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Cliches you can't stand

The Laurent said:
I'm pretty sure a similar imposition of medieval Christian morality on, say, King Arthur myths happened. Cultures write historical fiction, or history-based-fantasy, in reference to their own time. How can they not?
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They did. For example, the Vulgate and Malory was, in part, a response by Christian England to the pro-Courtly Love elements of the depiction of the Lancelot-Guinevere romance which was added by the French. "Adultery bad" was an explicit take on this myth. Chunks of the Grail Quest depiction there, for example, were basically God saying to Lancelot, "Bad boy. No cup for you."

Edit: On the subject of wanking, while sword enthusiasts don't wank their weapons quite so hard as gun wankers do, there is one subset that can and will do so: katana fans. The people who take the "Glorious Nippon Steel Folded Over 1000 Times!" meme perfectly literally, believe katanas are basically monoplanes that will slice through European swords, plate armor, and random trees they happen to lean them up against.
 
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Fivemarks said:
Realism, when it gets in the way of the story, should always be ditched. But what the fuck do I know.
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Yeah I can see that even without getting into the real things they cut out of movies or toned down because audiences would find it unrealistic or simple historical misconceptions about reality in certain periods.

Lord you couldn't make a character like lets say Teddy Roosevelt or Audie Murphy because people would at best find them to be mary sues. Reality can be far stranger than fiction and has no need to play to audiences views of 'reality'.
 
Alane1 said:
Yeah I can see that even without getting into the real things they cut out of movies or toned down because audiences would find it unrealistic or simple historical misconceptions about reality in certain periods.

Lord you couldn't make a character like lets say Teddy Roosevelt or Audie Murphy because people would at best find them to be mary sues. Reality can be far stranger than fiction and has no need to play to audiences views of 'reality'.
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That's so literally true that Murphy told the director to tone down the movie they made about him, because he knew noone would believe he had actually done all the ahit that he did.
 
The Laurent said:
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By giving the Protag stamina as their talent the creator doesn't need to give them as much skill, and as such does not require as much thought or creativity on the creator's side.

Naruto: Basically speaks for itself, because of his strong stamina he can brute force his way into other skills. Even when he gets ACTUAL skill that's somewhat ignored--for instance the Rasengan takes perfect chakra control, but we never actually see him use said chakra control for other things.

Bleach: I quit this one before it got too far, but his sword was like, not compressed at first but could still hold up to other swords?

Yuri on Ice: Yuri is noted as having high stamina so he can do jumps later in his programs where they have a point multiplier, while Yurio does actually more technically difficult things like arms out when he jumps.
 
NemiTheNen said:
By giving the Protag stamina as their talent the creator doesn't need to give them as much skill, and as such does not require as much thought or creativity on the creator's side.

Naruto: Basically speaks for itself, because of his strong stamina he can brute force his way into other skills. Even when he gets ACTUAL skill that's somewhat ignored--for instance the Rasengan takes perfect chakra control, but we never actually see him use said chakra control for other things.

Bleach: I quit this one before it got too far, but his sword was like, not compressed at first but could still hold up to other swords?

Yuri on Ice: Yuri is noted as having high stamina so he can do jumps later in his programs where they have a point multiplier, while Yurio does actually more technically difficult things like arms out when he jumps.
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I don't think that's fair to Yuri on Ice. For one, Yuri is noted as having amazing ice-dancing. He always gets great marks on the show part of things, and so what he needs to do is get better at the jumps and spins, etc, etc.

(And considering that the main sports drama in Yuri On Ice is whether he can nail jumps that he's barely able to try in practice...)

Edit: That said, the Naruto point is actually a good one, IMO.
 
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The Laurent said:
I don't think that's fair to Yuri on Ice. For one, Yuri is noted as having amazing ice-dancing. He always gets great marks on the show part of things, and so what he needs to do is get better at the jumps and spins, etc, etc.

(And considering that the main sports drama in Yuri On Ice is whether he can nail jumps that he's barely able to try in practice...)

Edit: That said, the Naruto point is actually a good one, IMO.
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That's just the thing with Yuri on Ice, and it was the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back.

Stamina wasn't needed, but it got put in anyways.

Ice Dancing is a skill, it doesn't need to be made up like in Naruto and in Bleach. You got it all in front of you. But nope, gotta give the protagonist Stamina.
 
NemiTheNen said:
That's just the thing with Yuri on Ice, and it was the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back.

