A Life

>walking home from a party late one evening >several guys were following me, as my drunk ass managed to piss them off by existing >try to walk faster, to no avail, as I'm drunk as shit >catch me in some random student neighbourhood >oh shit, my ass is about to be beaten >still in talking phase >lights flick on in a house >three guys in full musketeer garb walk out >leader is some blond guy with a beard, eyepatch, and some weird-ass accent >"What sort of ruffians would be accosting someone outside our residence? Stand and deliver!" >guys start yelling at them to fuck off, that I deserved to get my ass beaten >"Very well, then. Draw steel, you blackguard!" >all three of them draw rapiers on their belts >guys run >"I know not why those foul men sought your harm, but come and tell us the tale, stranger!" >spend remainder of evening drinking mulled wine with lunatics >bunch of Swedish re-enactors live there >blond guy is actually missing an eye; lost it in an machine shop accident >stagger home completely drunk with a hat

I had no idea people like that existed. Or had the money to rent a house.

in addition to two comments reading "FUCKING EPIC" and "THIS A THOUSAND TIMES THIS" op elaborated further in another post:

Holy shit, is this still being posted?

I figure I owe /tg/ a bit of an update on these guys.

Their leader, O he of one eye and little common sense, nearly had his visa revoked for these kinds of shenanigans. One too many arrests meant that his right to stay in the country was contested, and he had to go to court to defend himself and prevent his visa from being revoked.

I was his ride to court, and had to testify to the board that he shouldn't be deported for lack of common sense or social normality.

His defense? A written speech, about three pages long, about the rights of man, the education he has received here, and the opportunities for a one-eyed machinist. The spirit of his crimes were all in defense of people who would otherwise suffer. For other witnesses, he had some of the random people he'd helped out, including one memorable point where a woman, nearly on the verge of tears, pointed out how he'd taken on a guy threatening to rape her and carrying a knife by whipping out a fencing saber, disarming him, and mocking him in his thick Swedish accent so that the girl could call the cops. Something like a dozen people all showed up, explaining how this dude, despite his eccentricities, made the country better.

Part III: Boob Cups…Just Don’t Do It

As a student of medieval history, I am in a state of perpetually smouldering grouchiness about many things, but few things get my goat like this does:

Don’t! No boob cups! If you insist on designing female warriors like this and you know better, I will break into your house while you’re bathing and put an angry swan in the tub with you.

If you don’t know better and wonder why I don’t like boob cup armour, there are three reasons: 1) that isn’t how armour fits the body, 2) this design is potentially deadly, 3) people who show women in sexy armour do it to give themselves something to ogle at, not to be practical or historically accurate.

Here, like in the other posts in this series, I’ll be focusing mainly on medieval Europe.

Okay, so, point 1)…armour doesn’t sit right next to the skin. You wear a gambeson underneath it:

Made out of up to 20 layers of linen, a gambeson could work as armour by itself in a pinch, able to stop arrows while turning you into an overheated sweat beast. If you’re small-chested, wearing one would probably flatten you out pretty well, and if you’re large-chested, you’ll have one big uniboob. Either way, a garment like that isn’t going to leave your silhouette with a well-defined bust over which to cap a pair of snug steel half-globes. Breasts can be accommodated by the convex shape of the breastplate, with perhaps a bit of alteration if you’re especially curvy.

Which brings me to Point Two. One of the reasons it is convex is because that shape deflects blows from weapons away from your ribcage and all the squishy important things in your torso. Blades slide off easier than they would on a flat surface. A breastplate with boob cups would deflect a sword or polearm blade right towards your sternum, the exact opposite of where you want it to go. Also, if you fall on your front hard enough, it would collapse inwards, again towards your sternum.

Finally, 3) If men want to draw women in sexy armour, then…fine. I can’t stop you, much as my natural instinct is to chuck you in a lake for your sheer disdain of basic practicality. But since that is beyond my power, the condition should be that you allow women to design armour for men like this:

without causing a fuss. (No shade on this guy, though: he’s happy, confident, he loves his body, and he’s proud of his fashion choices. This is just the best image I could find of men in skimpy armour.)

To close, here’s what women who are actually ready for battle look like (once they put their helmets on):

Wahoo, hiya everyone! It’s-a me, Luigi!

Now, I need to-a talk about something serious. People are-a living their lives in a sad, sad way. They don’t think that they’re-a number one! They think they’re-a number-a one billion! Oh no!