He's right, all the way through. People who think this shit is easy have never tried to do it properly, and by "properly" I mean both plausible and entertaining.
I mean, yes, Tolkien had his wizards and his improbable creatures and his magic, but his Middle-Earth also has a history, and consequences, and room to examine implications. Leiber worked the same way, and so did Dunsany, and Lewis, and Ende, and every other fantasy author I've read who was worth anything.
If you can find it, Diana Wynne Jones's Tough Guide to Fantasyland is a humorous examination of the same problem. I like the entry on horses particularly.
He's especially right about fighting and weapons. I own a couple of swords, one of them a working model (by which I mean it's sharp, professionally balanced, and can kill you). Neither of them are particularly heavy—each less than ten pounds, I'd wager—but try holding ten pounds at arm's length for any period of time. Or even three. This is why my female warriors are always burly types, at least if they're the sort who like to go toe to toe with their opponents.
(Then again, a lot of fantasy fans I've met have peculiar ideas about martial arts, like for example that their principal purpose isn't to hurt the other guy as much as possible.)
I've got a copy of that book, actually, but it's at home. Horses are a form of vegetation, if I recall.
About the martial arts: I was shadowboxing at the gym yesterday, and a guy asked me what I was doing. I told him "Muay Thai", and he said "Oh. Are you going to practice breakfalls next?"
"Well, no. This is Muay Thai - if you're down on the ground, you've done something wrong."
"My nephew does martial arts. He tells me they practice falling all the time in Aikido."
"Yes, but Aikido is all about falling down."
More seriously, Aikido really isn't mean to hurt your opponent, but it's fairly close to unique in that. The thing that really makes me wonder is that, from all the people training that I've seen, they practice day in and day out against... attackers who aren't doing anything approaching a real attack. I constantly want to see what an Aikido practitioner would do against somebody who was really trying to punch his head off, just to see how those impressive-looking throws work against an actual attack.
I've never done Aikido, so I don't know. rwx used to, maybe he could tell you.
We practice falling sometimes in kung fu, but it's more like a just-in-case thing.
And yes, the book makes reference to fantasyland horses reproducing by pollination, as none of them ever show signs of heat, or give other indications of sexual reproduction. (In fact, I remember an incident in C.J. Cherryh's Exile's Gate that was fairly unique in showing the potential problems of two travelers on horseback, one of whom is riding a stallion, the other a mare.)
Back when I did a spell of judo, falling (and recovering from) was very much among the basic couple of skills. Of course, 'falling' there means 'how to get your ass kicked by your opponent who's training to bring people down without getting seriously hurt'.
Absolutely - but pure Muay Thai teaches you to fall only as far as "Don't break your fall in these three ways or you'll snap your wrist/ankle/elbow" - and leaves the rest on the philosophy that practicing how to fall is not nearly as useful as practicing how to stay on your feet even if you catch a kick to the head.
That's not facing a real attack, though. Aikido training is all about defending against other Aikido students - who don't know how to attack, don't try to attack realistically, and don't want to hit you.
What I want to see is an Aikido master, trained purely in Aikido and nothing else, facing somebody who does Kung Fu, or Tae Kwon Do, or Muay Thai, or even a non-striking art like jiujitsu. I'm interested to see how that would turn out.
The difference there I think is that judo is more of a 'grappling' thing -- you grab each other's shoulders and then attempt to swipe the other guy's feet out from under him (plus subtleties, of course). You score points by, first, getting the other guy to fall down *and* then you continue on your hands & knees until one of you has the other pinned down. There's not much need to practice (at least at the lower levels which is all I have experience of) staying on your feet when kicked in the head, since that kind of thing isn't part of the sport anyway -- or at least, only in so much as 'how to block that shit so you can get to grappling range'.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-23 10:47 pm (UTC)I mean, yes, Tolkien had his wizards and his improbable creatures and his magic, but his Middle-Earth also has a history, and consequences, and room to examine implications. Leiber worked the same way, and so did Dunsany, and Lewis, and Ende, and every other fantasy author I've read who was worth anything.
If you can find it, Diana Wynne Jones's Tough Guide to Fantasyland is a humorous examination of the same problem. I like the entry on horses particularly.
He's especially right about fighting and weapons. I own a couple of swords, one of them a working model (by which I mean it's sharp, professionally balanced, and can kill you). Neither of them are particularly heavy—each less than ten pounds, I'd wager—but try holding ten pounds at arm's length for any period of time. Or even three. This is why my female warriors are always burly types, at least if they're the sort who like to go toe to toe with their opponents.
(Then again, a lot of fantasy fans I've met have peculiar ideas about martial arts, like for example that their principal purpose isn't to hurt the other guy as much as possible.)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-23 10:55 pm (UTC)About the martial arts: I was shadowboxing at the gym yesterday, and a guy asked me what I was doing. I told him "Muay Thai", and he said "Oh. Are you going to practice breakfalls next?"
"Well, no. This is Muay Thai - if you're down on the ground, you've done something wrong."
"My nephew does martial arts. He tells me they practice falling all the time in Aikido."
"Yes, but Aikido is all about falling down."
More seriously, Aikido really isn't mean to hurt your opponent, but it's fairly close to unique in that. The thing that really makes me wonder is that, from all the people training that I've seen, they practice day in and day out against... attackers who aren't doing anything approaching a real attack. I constantly want to see what an Aikido practitioner would do against somebody who was really trying to punch his head off, just to see how those impressive-looking throws work against an actual attack.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-23 11:07 pm (UTC)We practice falling sometimes in kung fu, but it's more like a just-in-case thing.
And yes, the book makes reference to fantasyland horses reproducing by pollination, as none of them ever show signs of heat, or give other indications of sexual reproduction. (In fact, I remember an incident in C.J. Cherryh's Exile's Gate that was fairly unique in showing the potential problems of two travelers on horseback, one of whom is riding a stallion, the other a mare.)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-24 12:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-24 01:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-24 03:07 am (UTC)It's supposed to be very effective against the more linear styles.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-24 03:34 am (UTC)And I'd like to.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-24 03:46 am (UTC)Remember, they have a huge emphasis on redirecting and amplifying an ememies force.
He said "They just stood there facing each other. Then one of them twitched, and was thrown across the room by the other guy."
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-24 04:23 am (UTC)What I want to see is an Aikido master, trained purely in Aikido and nothing else, facing somebody who does Kung Fu, or Tae Kwon Do, or Muay Thai, or even a non-striking art like jiujitsu. I'm interested to see how that would turn out.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-24 12:04 pm (UTC)