Welcome to my blog, the purpose of which is to talk... about--stuff. And... yeah. Skeptics and freethinkers welcome. And Lovecraft fans. And Star Wars fans. And Bruce Lee fans. And martial artists. And any one who prays to the Old Ones.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

KNIGHTS VS SAMURAI, AND DELUSION

So, after reading hundreds of offensive and frankly stupid comments on YouTube, I've decided to make my own profile, Walter Bernahrd (It was supposed to be "Bernhard", but I was in a hurry and fuckin' YouTube won't let you alter your user name after it's been set). So I've been arguing with YouTube theists, who seem to be dumber than regular theists, with non-existent spelling, grammar, and syntax. Then, after watching some battle scenes from period movies, I clicked on some lame samurai video, that wasn't even a battle scene but a montage set to really annoying music. That's when I saw this comment from user Martin958;

Lucky Germans then. They stopped short of the English channel as they readied to cross into Britain after a messenger arrived with some personal bereavement news, so they turned back to sort out a new leader. Either way the European knights could barely stand-up in their armour let alone fight a Mongol (or a Samurai) being the main point.

Yeah, it's that ignorant. While I generally avoid stupid, pointless locker room debates about pirates vs ninjas, or Vikings, or whatever, this is the kind of ignorant Hollywood bullshit, that, as a history buff, I find deeply offensive (it's like creationism to biology, geology, and paleontology students). Like the people who insist that Vikings wore horned helmets, or had really slow heavy swords, the whole "medieval knights were really, really slow in plate armor" is just too fucking stupid for words. So, I responded.

"Wow, really? Again with this shit? If knights could barely stand up in armor, please explain to me how they were able to sprint across battlefields in it and ride horses. If they couldn't fight in it, then why did they successfully fight in it for over a thousand years? DUH. Let's stop the stupid samurai vs knight debate; knights have better armor, better swords, and they don't kill themselves when they lose a battle. And since there's no way to know who would win, the entire thing is pointless." [I'd like to be the first to point out that I was inaccurate when I said "a thousand years". Full plate didn't become popular until the 12th century]

His reply to me;

Yes really! Again with this shit indeed it seems. When was the last time a Knight could sprint across a battlefield. If you knew how to read a history book you'd see some were even lowered onto their horses with various contraptions as they were too heavy to climb up themselves. DUH! They fought in them for hundreds of years because all they ever had fights with were defenceless concript foot-soldiers or other over-weight Knights. Brain-power is the key to knowing my dear.

 "Most suits of armor weighed between 50 and 70 pounds. That's about the same weight carried by modern soldiers, and it was equally distributed around the limbs, allowing them to mount and ride, and run. You're the one who needs to learn how to read a history book, dumbass. The really heavy suits were only for tournaments, not real combat. Also, idiot, if armor was so heavy that they could barely fight, then lightly armored or unarmored knights would have finished them off, since tactics evolve."

I then elaborated my position.

"Throughout European history, tactics change with technology. That's [why] the advent of firearms in the 16th century eventually led to armies dispensing with full suits, keeping only their breastplates for defense against musket balls. So if full plate armor was so restrictive, it would have been discarded long before then. So, you're wrong."

"Brain-power is the key to knowing my dear."

"In that case, you better start reading a lot more books."

 And then again.

"And just to compound the stupidity of the whole Otaku "samurai are invincible!!" shit, there's also the fact that knights were trained from early childhood to fight and ride in plate. Because as all samurai nuts must *know*, repetitious exercise over the course of your entire life doesn't make you any stronger. Riiight."

His replies to these last two comments?

 "Go cry to mommy.", and "boo-hoo".

Followed by,

"I thought the discussion was Medieval Knights vs. Samurai's and you're talking 16th century musketballs now. Keep moving the goalposts."

The funny thing is, completely ignoring the context of a post like that is what creationists have been doing to me since I first started debating them. So it's truly enlightening to step out and realize that pompous, immature, condescending douhe-baggery is not limited to fundies and Cretinists, but also to weird otaku freaks who are convinced that samurai are the greatest warriors ever, even though they were never tested against any other power except Korea (which they were forced to abandon just a few years later). And seriously; this Deadliest Warrior shit has got to stop. I don't know why comparing ancient warriors who never met in battle to each other is so fascinating, but it has resulted in some truly sad people who have absolutely no grasp on how historical research works.

5 comments:

  1. YouTube theists, who seem to be dumber than regular theists

    YouTube everything is dumber than regular everything. YouTube comment sections are the cesspit of the internet. It's gotten so bad that YouTube itself is trying to figure out how to clean it up.

    Sounds like Martin958 had a historical fetish of some sort and you stepped on it. Religion isn't the only kind of dogmatic thinking, though at least otaku don't usually resort to burning you at the stake.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Martin is the kind of person that I've taken to calling "samurai-fags", in that they are totally obsessed with the samurai and the idea that they could defeat anyone from any time period. These are the same people who will actually go out of their way to claim that a katana can cut through plate armor even though the cutting edge was generally made of soft steel (which is why is Kendo and Kenjutsu, the fencers NEVER block an attack with the edge, but parry it away with the flat of the blade). To demonstrate the absurdity of the samurai fetish even more, last semester, this guy who is a black belt in Aikido came to my Tae Kwon Do and we talked about swordplay. Somehow we got on the subject of katanas, and he talked about how you don't block. "Why not?", I asked. "Because,", he said, "if you did that, I would destroy your sword and kill you."

      Delete
  2. I have a sneaking suspicion that Martin958 was a troll...
    and a good one, apparently...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nope. He continued in his vacuous manner after I left the thread. The whole historical warrior vs whatever has become pretty big on the Net, so when you see retards saying katanas can cut through tanks, or [insert favorite guy here] were/are utterly invincible, odds are they're being perfectly serious. Sad, but true.

      Delete
  3. Let me ask you something 'expert', what would you say is the most important factor in a fight?

    ReplyDelete