This is my personal farewell to a game series that has managed to captivate and move me like no other. Perhaps you will find a few of your own experiences reflected within it, too. If you’ve found this comic, I’m glad we could undertake a small part of this journey together. Enjoy!
(I would have liked to include so many more things but ajksdkflkanc I’m just glad it is done)
I took some historical sword-fighting lessons to make the fights in my novel more realistic - here’s what I learned.
To make the fighting scenes in my low fantasy novel more realistic, I went to see a trainer for historical sword-fighting last week, both to barrage her with questions and to develop realistic choreographies for the fight scenes in the novel. Since I figured some of what she told me might be useful for you too, I put together a small list for you. Big thanks to Gladiatores Munich and Jeanne for making time! (Here are some more pictures if you’re interested.)
Caveat: I’m by no means a sword-fighting expert myself, so take these nuggets with a grain of salt – I might have misremembered or misinterpreted some of the things Jeanne told me. If I did, feel free to tell me.
1.) Weapon choices need to make sense
Let’s start with a truism: always ensure your character’s weapons make sense for a.) their profession, b.) their cultural background and c.) the environment they’re going to fight in. A farmer probably couldn’t afford a sword and might use a knife or threshing flail instead, and someone who doesn’t want to be noticed probably wouldn’t be milling about sporting a glaive or another large weapon. Also, soldiers native to a country with wide open plains would be more likely to carry long-range melee weapons such as spears or large swords, than those from a country consisting of mostly jungle or dense forests. The same applies to situations: if your character is going to be fighting in close quarters (even just a normal house), he’d get little value out of a spear or even a longsword, as there’d be no space to swing it effectively.
2.) Boldness often beats skill
In real swordfights, recklessness was often more important than technique. The fighter less afraid of getting injured would often push harder, allowing them to overpower even opponents with better technique.
3.) Even a skilled fighter rarely stands a chance when outnumbered
While a skilled (or lucky) fighter might win a two-versus-one, it’d be extremely unlikely for even a single master swordsman to win against superior numbers, even just three and if they’re below his skill level. The only way to plausibly pull this off would be to split the opponents up, perhaps by luring them into a confined space where you could take them on one by one. The moment you’re surrounded, you’re probably done for – because, unlike in Hollywood, they wouldn’t take turns attacking but come at you all at once.
4.) Dual-wielding was a thing
… at least in some cultures. I often heard people say that people using a weapon in each hand is an invention of fiction. And while my instructor confirmed that she knew of no European schools doing this—if they did, it’s not well-documented—she said it was a thing in other cultures. Example of this include the dual wakizashi in Japan or tomahawk and knife in North America. However, one of the biggest problems with the depiction of dual wielding in novels/movies/games are the “windmill”-type attacks where the fighter swings their weapons independently, hitting in succession rather than simultaneously. Normally you’d always try hitting with both weapons at once, as you’d otherwise lose your advantage.
5.) Longswords were amazing
Longswords might seem boring in comparison to other weapons, but they were incredibly effective, especially in combat situations outside the battlefield. The crossguard allowed for effective blocking of almost any kind of attack (well, maybe not an overhead strike of a Mordaxt, but still), the pommel was also used as a powerful “blunt” weapon of its own that could crack skulls. Though they were somewhat less effective against armored opponents, the long, two-handed hilt allowed for precise thrusts at uncovered body parts that made up for it.
6.) “Zweihänder” were only used for very specific combat situations
Zweihänder—massive two-handed swords—were only used for specific purposes and usually not in one-on-one combat as is often seen in movies or games. One of these purposes was using their reach to break up enemy formations. In fact, one type of two-handed sword even owed its name to that purpose: Gassenhauer (German, Gasse = alley, Hauer = striker)—the fighters literally used it to strike “alleys” into an enemy formation with wide, powerful swings.
7.) It’s all about distance
While I was subconsciously aware of this, it might be helpful to remember that distance was an incredibly important element in fights. The moment your opponent got past your weapons ideal range, it was common to either switch to a different weapon or just drop your weapon and resort to punching/choking. A good example of this are spears or polearms—very powerful as long as you maintain a certain range between you and your opponent, but the moment they get too close, your weapon is practically useless. That’s also why combatants almost always brought a second weapon into battle to fall back one.