Stamina wasn't needed, but it got put in anyways.

Ice Dancing is a skill, it doesn't need to be made up like in Naruto and in Bleach. You got it all in front of you. But nope, gotta give the protagonist Stamina.
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I don't think it is, though? A person can have multiple advantages? Like, one of the notes is that he's an experienced competitor. And yes, in Figure Skating that can mean, "About to be over the hill" because sports are weird like that, but Yurio's just a kid. He's going to get more stamina as he spends even more time Figure Skating.

Heck, Figure Skating itself cares about stamina? And having the stamina to complete a challenging routine (and that's something you train), or working your routine around your stamina, is in fact an accepted and vital part of being a pro?

Edit: It should be noted that we meet Yuri at a low point in a career that has lasted some time by this point. He's not a newbie who suddenly, shock of shocks, secretly has amazing stamina like, say, Naruto or Ichigo were.

He's someone who trains this, and is good at it, because he trains this, on top of ice-dancing, and all of the other things.
 
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I sort of get it, though? "Stamina" as a special trait goes hand in hand with the Generic Meathead Shonen Protagonist personality, where they're not too smart, not too skilled, and not too handsome, but they try really hard and achieve their goals through sheer effort and perseverance. I can see why it would leave a bad taste even in examples where that's not really the case. (Plus, it honestly undercuts the message--I mean, if you have extra-special stamina, it allows you to keep banging your head on a rock to advance while people with normal energy reserves have to actually git gud.)
 
NemiTheNen said:
Naruto: Basically speaks for itself, because of his strong stamina he can brute force his way into other skills. Even when he gets ACTUAL skill that's somewhat ignored--for instance the Rasengan takes perfect chakra control, but we never actually see him use said chakra control for other things.
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To be fair, at first, Naruto was cheating around the chakra control issue for the Rasengan by using a clone to produce the varied rotations instead of producing it himself.

By later in the story, he does start applying the skill in chakra control he's developed. Both in managing to achieve perfectly-balanced Sage Mode (though that still took some time to manage), and during the Fourth Ninja War, managing to connect Kyuubi's chakra to all the people on his side is noted to involve Naruto having to properly match the chakra he's emitting to the patterns of each and every individual he's doing so with.
 
DezoPenguin said:
Edit: On the subject of wanking, while sword enthusiasts don't wank their weapons quite so hard as gun wankers do, there is one subset that can and will do so: katana fans. The people who take the "Glorious Nippon Steel Folded Over 1000 Times!" meme perfectly literally, believe katanas are basically monoplanes that will slice through European swords, plate armor, and random trees they happen to lean them up against.
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Believe it or not, I find the direct opposite kind of person way more often. In fact, I've never actually met one of these people in my life, but the haters? Fuck me, in some places I'm hesitant to even admit to liking any variety of eastern sword for fear of getting fucking dogpiled.

Maybe I just frequent different circles of the internet, but as far as I'm concerned the sheer preponderance of people who will refuse point blank to attribute even a single positive quality to the katana, cherry picking examples just as badly if not worse than the K-wankers themselves, is a million times more obnoxious. Because as irritating as the Glorious Nippon Steel crowd is, at least their obnoxiousness is sourced in genuine love for something, rather than a kneejerk hatred borne of someone else liking something you don't and being silly about it.

That's not to suggest I think you're one of those people, christ no. I totally understand being annoyed with Katana wank.
 
Manic Dogma said:
Believe it or not, I find the direct opposite kind of person way more often. In fact, I've never actually met one of these people in my life, but the haters? Fuck me, in some places I'm hesitant to even admit to liking any variety of eastern sword for fear of getting fucking dogpiled.

Maybe I just frequent different circles of the internet, but as far as I'm concerned the sheer preponderance of people who will refuse point blank to attribute even a single positive quality to the katana, cherry picking examples just as badly if not worse than the K-wankers themselves, is a million times more obnoxious. Because as irritating as the Glorious Nippon Steel crowd is, at least their obnoxiousness is sourced in genuine love for something, rather than a kneejerk hatred borne of someone else liking something you don't and being silly about it.

That's not to suggest I think you're one of those people, christ no. I totally understand being annoyed with Katana wank.
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Same but my assumption is that it was a meme that died down and is now only relevant for certain jokes.
 
People act as if Katanas were these super badass amazing cutters, and they are!

They just pale in comparison to something far more specialised like a scimitar or a sabre.
 
