On Female Armor
I recently stumbled on this video, a thoughtful discussion of the use of armor shaped to the female body, as frequently seen in anime and other fantasy works. The practicalities or impracticalities of such designs are of course interesting to me, since magical girls wear armor on occasion.
The topic, as the host acknowledges a few times, is perhaps over-generalized, since he is discussing a wide range of history with a lot of different armor designs. But it is an intelligent discussion nonetheless.
A few added notes on things the video mentions in passing but does not have the chance to discuss in depth:
- St. Joan of Arc, one of the few real women known to have worn armor, apparently did so for purely practical reasons. At her kangaroo trial, she was accused, among other things, of being a transvestite, but she in fact wore men’s clothing on the road and while imprisoned because it was a guard against potential rape. She wore armor on the battlefield for reasons even more obvious. These were understood at the time as acceptable reasons for a woman to dress as a man.
- I have been told, though am unable to confirm it from personal experience, that molding plate around each breast separately, as is popular in fantasy armor design for women, is impractical because it would inhibit normal movement of the arms. So although the video defends sculpted breasts on women’s armor plate, it might in fact be unrealistic—unless the breasts were sculpted on top of a cavity that allowed movement. That would, however, require a design very different from the body-hugging plate we typically see in fantasy art.
Rock on with ‘Dead to Rites’
I am working on Dead to Rites, the second volume of Jake and the Dynamo, which is much longer than I’d expected it to be, but I have finally reached the rock concert, a scene I’ve been looking forward to for a long time.
Amidst the roars of the crowd, the keyboardist started in, and the other instruments soon followed. After several opening licks, Vanessa, with a voice rough and raw and passionate, started singing.
The crowd jumped and shouted and waved. Jake couldn’t make out most of the words, but when Vanessa reached the refrain, she roared out:
“Beaten, battered, bruised, and torn, and stabbed with a million knives! But we’re still alive!”
All around the stadium, people, Dana included, pumped their fists in the air and shouted, “We’re still alive! We’re still alive! We’re still alive!”
“Let me hear you, Urbanopolis!” Vanessa called. “We’ve had a hard couple of weeks, haven’t we? But they can’t keep us down! All the forces of evil in the whole darn universe can’t keep us down! Shout it loud! Shout it proud! Shout it so the Moon Princess can hear you! Let her know that her children are still alive!”
“We’re still alive!” the crowd cried. “We’re still alive!”
The lead guitarist stopped playing and tossed his guitar into the air. With a high leap, Vanessa caught it, landed back on the stage, and moved into a squealing guitar solo. “Keep it going!” she shouted.
“We’re still alive!” the audience chanted. “We’re still alive!”
In spite of himself, Jake swayed back and forth to the deafening, punishing music. Dana had her feet on the lowest rung of the railing and was leaning precariously over the side, pumping a fist and banging her head. Her wild, unkempt red hair flew about her face like raging flames. Overhead, the moon shone brightly, and a few stars twinkled.
Then Jake understood. Slowly, he raised a fist. The humans had been through some tough battles in the last few days, and it was true that everything in the cosmos and beyond was out to kill them—but they kept going. They suffered, and they bled, but they always gave better than they got: Innumerable alien races had set upon the Earth to wipe the humans out, but most of those races were now dead, and humanity lived on. They survived. And tonight, in the music of Metal Huntress Vanessa Van Halensing, humanity was letting it be known: They were cutting loose with a rebel yell and lifting a middle finger to the universe.
“We’re still alive!” Jake shouted. “We’re still alive!”
Anime Review: ‘ViVid Strike!’
I have come to make friends and to kick ass, and I am all out of friends.
ViVid Strike!, directed by Junji Nishimura. Written by Masaki Tsuzuki. Music by Yôichiro Yoshikawa. Starring Eri Kitamura, Inori Minase, and Mamiko Noto. Seven Arcs (). 12 episodes of 23 minutes (approx. ). Not rated.
Available on Amazon Prime.
ViVid Strike! is the fifth anime series in the main continuity of the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha franchise. On the one hand, that hardly matters because this series is designed to stand alone: No previous knowledge of Lyrical Nanoha is necessary to understand and enjoy what’s going on here. But on the other hand, despite a radical departure from the previous incarnations of the franchise, ViVid Strike! takes Lyrical Nanoha back to its roots, back to the core concept that made the franchise so enormously popular in first place—magic-powered little girls viciously beating each other to a bloody pulp in the name of friendship.
Indeed, although it is not without its problems, ViVid Strike! is arguably the strongest entry in the long-running franchise, or at least the one with the clearest vision … as well as the most brutal violence.
#memes
#memes
#memes
#memes
Writing Day for ‘Dead to Rites’
Today is a writing day for Dead to Rites. I am still making my way through ViVid Strike!, which I want to wrap up before I review anything else, simply because I’m afraid it will disappear from Amazon Prime. I’m not done with it yet (I have too much else to do), but I will say in advance that I so far think it is the most entertaining series in the Lyrical Nanoha franchise, even though it is also easily the shallowest and stupidest. Unfortunately, I am easily entertained by scenes of young girls beating the everloving snot out of each other, and that’s pretty much the show’s entire premise.
The rough draft of Dead to Rites, second volume of Jake and the Dynamo, is just about done. Tonight, I am working on the grand climax. There’s probably one to two chapters after that, and then it’s on to the editing and rewriting phase.
Trying to Get Verified with Google
As I’ve mentioned previously, I’m trying to improve my search engine optimization over here. I’ve switched to a plugin that does much finer analysis of SEO than the one I used previously, checking for everything from proper URLs to sentence length.
And speaking of sentence length, my SEO software apparently thinks you’re all idiots, since it keeps warning me that my sentences are too long and complex for you to understand.
Anyway, I happened to discover today that I warrant a knowledge graph on Google—and in case you don’t know, the “knowledge graphs” are the highlighted results that show up in the right sidebar.
Hoping I could get my knowledge graph expanded, with maybe links to my social media accounts, I decided to try “claiming” it, which would allow me to suggest edits. I then discovered that this is quite an arduous process: Google demands screenshots from five accounts, a selfie holding official identification, a 500-character essay of self-abasement, a firstborn son, an immortal soul, and an infant sacrifice on the stroke of midnight of a Walpurgisnacht in which Venus is in retrograde and Jupiter burns in the twelfth house. Only then, Google might—might, mind you—deign to notice me with one baleful eye overshadowed by its majestic beanie cap.
Once I had finished the ritual ablutions and conducted the proper sacrifices, I presented my offerings to the great god Google only to receive the following:
Apparently, I erred in the performance of the sacred rituals. Perhaps one of the tallow candles dripped imperceptibly on the magic circle, or maybe I inadvertently scuffed one point of the Druid’s claw with my shoe.
I shall see the oracle to learn what penances will appease the god, and then I shall attempt the sacrifices again.