8.) Real fights rarely lasted over a minute
Another truism, but still useful to remember: real fights didn’t last long. Usually, they were over within less than a minute, sometimes only seconds – the moment your opponent landed a hit (or your weapon broke or you were disarmed), you were done for. This is especially true for combatants wearing no or only light armor.
9.) Stop the pirouettes
Unfortunately, the spinning around and pirouetting that makes many fight scenes so enjoyable to watch (or read) is completely asinine. Unless it’s a showfight, fighters would never expose their backs to their opponent or even turn their weapon away from them.
10.) It still looks amazing
If your concern is that making your fight scenes realistic will make them less aesthetic, don’t worry. Apart from the fact that the blocks, swings and thrusts still look impressive when executed correctly, I personally felt that my fights get a lot more gripping and visceral if I respect the rules. To a certain extent, unrealistic and flashy combat is plot armor. If your characters can spin and somersault to their heart’s content and no one ever shoves a spear into their backs as they would have in real life, who survives and who doesn’t noticeably becomes arbitrary. If, on the other hand, even one slip-up can result in a combatant’s death, the stakes become palpable.
That’s about it! I hope this post is as helpful to some of you as the lessons were to me. Again, if anything I wrote here is bollocks, it’s probably my fault and not Jeanne’s. I’ll try to post more stuff like this in the future.
a really excellent way to reduce anxiety is to pick up a new hobby. find something you’re interested in, learn it, then use it as a healthy and productive way to cope.
learn to play guitar
learn how to make interactive stories with the free program Twine
learn how to make pixel art
learn another language
learn how to build a ship in a bottle
learn how to develop your own film
learn how to embroider
learn how to make chiptunes (8-bit music)
learn how to make origami (the art of paper folding)
In honor of the recent Patreon push and the new chapter being released on March 24, the folks over at the TOAFN discord and I (@asexualchloe ) are doing a thing called the 14 Days of The Once and Future Nerd! Each day has a specific prompt and a character associated with it. Respond to the prompt, talk about the character, engage however you want!
Who can participate?
Everyone! The idea here is to get as many people engaging with this as possible? You can do good art? Great! Do an art about the prompt or the character! You can draw a stick figure? That’s awesome too! Post your stick figures as much as you want! You don’t art at all? I don’t art either, I designed this so you don’t have to!
Contribute as much time, energy, and creative muscle to this as you want to.
What do I do?
Each day (or as many days as you want to do) make a post that is in line with the prompt. Tag it with the Once and Future Nerd tags. You’re done!
When does it start?
March 10, two weeks before the premiere.
Where can I find the prompts?
Below the cut right under this answer. Prompts will also be posted as the event goes on!
one of my favorite tropes is when a character is talking in the foreground and something happens in the background that directly contradicts what they’re saying
Normally I don’t like bringing this up, but: Tumblr is making it increasingly difficult for writers and artists to get their posts to show up in tags and searches, meaning that our fics and art are being exposed to fewer people.
Yes, it’s still possible to get posts to show up, but in the case of the search function, it’s only if they have no links - not even links to other Tumblr posts. For people like me who include links to other chapters in my fic so readers can get caught up on chapters they might miss, this is a huge problem. I basically have no choice but to include those links, or else I would make things massively inconvenient for my readers.
So why am I telling everyone this? Because this means reblogs are becoming more and more important to creators. With posts so difficult to find in searches and tags, reblogs are one of the few other ways for people to find new artists or writers.
You’re under no obligation to reblog my stuff, of course, but I want to put it out there why reblogs are so important to those of us who write/draw/create content.
(Also: While I’ve personally verified the stuff that’s going on with searches, I have no clue what’s going on with tags. Some of my stuff is showing up there, some isn’t, seemingly with little correlation to the links included. So tags might not be quite as strict, but they do seem to be less consistent.)