Do they say that though? Or is it just the stereotype?

That said, I don't particularly care how good they actually are. I just want to like the cool thing without a certain breed of people trying to make me feel ashamed for it.

It used to work, too. Those weren't fun days.
 
I agree with @Manic Dogma over @DezoPenguin here: I have never actually met anyone who unironically engages in katana-wank. Don't get me wrong, I like katanas as an aesthetic, stylistic thing, but I - nor anyone I've ever seen - have never claimed it to be a superior sword to everything else. There certainly were a lot of fanboys/fangirls back in the nineties (god, I'm old), but that was a more uncritical "Japan is great" position than a "katana-wank" specific thing. By contrast, as a general thing and not pointing out anyone specifically, people who claim to hate "katana-wank" seem to be determined to find a strawman to prop up.
 
There used to be and still are people who unironically believe the katana as some sorts of superior sword that can perform fantastical deeds. This is especially apparent from old media and it's gradually dying out but there's a good reason why every sword enthusiast on youtube made a video about mythbusting the katana. Also look no further than D&D to see this in action. Katana is a superior one handed weapon that does 1d10 while longswords are 1d8 and Scimitars only do 1d6 in damage. Doubly weird when you consider that in computer game versions swords do slashing damage yet the sword most optimized for cutting does the least damage out of the three. You can of course say that the GM can always fix this but the fact remains this is the vanilla impression about the relative "goodness" of these swords.

That being said "katana debunking" and reaction to "katana wankers" certainly got overblown as a discussion topic, a vocal group turned it to almost a hate campaign. It became "hip" to talk smack about katanas and belittle anyone who likes them. It's a recognizable problem and it does scare away people who would otherwise might wish to know more about weapons and/or swordsmanship.Still, you may not have people unironically praising katana as a godly sword in more intelligent circles but its pop culture myth has yet to die off.
 
willyvereb said:
There used to be and still are people who unironically believe the katana as some sorts of superior sword that can perform fantastical deeds. This is especially apparent from old media and it's gradually dying out but there's a good reason why every sword enthusiast on youtube made a video about mythbusting the katana. Also look no further than D&D to see this in action. Katana is a superior one handed weapon that does 1d10 while longswords are 1d8 and Scimitars only do 1d6 in damage. Doubly weird when you consider that in computer game versions swords do slashing damage yet the sword most optimized for cutting does the least damage out of the three. You can of course say that the GM can always fix this but the fact remains this is the vanilla impression about the relative "goodness" of these swords.

That being said "katana debunking" and reaction to "katana wankers" certainly got overblown as a discussion topic, a vocal group turned it to almost a hate campaign. It became "hip" to talk smack about katanas and belittle anyone who likes them. It's a recognizable problem and it does scare away people who would otherwise might wish to know more about weapons and/or swordsmanship.Still, you may not have people unironically praising katana as a godly sword in more intelligent circles but its pop culture myth has yet to die off.
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So how to accomodate both the people who like Katanas and the ones who hate how it is seen as superior. I don't know that much but if I remeber correctly a Katana is indeed sharper than other swords but more brittle. So maybe emphasize in fiction that feature it that it is a purely offensive weapon and cannot be used for parrying well etc. Oh, and saying it is a one handed sword seems wrong. Maybe use it as a glass cannon, high damage output but likely to break if used wrong. I am not sure if my understanding is correct here so please correct me if I got something wrong.

EDIT: When I think about it, maybe make Katanas worse against armour. All the sharpness in the world will not cut through metal armour (or Samurai wodden armour either I think but am not sure). So better sharpness will do more damage towards unarmored targets but due a Katanas lesser durability when striking something it cannot cut it will be worse against armour. A not aa sharp longsword that carries much more mass and therefore momentum would be better to buckle armour and stun the opponent.
 
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willyvereb said:
There used to be and still are people who unironically believe the katana as some sorts of superior sword that can perform fantastical deeds. This is especially apparent from old media and it's gradually dying out but there's a good reason why every sword enthusiast on youtube made a video about mythbusting the katana. Also look no further than D&D to see this in action. Katana is a superior one handed weapon that does 1d10 while longswords are 1d8 and Scimitars only do 1d6 in damage. Doubly weird when you consider that in computer game versions swords do slashing damage yet the sword most optimized for cutting does the least damage out of the three. You can of course say that the GM can always fix this but the fact remains this is the vanilla impression about the relative "goodness" of these swords.

