(Untitled)

[raccaldin36]

This mostly a rambling, vaguely stream-of-consciousness, discussion on combat and mental state. Triggers: lots of talk about medieval versus modern combat in S.M. Stirling's A Meeting at Corvallis, and some chatter with Josh on "keeping your cool", and a little bit of watching action flicks with Hollywood combat on the very long plane flight home

Comments

[the_sinistral]

Fencing is a highly stylized sport. I don't see why you even mentioned it here.

You made one other mistake: The first combat was not about status. It was about control. "Status" did not even exist yet. Status is a metaphorical, highly abstract idea; physical conflict is one of its literal sources.

Emotion-based combat, when it's mano a mano, always seems to be melee. The viscerality missing in a ranged fight takes the emotional value of your attacks out of it. I don't really count taunts, for that; they're the only thing left worth an emotional damn at a distance, and they give away your position.What you observe here strikes me not as an insight into combat, but as a reflection of your exposure to works of literary or cinematic battle formulae whose conventions are exactly as you describe. Let the record show that I see no logical reason to devalue the emotional tension of combat that does not involve immediate physical contact. The aforementioned formulae--and now I veer into deduction--are merely the ritualized scion of

[raccaldin36]

I included fencing largely because the sport is derived from actual combat, and what is actually taught in the sport is sufficient to be used as training for using sharpened foils in live combat. They don't wear body armor because blunted tips can poke out eyes; they wear it because if those little balls fall off, the damn things can slide into your heart if you're unlucky