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By Mark D, May 11, 2011 1:28 am

TNA was fun. My new and improved Axe is even more deadly then before. Its
faster and thus I’m faster. For the war part of it I ended up barking out
a lot of orders and got a big helping hand from Gerade. We really kicked
some ass for most of the day. I did re-learn a lesson I learn every start
of the season. I HATE our archers. They know enough to kill me because I
wear no plate and I’m usually out in the open. Plus I’ve learned that when
our archers aren’t aiming at their targets they are most likely aiming at
their target.

Hurrah for Brahm for hiding my Jack Daniels that I worked really hard to
get for free. The one ranger was fine, the other one was a pain in the
ass Super Cop Rookie. God Dam Bright Highlighter Orange MadDog.
Of course they saw that stuff when you hide it with your foot. The only
real problem I had was that my pinky toenail is curved upwards, and
towards the end of the fighting I managed to drive the steel toe down
into the toenail which went into my toe and made it tough for me to walk.

Right now I feel like I am living just for the weekends, just for war. I
really feel alive when I’m fighting, when violence is being feed to me. I
want to fight as much as possible. I want to bring vengeance and wrath
upon my enemies, no matter who they are on the field. I am fighting for
the pure adrenalin from battle to battle. To know you can defeat your
enemies no matter who they are is the greatest feeling in the world.

Plus let me just say I got a great response from Blackcross about my Rise
and Fall story. That story was definitely inspired by his stories at last
years Masquerade Ball, so to get a response from him was great.

I’ve got something pissing me off really badly. I won’t definitely know
anything about it till after this weekend. I’m usually the last one to
catch on to some of the politics going on around me, and this seems to be
one of those times. Thankfully its got to know the lay of the law and to
have connections in all the right places. Those people have definitely
offered me a hand already. I’ll probably know more after this weekend. I
just can’t really say anything on this forum of speech. This is almost
like Reality TV. Is reality TV really reality once you introduce Cameras
to people. People naturally act and react differently when they do not
know they are being watched. Interesting thing to think about for this
Journal.

Comments (3)

By Mark D, April 15, 2011 6:08 am

Although this isn’t just limited to sword battles, it’s just about any non-gunpowder battle in Hollywood films. The problem is when you’ve seen real-ish combat, you understand that all combat basically breaks down to the same idea. It’s all Action Vs Re-Action. Unless you have super human reflexes, it’s almost impossible to parry. Most of the time you want to swing to kill with your first swing, not aim to parry anyway. Parrying will only save you for a short period of time, and is useless unless whoever your against does something to blatantly telegraph a move which will  leave him off balance.

You can see this in a one on one match between the two best fighters I know:

They obviously know each other too, but you can see what I’m saying. A battle is going to be an action and a re-action. if the action strikes, there is no re-action. If the action misses, the re-action should win. It is extremely rare you see long dragged out duels like you see in Hollywood. Sometimes you might see that between two pole arms, but that is mostly due to the length of the weapon allowing blocks to cover more of the body.

But for the most part you rarely see pole arms in Hollywood combat. As great a warrior as Gimli is, he would be at an extreme disadvantage against a 6 foot tall opponent with a 6 foot pole arm. I have fought people who had an obvious reach disadvantage, and had no problem dispatching them. Only the very best can make up anything more then a few inches in reach differential. But you will once again almost never see reach given any sort of importance, other then the Braveheart scene with the Spears and the horseman.

If you can act first, you will most likely win a fight. So if someone comes into your reach without you being in their reach, you’ll probably win. It kind of sucks though that this is almost always ignored. To me there is more to a fight then swinging the swords. There’s a certain psychology when two fighters are staring each other down. Who will move first? Does the fighter want to act or re-act? The closest you ever get to this is the end of Kill Bill Volume 1, but even that has too much parrying.

Battles can be a thing of beauty, even without a bunch of parrying back and forth because you somehow have to shoehorn a conversation into a fight. For that matter the lack of Pole arms tends to get on my nerves too. The Billhook was one of the most popular weapons of the period for foot soldiers because of it’s multiple uses. Most of them came with a thrusting tip, they would have a back blade for cleaving, and if the hook didn’t puncture the armor like an axe, it tended to hook between armor plates and you could drag horsemen to the ground.

Swords are overrated as weapons, especially Florentine (two swords) style. Unless you were fighting with a Sword and Shield you were a dead man walking with just a sword or two swords. For example you commonly see someone crossing their swords to block/catch a blade. This is actually the worst thing possible to do. You need to use one hand as an offensive sword and one as a defensive sword. If you are blocking one attack with both blades, you are unable to take advantage of the block. Which once again everything goes back to act and re-act. If you can’t immediately take advantage of the situation or opponents mistakes then  your just asking for your mistakes to be taken advantage of.

There’s a reason I don’t work in Hollywood, because I probably wouldn’t make a penny and my film would be a mish mash of everything. It wouldn’t make a lick of sense, and at some point I would probably cause it to make even less sense. But if I did have the money to produce a film, I’d probably get the rights to the Prophet Series by Duetscher and make an epic out of the Life of Trotsky, but that’s a story for another day.