That being said "katana debunking" and reaction to "katana wankers" certainly got overblown as a discussion topic, a vocal group turned it to almost a hate campaign. It became "hip" to talk smack about katanas and belittle anyone who likes them. It's a recognizable problem and it does scare away people who would otherwise might wish to know more about weapons and/or swordsmanship.Still, you may not have people unironically praising katana as a godly sword in more intelligent circles but its pop culture myth has yet to die off.
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I which edition though? Because the most recent one says call a longsword a katana and there you go.
 
The Laurent said:
Though if you're playing D&D, well. You have only yourself to blame, because tons of stuff that they peddle about weapons and armor is pretty arbitrary.
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I'll also note that the d&d ones may actually be superior given that the 3e samurai class literally has "your katana is so awesome it becomes magic on it's own" as a class feature, and the default Asian setting was Legend of the Five Rings, where the katanas are made with metals that aren't remotely natural.
 
shepsquared said:
I which edition though? Because the most recent one says call a longsword a katana and there you go.
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I haven't played D&D in ages so I stopped around 3rd edition or so. And yeah, I heard about that and this is why I said "old D&D". Yeah and as terma said:
terma said:
3E and 3.5E had it as well, automatic masterwork bastard sword.
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Moving on:
Arawn_Emrys said:
I'll also note that the d&d ones may actually be superior given that the 3e samurai class literally has "your katana is so awesome it becomes magic on it's own" as a class feature, and the default Asian setting was Legend of the Five Rings, where the katanas are made with metals that aren't remotely natural.
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All base weapon values apply to steel as its material. D&D authors just literally bought the "folded thousand times" myth and though all katanas were fantastical masterworks that made them superior to everything else. As for the Samurai excuse, it would only work if the katana is exclusive to them. It never was.

Axslashel said:
So how to accomodate both the people who like Katanas and the ones who hate how it is seen as superior. I don't know that much but if I remeber correctly a Katana is indeed sharper than other swords but more brittle. So maybe emphasize in fiction that feature it that it is a purely offensive weapon and cannot be used for parrying well etc. Oh, and saying it is a one handed sword seems wrong. Maybe use it as a glass cannon, high damage output but likely to break if used wrong. I am not sure if my understanding is correct here so please correct me if I got something wrong.

EDIT: When I think about it, maybe make Katanas worse against armour. All the sharpness in the world will not cut through metal armour (or Samurai wodden armour either I think but am not sure). So better sharpness will do more damage towards unarmored targets but due a Katanas lesser durability when striking something it cannot cut it will be worse against armour. A not aa sharp longsword that carries much more mass and therefore momentum would be better to buckle armour and stun the opponent.
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Okay, hopefully others aren't sick of katana mythbusting yet so here's a diet coke version.

All swords that were maintained properly and used for combat were sharpened. While it might be true that late period katanas from the 19th century were sharper but so were sabers. Sharper edge as you properly guessed reduces the durability of the said edge. Making a blade too sharp is counter-intuitive. When armors and more blade/material contact was expected blades were made somewhat less sharp. Those are still the low end of razor sharp, though. You need that to cut through thick fabric armors like gambesons. No bladed weapon used for combat were left intentionally dull.

As for cutting ability, katanas are about average. Their blade geometry and weight distribution aren't anything special so they lose to any of the purpose designed cutting swords. In addition the curve of the blade has little to no role at assisting cuts, it just makes their creation easier. Keep in mind I am talking about the usual design, while not as varied as longswords there are still a wealth of different katanas that might also have unusual characteristics.

And you're right on that katanas aren't one handed weapons. They aren't greatswords but their entire design was optimized for two hands, same as with longswords. D&D just mysteriously treats these as one handed weapons. Westerners in the 19th century described the katana as a short two handed saber. And as a bonus, a brief talk about its speed. Katanas are actually a bit on the heavy side for swords and combined with their shortish blade this makes their tip speed a bit slower, although in general this wouldn't be a major difference from a longsword. What Westerner took note of is the Japanese draw cut technique which of course was surprisingly quick. And here's the thing, the speed of your attacks are far more directed by the technique than just the characteristics of the weapon. Of course a tip heavy mace is slower than a hilt-balanced sword of the same size but when you compare a pair of two handed swords the user and techniques matter far more. Draw cuts are fast albeit a bit gimmicky. I don't know which school of fencing is the fastest in general, though. The point is that don't look at the weapon for speed, look at the user.
 
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