Thread "Never let historical accuracy get in the way of a good story." in forum "Comic Talk and General Discussion *"

Posted at 12:05PM, May. 4, 2016

ozoneocean wrote:
Chainmail bikinis and skimpy female armour isn't quite as bad as the internet tends to claim…
I mean, obviously stuff literal chainmail bikinis are not practical for fighting, but you can be sure they existed historically in some form for dancing girls. Even breast plates with boobs for women existed historically, but they were a little more ceremonial.
As you get further into it though- male fighting costumes from many periods was rather skimpy, famously so, so it IS ok for women to have similar outfits, as long as the males do too.
And even when it comes to fully covered plate- men rarely wore bulky, form disguising suits of the kind you see in modern fantasy art and modern reproductions. Most plate armour was very from fitting, with narrow little wasp waists. Even for fat guys it was still form fitting. So form fitting armour on a woman is realistic :)

A breast plate with boobs would create hills and depressions that would catch a weapon strike and cause more damage. You ideally want a flat or nearly so surface so blows glance off. Male pecs are one thing, breast forms are another. So they were entirely ceremonial the same as male breastplates with exaggerated deeply engraved muscle tone. Basic muscle tone like a Greco-Roman muscle cuirass could deflect some blows but put boobs on it and that just gives someone something to hack off.

Now legendary soldiers are skimpily dressed, historically they grabbed every piece of armor they could get so long as it didn't impair their movement too much. What can you get away with and still be maneuverable? Thigh armor for example was not wise before stirrups as it lessened control of the horse. So a lot of pre-stirrup cultures are bare legged. Famously skimpy soldiers would add armor if going up against certain heavily armored enemies. Rook at the heavy legionnaires who fought the Parthians. Homer constantly talks of bronze clad soldiers yet the art shows them naked. Homer is very insightful when it comes to fighting and understands armor and equipment like so many artists all the way down to Frank Miller don't. But then it's the depiction of legend, (like Arthur's men in full 15th century plate in Excalibur, though with interesting period touches), NOT history.

Posted at 5:05PM, May. 4, 2016

And here's Bravo being more pedantic about ephemera.

Tight chain mail is ineffective. Overly tight plate is counter productive. You need it to balance freedom of movement with protection. So skin tight is out. Also it gives the best protection when spaced from the body and cushioned against the Force of a blow.

You want to beat Mr. Skintight armor? Smash him with a mace and break his ribs. Overly tight plate would bend back from heavy blows and cut the wearer inside. Chain mail needs to be spaced out and padded so there are only minor cuts and bruises like the crusader Knights set upon by dozens of enemies who hacked their way out with minor injuries because of the effective protection of their chain mail over padded gabescon(spelling?)

Amazingly there have been a few modern films to portray this accurately. Thank you Royal Armouries and Medieval archeology.

And I wrote a script about this stuff called "Sword Sandals and not Much Else" and its sort of sequel, Metalhead.

Posted at 8:05PM, May. 4, 2016

From visiting museums, galleries and looking at good references is where I formed my knowledge on historical armour. It wasn't bulky and it was largely form fitting. It had to be because fast, easy, quick supple movement is needed far more than simple impact protection. The bulkier the armour the more clumsy the overlaps and the less flexibility and movement you have. Also you need way more padding under it which makes it too hot to be practical.
The famous Greek Corinthian helmets for example were skull fitting caps with zero padding or even suspension straps.

For skimpy armour, don't just look to Greeks and Romans with their bare thighs and upper arms (of course not all Greeks had metal breastplates), but the Egyptians and sub-Saharan African peoples etc.

You can't have skin-tight usable chain-mail though because it's heavy and hangs is baggy folds. That stuff has a level of padding underneath.

The boob armour I've seen comes from India. I believe it was used to make the wearer look like an avatar of Sheeva or one of the other gods.
You can make booby upper chest armour heavy enough so that nothing can go through easily enough. Nothing can go through a real hardened steel breastplate anyway short of a lance or a bullet so it's not as much of an issue as speculators claim. (going by what the director of the collection at the New York MET says and the research they've conducted on historical pieces)

Posted at 11:05PM, May. 4, 2016

I said it's a balance between tight and loose so you're right. But looking at armor is one thing, reading accounts of how it worked in battle is another. Or even talking to people who wear and test it to see how it works. I remember talking to an assistant curator in MMOA about anot early rifled firearm in the collection to discover he had never fired a gun let alone any idea how to load a muzzle loading rifle. He knew about it an object of art, not as something you use. I also said something about can openers and 16th century pole arms and he didn't get the comparison.

