stores in their cities and fortresses.

The second would be a sufficiently massive agricultural base, and logistical chain, backing them. The larger the army, the larger the nation that fielded them would need to be. This almost exactly flips the advantages and disadvantages of the previous solution. They'd need a strong logistics chain, and have a very limited ability to advance, (unless they're supporting it raiding), and their fortifications would be incredibly resistant to sieges. It's also possible that any army laying siege to a giant fortress would have to contend with patrols of giants wandering into and disrupting their camps. This could actually make these sieges particularly dangerous.

Their ability to produce arms and armor is related to two questions. Are they producing their own equipment? What is their overall level of technological development?

If they're producing their own gear, then chances are they need production facilities. Smithies, access to iron (or fictional materials such as orichalcum.) If they're fielding weapons and armor that are similar to scaled up human gear, chances are that it needs to be made from something other than steel, or they need to be exceptionally skilled smiths.

Something we've talked about in the past, but the use of the greatsword was delayed by centuries because smiths didn't have access to steel that could structurally support the design. If you have a 20ft tall giant swinging around a 15ft sword, you'd basically need access to super alloys. modern steel, or mythical materials to make that weapon a reality. You could not do it with iron, and you'd be hard pressed to do it with steel from more than a few centuries ago.

The needed technical proficiency applies regardless of whether the giants are producing their own weapons or not. But, if they're not, then you're more likely to see more scavenged or improvised weapons. Such as a giant slapping people around with the beam of a trebuchet or a fallen tree trunk.

The biggest issue with armor would just be getting enough metal to outfit them in the first place. Obviously, if they have access to mines then they could collect the materials themselves, securing access to more metal would be something that could drive an organized nation to war.

As for the final question, turning them loose on conventional infantry would be a bloodbath. Polearms and artillery would be legitimately dangerous to an unarmored giant. Lighter weapons, like sword and shield infantry, archers, and gunpowder infantry would (likely) be completely outclassed, and easily dispatched. Mounted units armed with polearms could pose a threat, while other mounted units would likely fall behind. Even with polearms, engaging would probably result in devastating casualties. (There's a potential edge case here with marksmen being able to target the eyes specifically. This isn't, realistically, an option for pre-rifled handgunners, however for skilled bowmen or crossbowmen, it could drop a few giants.)

This is assuming that the giants have proportionately thick skin that resists casual abuse, which seems like a safe assumption.

If the giants are fielding full plate armored units, yeah, the poleams and artillery are your best options, but the casualties suffered would be even higher.

You do not want to get into a fight with a 20ft tall full plate fighter.

-Starke

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Equipping and Using Armor

How long should armour/costumes take to put on? Also it seems from films, there are so many complaints about such being ill-fit, and taking a long time to wear, movement restricting, too heavy. I get it’s filming but we’re expecting the characters are able to freely fight in them and get in and out at ease. In other words, what we see is too impractical and unrealistic in reality. So what is actually realistic and something you could really see working?

So, there’s a huge difference between armor and costumes. There’s also a wild difference in the amount of time (for either) based on what you’re talking about.

Something like a gambeson or breastplate could be put on fairly quickly. Somewhat similar to putting on any other article of clothing (though, admittedly, the breastplate may be a poor example here depending on the design.)

On the other end of the spectrum, something like full plate would require a second person to strap the wearer in, though I’m not sure on exactly how much time it would take. A modern reenactor can get into plate in ~10 minutes, though that number will vary based on the armor in use, and it’s likely that a professional combatant in the era could have easily shaved a few minutes off that time. So, it’s not an incredibly drawn out process, but it is still something you’d need to do before combat began.

As he demonstrates, getting out of your armor is considerably easier than getting into it, but there are still going to be buckles in hard to reach places that will require assistance. His estimate of it taking about a third as long to get out, is probably a pretty sound guess.

Too heavy is a very subjective criticism; it is entirely dependent on the wearer’s conditioning. Historical armor weights vary wildly depending on the style, and material. The video example above weighs just under 60lbs, which is slightly lighter surviving historical examples from the 14th century.

Ironically, soldiers today tend to have heavier carry loads than someone armored in full plate with their kit.

The reality was that fully articulated armor offered the wearer a lot of mobility, and combined that with protection. While it is, “heavy armor,” that is weight that a professional combatant could condition themselves to, and wouldn’t really interfere with their ability to move and fight. If you have armor that seriously impairs your ability to move, that’s just going to get you killed.

Ironically, the bigger issue wasn’t the weight of the armor, it was the way the armor could trap heat, and exhaust a combatant who didn’t have the conditioning for it.

This is where you’ll get into a specific problem that’s basically impossible to lock down because it’s going to depend on the individual. If you’re putting actors in period appropriate reproduction armor, they might find that very uncomfortable, and may not have the condition (or the desire to build up the conditioning) to be effective in it. They’re not going to need to actually fight in the armor. Additionally, it’s entirely possible that the costume designers created armor that isn’t really functional. This is a weird edge case, because at that point you do have a costume, not armor, and it doesn’t matter if it would be impossible to actually fight in armor designed to those specifications, because the actors are going to do what the script tells them to.

There’s actually a lot of examples of downright terrible armor designs in films, that would be more dangerous to the wearer. Any armor with, “boob plate,” come to mind off hand, but that’s an entirely different topic.

Now, having just dunked on that, there are a lot of films, and TV where the production team takes the time to make functional armor designs, or use historically accurate(-ish) reproductions. (Sometimes you’ll see some anachronisms. Post-gunpowder armor designs in a pre-gunpowder setting is a very common example.) The considerations of filming work better if your actors can move and interact with their environment. If they’re comfortable and mobile, then that’s not problem for the production.

One of the biggest examples of armor that simply doesn’t work which you’ll see frequently in pop culture, isn’t heavy at all, it’s leather. While leather was used as a component of armor (such as the straps in the example above), nobody was making armor out of leather. The image of a stealthy knife fighter in bondage gear has the same historical authenticity as Leonidas’s leather speedo crew. Which is to say: None.

Leather was used in clothing (just like it is today), and if you’re looking at a character like Aragorn (and, I mean, specifically Aragorn, as in the creepy murder hobo wandering around in the forest), then leather clothing makes a lot of sense. But that’s not armor.

When it comes to armor weight, most of it is going to come from the chain. Chainmail is excellent protection. It has its weaknesses, but it’s a very solid starting point. Padded armor gets a bad reputation in modern pop culture, but was also shockingly effective. It’s easy to forget, but that was armor, and it did work. Plate was an effective outer shell, protecting your chain from the worst of the abuse you’d take.

So, in asking, “what works?” Historical armor worked. It worked very well. Even things like full plate (when they’re based on historical examples) were things you could actually move and fight in. Now, you needed training, you needed the conditioning to effectively function in that armor, but real people did that.

-Starke

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Equipping and Using Armor was originally published on How to Fight Write.

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