iron-imperialist:

whitesupremacymemes:

rtrixie:

gh0st1764:

somesocialjusticebullshit:

whiskey-wolf:

And this is what happens when a masterfully crafted katana collides with a masterfully crafted longsword.

Suck it, katana

“But…but gloriously folded 1000 times Nippon steel, b-but” -

SUCK IT WEEABOOS

rtrixie

;_;7

Wait, why is this being tested edge on edge? Edge on side is more common.

It’s actually not. When i was learning sword, the first thing you learn is to catch the enemy’s blade with the edge of your own. When you catch with the flat, the angle costs your wrist a lot of strength. It’s all physics. Edge-on-edge actually is the appropriate way to parry. It nicks up your blade, yes, but better the blade than your body. 

True. The intensive smithing process that produces katanas is mostly about compensating for the shitty iron sources, in battle samurai were cavalry archers or maybe heavy cavalry that charged with polearms, the image of samurai as swordfighters and duelists (and poets, and brave facers-of-death) mostly comes from the Edo period, a time of peace when the warrior types tried to justify their social position through increasingly ridiculous romantic gestures.

Like, this is a pretty common pattern when an age of war ends, the warriors turning their energy to petty bullshit, seeing who can put together the most absurdly expensive/expensively absurd outfit, who can tell the best epic tale about how awesome they are and think up the cleverest way to throw poetic shade at each other, all starting feuds and killing each other over dumb teenage-boy honor shit.

Like, think about the French nobility at Versailles. Or wealthy Italian families after Condottieri stopped mattering in battle - that’s the setting of Romeo & Juliet, where the Montagues and Capulets are all throwing costume balls and walking around with swords and figuring out cute ways to double-entendre insult each other and killing and dying in the street and the real power lies with the Prince who is like “Oh my GOD you guys, stop it, you’re bothering the merchants.” That’s a lot closer to what samurai swordsmen were like.

Hell, think about the way the actual gang wars of the crack era to capture corners (that is, productive territory) gave way to gangsta rap, diss tracks, and silly bling.

French Wars of Religion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It was the priest as an idler and destroyer of the household, who gained ascendancy over women through the confessional, that the soldiers and leaders attacked more than the priest as magician or upholder of the old order. The revolutionaire was no theologian. even if he talked of superstition, and the real reason for his prejudice against the confessional was the power he felt it gave the priest over his womenfolk. Such prejudices at times came near to misogyny and there are many examples of this in the expressions of the san-culottes, the commissairs and the representants en mission. This anti-feminism was fortified by the frequently furious opposition from the village women which they encountered on their iconoclastic missions-more than one revolutionaire had to take to their legs to escape their fury. But most of all the soldiers held a grudge against women because of the way they let themselves be seduced by the lying and lazy priests. At Bec du Tarn, Huegny, a Toulouse commissaire civil ‘thundered against fanaticism, and in particular against women, who were more easily seduced by it; he said that the Revolution had been made by men, and women should not be allowed to make it backtrack…” Dartigoeyte, representant en mission in the Gers, gave vent to similar feelings in his tirade against the devotes of Mirande: “And you, you bloody bitches, you are their whores [the priests’], particularly those who attend their bloody masses and listen to their mumbo jumbo,’ but he also had a word for the “jean-foutres of husbands who are naive enough to accompany them [and who] simply show what cuckolds they are by doing so.’

From The People’s Armies by Richard Cobb (via lovegodsmashtyrants)

nostalgebraist:

nostalgebraist:

“O Princess Dulcinea, mistress of this captive heart!  Thou has done me grievous harm in bidding me farewell and reproving me with the harsh affliction of commanding that I not appear before thy sublime beauty.  May it please thee, Señora, to recall this thy subject heart, which suffers countless trials for the sake of thy love.”

He strung these together with other foolish remarks, all in the manner his books had taught him and imitating their language as much as he could.

Meanwhile Don Quixote so far is about a LARPer who bases his life choices on bad fantasy novels and complains about getting friendzoned.  It was published in the early 1600s.  Human nature is eternal

The Partisan Leader - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Partisan Leader; A Tale of The Future is a political novel by the antebellum Virginia author and jurist Nathaniel Beverley Tucker. A two-volume work published in 1836 in New York City and in 1837 in Washington, D.C. under the pen-name “Edward William Sydney,”^[1] the novel is set thirteen years into the future, in 1849, and imagines a world where the American states south of Virginia have seceded from the Union. The story traces the formation of a band of Virginia insurgents who seek to free their state from federal control and adjoin it to the independent Southern Confederacy.

“Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don’t want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women’s strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.”

“Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world”

William Moulton Marston - reputed psychologist, polyamorist, inventor of the polygraph, creator of Wonder Woman. Y'know, wielder of the Magic Rope of Domination +3. (Though in the early stuff she sure does spend a lot of time tied up herself.)

Strong Female Characters, 1940s edition.

Honestly, I love genre fiction for the way that even the really good, well written stuff will be spiced with completely unreflective takes on the author’s kinks.

Like, Kim Stanley Robinson will write these great epic sagas about politics and ecology and postcapitalism and the role of scientists in society, all sorts of settings, and good money says there’s gonna be intergenerational sex in a public bath.

And my, Joss Whedon sure does love stories about psychologically vulnerable teenage girls who beat men up.

(Also pioneer of the “redhead geek girl” thing. Said once it was his explicit goal to make Alyson Hannigan a sex symbol. Plus Christina Hendricks, Felicia Day, Kitty Pryde, Kaylee hired ‘cause she can fix engines on her back with dudes she just met)

And well okay, that’s men. Except that the genre fiction by and for women is like pure kink. Before the internet, grocery and drug stores used to have, just hanging out there, a section full of rape/submission fantasies for women. Now it’s relegated to fanfiction. Or, y'know, the bestseller lists, like Twilight. Or bestselling Twilight fanfiction.

Also, ICP are America’s leading clowns. I’ve heard people say they “dress up as” clowns.

Even beyond the facepaint, they put on performances of musical comedy with elements of violent spectacle and folk spirituality, they emcee festivals where the adventurous young poor from farming regions gather, get intoxicated and enjoy a state of suspension of everyday society.

And if that doesn’t fit your understanding of “clown”, like, what?