That's why I thanked Royal Armouries. They test it through use to see how it worked. Also all the concepts about protecting an armored target remain the same whether it's a tank or a guy in plate armor.

Posted at 11:05PM, May. 4, 2016

The guy I referenced is a researcher as well and tests period accurate replicas. There are quite a few of them now in the museum field.
Art galleries tend to have the people who only have an abstract knowledge. Often it's those people who perpetuate embarrassing myths… like knights being hoisted up with cables.

Posted at 2:05AM, May. 5, 2016

Don't forget bodkin arrow heads from long bows and cross bows. Look at the inside of one sometime. It was often flat, the shape only cast on the outside. It was expected that something be worn on the inside to cushion it if a leather or felt lining was not already there. Or athe least if worn into battle.

Enough of this. At the end of the day we are really both right. Real world examples can be found of both. Just what would rather trust your life to in the heat of battle?

Posted at 6:05AM, May. 5, 2016

And remember freedom is relative. When we speak of freedom before modern liberalism and universal suffrage we are talking about one group wanting freedom from the oppression of another. An example is Thomas Jefferson: Freedom for white males not the black slaves and certainly not women (Sorry Abigail Adams). Spartacus: freedom from Roman slavery, William Wallace; freedom from English oppression, Athenians: Freedom from barbaric oriental tyranny in the form of the Persian Empire. The Macedonians would co-opt this into a pan-Greek crusade to conquer Asia. Though some did not even see them as Greek and they certainly only united Greece through brutality. The modern definition is broad theirs was group specific but still freedom. Freedom for US versus THEM but not YOU outside our group.

Along these lines, I always found it interesting that the States that made up the Confederacy railed about their rights to secede from the Union, calling it tyranny to disallow them, but once they secede, they then turn around and make it illegal, in the Confederate Constitution, to secede from the Confederacy! Freedom really is relative!!

Posted at 11:05PM, May. 6, 2016

bravo1102 wrote:
Enough of this. At the end of the day we are really both right. Real world examples can be found of both. Just what would rather trust your life to in the heat of battle?

On the example of form fitting armour and the problem with the modern mistakes about it, THIS is a brilliant little series:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLllw4zFP7rK8PVu6uWOyS52cG7PcpDxfc
The it's a small playlist that's part of a bigger channel. The fellow touches on different pieces of armour and how our modern conception of it has changed the way people make reproductions- i.e. grieves HAD to be anatomically shaped around the leg in order to work, while modern ones are just straight or tapered tubes; Helmets were shaped closely around heads; breastplates were short and highly shaped with the bottom edge at the natural waste, not long and shallow like all modern versions, which usually go down to the hips etc.
(I'll clarify a bit: you did have a bit of thin padding under middle ages armour, not much though because it would impair movment and stop the armour being form fitting. You wore more padding under chainmail.)

EVEN so, we will often somewhat forgivably miss-armour historical people because it's easier for audiences to recognise them:
Most famously Roman Legionaries in their lorica Segmentum armour of laced steel plates. Romans only wore that in one place for very short time in history. More of the time they actually wore chainmail.
Another is Greeks in their bronze bell cuirases (breast and backplates), especially with the muscle patterns on them. Not many warriors could afford those and far less could afford the muscle patterns. Generally their armour was made out of fabric. -And of course they were NEVER bare chested in war.
Or if it's ancient Greece they wore bizzare boar tusk stuff and massive bronze overlapping plats…)

But we give audiences what they expect so they will understand and recognise what is being conveyed to them- things like Western knights only using straight cross-hilted swords and Muslim warriors using curved blades- not true historically but easier for people to understand who're the goodies and baddies :D

Posted at 5:05AM, May. 7, 2016

And the videos validate what I said about the shape of a breastplate even down to padding in arming garments and the bulging to deflect blows and spacing to lessen impact. His rant about incorrect length is with makers confusing the lengths of breastplates from different eras. later 16th century one piece through to modern Dragoon Guard cuiraisses are longer but are flared out so as to not sit on the pelvis. I have a few miniatures of 17th century pikemen as well as cuirassiers showing this. Historical accounts agree that the breastplates rung when struck sounding like a bell on the battlefield.

The grieve bits are specifically about late medieval items and not other types. In the Roman case grieves were mass produced for the heavy legionnaires. Ancient grieves were often no more than shin guards and the lining merely there so you're not wearing metal directly against your skin.

As for tight helmets, there are tons of historical accounts as well as battlefield archaeology that have thin helmets being cleaved in with the edges of the metal going into the skull. There's evidence from all eras. Also there are accounts of the poor guy in the helmet having his ears ringing from a heavy blow and having to get out of the thing. Padding helped, whether a thin piece of linen, a thick page boy haircut (read one account that it came about because of the bascinet style of helmet) or a pouf of hair tied up on the top of the head (Gauls, Goths and some hoplites)

And then there are late 15th century wounds which show the drawbacks of open faced helmets adopted so the man at arms could see better. (Towton and Bosworth excavations)

Posted at 8:05AM, May. 7, 2016

History says Ozoneocean is a butt mouth.

and he has a crush on Hitler.

Posted at 8:05AM, May. 7, 2016

Those abs… Dreamy. <3

Posted at 7:05AM, May. 8, 2016

Bravo, you need to see all his vids. He covers stuff from all medival ages, especially the different types of helmets. Most helmets were tight, going back to ancient Greece. Only specific types of helmets were extra big to allow padding or things under them, like Great helms for example.

Greaves were always shaped, he gives the reasons why: they can't be used as functional armour when they're not. I've seen examples in the museams in Germany and Athens.
I've also seen a lot of midle ages armour in museums- the only place you get a bulge (and only on certain styles) is on the breastplate in the centre towards the base. The Austrian ones almost come to a point there.
19th centry cruiases aren't part of an armour system. They're still not too long, but those aren't meant to function with other armour pieces so their shape can be different.

Posted at 11:05AM, May. 8, 2016

You are missing the point, helmets can be tight but do not give the best protection if they are. As a user I look at helmets differentry and have the hindsight to see just how bad historical stuff can be. I look at the remains of those who spent a lifetime getting whacked in the head. So I have written stories based on that.

I acknowledgd Grieves are always shaped. Legs are shaped so a tube won't fit. Look at sports shin guards, many are flexible so they can be shaped to the leg. But you can't do that with metal. I remember ones so tight they fitted without straps. And then there's me realizing that the Robofemoid Grieves were different for right and left sides when putting the figures together.

But how much of all that have you used in your FICTION? instead you invented your own weapon system so noone can say you're wrong. Even when your ideas at best are impractical but so fashionable. As impressive and cool as that unpadded corinthian helmet but not something I'd want to use in combat. Always kind of liked kettle helmets myself.

Posted at 11:05AM, May. 22, 2016

^ I find that combining historical facts WITH fiction creates wonderfully bizarre situations. My time travelers stumble on a 19 year old King Tut, who's aware that he's sick, and is asking for help from the "gods of time."

Tutankhamun had malaria, and combined with an infection that came about because he broke his leg, he died suddenly and unexpectedly.

I do applaud you, OP, because seriously, I've been afraid of working on this story for a million different reasons, the biggest one being that I'd screw up historical accuracy (and in a time travel story, that's a big issue). But, if you grab a hold of a few solid facts, nothing more, then run with whatever your heart tells you from there, your fiction can collide with historical events and create something amazing.

Posted at 11:08PM, Aug. 7, 2016

Konspiracy- I do exactly the same thing with Pinky TA.
It looks like you ha e pretty cool work there.

On the original topic, I was just listening to a play based on the life of Theramin, the man who invented the Theramin…
The events of his live were completely remixed and the timeline was jumbled up. It was a terrible example of messing up history for the needs of a story, because the story would have worked even better if things were done more correctly. There was no point to the changes except to put all the action in Britain, instead of spread across the USA, the UK and USA, and stuck in the late 1920s instead of spanning from the '20s to the 1950s.

One benifit of the story was it got me interested enough to look up the real guy, but then I was instantly disappointed in what I just heard because the real story, even in a tiny brief outline, was FAR more interesting than the whole hour long olay I'd just heard.

Posted at 12:08AM, Aug. 8, 2016

ozoneocean wrote:
Often you need to alter things in a way that makes the historical culture relatable and understandable to a modern audience. Hence all the bullshit about "FREEDOM" in gladiator and Braveheart.
If you did a realistic movie version of the Norse Eddas for example, people wouldn't understand what was going on because Norse people had a VERY different way of thinking than we do now, with a totally different moral compass and values.

But it would make for such an amazing movie if they did get us inside the head of the way historic peoples thought. It would be hard but if they can do it for extraterrestrial alien cultures in sci-fi, why can't they do it for historical alien cultures in historical fiction?

Posted at 1:08AM, Aug. 8, 2016

irrevenant wrote:
ozoneocean wrote:
Often you need to alter things in a way that makes the historical culture relatable and understandable to a modern audience. Hence all the bullshit about "FREEDOM" in gladiator and Braveheart.
If you did a realistic movie version of the Norse Eddas for example, people wouldn't understand what was going on because Norse people had a VERY different way of thinking than we do now, with a totally different moral compass and values.
But it would make for such an amazing movie if they did get us inside the head of the way historic peoples thought. It would be hard but if they can do it for extraterrestrial alien cultures in sci-fi, why can't they do it for historical alien cultures in historical fiction?

Yeah, maybe they do that in the Vikings TV series? I haven't seen that.
When I read the Eddas, it's so weird…
I mean, the way the Vikings thought and their attitude to things isn't that different from the Romans or the Ancient Greeks in a lot of ways, but they weren't the same.
They were very well aware of social status and their place in the hierarchy, but also very ambitious to better themselves and move up in class which they could do through raiding, trading, or exploring.
Their sense of humour was very, very base and simple, involving bodily functions and violence. Menstruation was hilarious…

They did not care about people the way we do, unless they were a member of their clan or kin, they don't seems to have had any sense of empathy.
Extreme violence in reaction to social sleights was regrettable but perfectly acceptable, under certain circumstances…
And they seem to have been ultra cold and "rational" in a sort of Nietzschian way about life and death in relation to family members, the sick and injured. i.e. in a harsh winter you, you, and you will die, sorry but we need the wood and warmth more.

Posted at 2:08PM, Aug. 8, 2016

I've only seen the first episode of Vikings. So far they seem to be steering a middle ground. They're doing a pretty good job of getting across that ancient Vikings saw things quite differently than we do through the rather clever device of the main character's son coming of age (thus giving his father a reason to expound on the way things are). But conversely as (presumably) the hero of the piece, the main character is also suspiciously modern in his attitude towards personal enterprise.

The show also seems to be working from the assumption that the things the Vikings believed in (Odin, reading the runes, etc.) are legitimately real which effectively makes it a fantaay series rather than historical - if an authentically historical fantasy.

Like I say though, I've only seen the first episode so far. It didn't stand out enough that I was in a hurry to watch the next one but I probably will at some point..

Posted at 5:08PM, Aug. 9, 2016

It's so easy to misinterpret things when taken out of their historical context. Freedom in an ancient and Medieval context meant "ethnic liberty" not the individual liberty it would come to mean after the Enlightenment (and precursors in the Renaissance)

So medieval Scots and ancient Greeks were talking about the freedom of Greeks and Scots from outside invaders. Not the freedom of opportunity of mobile class structure of a Renaissance and Enlightenment commercial culture.

The movie 300 Spartans did a much better job of representing thone differences.

As for Vikings, seeing them as Medieval entrepreneurs is one school of thought on understanding their culture. It's based on a lot if study with a huge library of papers on it. Suffice to say when a Viking scout arrived he would see how strong the locals were. If the Vikings could beat them, they raided and took stuff by force. If they couldn't, they traded. This is one of those universal models of human interaction going way back. The more humans are different the more they are the same. In my opinion one of the best presentations of Viking cul6was the comedy Eric the Viking One way to present an alien culture is by having a character questioning the values of that culture as the main character in the movie does. And when it comes to Medieval culture Terry Jones gets it.