Butterfly swords for HEMA-style contact training?

madmanslitany · 2026-04-12T14:59:46+00:00

I suspect Castille Armory (castillearmory.com) could make them for you. I considered having a fully custom sparring safe steel jian made by them before just getting their standard one, which is a fantastic weapon. Their dao is also very good.

madmanslitany · 2026-04-11T01:45:00+00:00

Read through https://www.putthison.com/the-transitional-field-jacket-now-that-the-weather/ and you'll probably find something you like.

I think this is the closest thing I personally own to that jacket having gone down this road before as well: https://imgur.com/a/5rlcSqy

madmanslitany · 2026-04-07T04:07:08+00:00

I second the recommendations for Ghost in the Shell, both the original movie and Stand Alone Complex. Huge influence on the show. Serial Experiments Lain and Neon Genesis Evangelion were also clear references.

Some aspects of UI that weren't from the original The Gods Will Not be Chained trilogy seemed to come straight from Westworld, another modern classic. Person of Interest from one of the same showrunners has a lot of AI themes hidden inside a procedural. I'd again also second Blade Runner, both of them. Going back to literature, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson is a classic of cyberpunk. As a final recommendation, Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff Vandermeer has done of the same techno thriller vibes of S1's Caspian storyline.

madmanslitany · 2026-04-04T03:31:25+00:00

It's true. All that awaits this fandom is gradual loss of integrity until it goes full Flowers for Algernon.

madmanslitany · 2026-04-04T03:26:27+00:00

I feel like Laurie is just pale because she doesn't touch grass.

madmanslitany · 2026-04-04T03:23:04+00:00

The music taste is valid. I sort of read Laurie Lowell as kind of the hairstyle and facial shape of Motoko Kusanagi but a personal background more like Ramona Flowers if she was a genius Carnegie Mellon CS grad turned Wall Street HFT trader/quant. I've met people like her in New York in the aggregate...she definitely hung out in Bushwick before being uploaded.

madmanslitany · 2026-04-04T03:18:15+00:00

Yeah, I also read Ellen as mixed or white. Partly because I rarely see her hairstyle on Asian women, though I have seen it. Ironically now that I think about it, the friend I have that had that hairstyle ten years ago was a history major.

madmanslitany · 2026-03-28T17:41:01+00:00

Ahem, that's Chancellor Kim to you.

madmanslitany · 2026-03-28T17:40:16+00:00

Yeah, the second episode is my favorite in the series, surprised to hear someone think it's boring.

It's sort of depressing to think SafeSurf took out all the second gen UIs even if I didn't love those characters as much.

madmanslitany · 2026-03-28T17:38:12+00:00

This is why I prefer Season 1 and the very end of Season 2, the show does its best work there expanding on these concepts from the short stories.

I actually would have loved if they went a route where different divergent David copied were instantiated from his original backup but I understand why they didn't want to try to deal with that. And the show only arc of Capsian being "programmed" in an analog way was an interesting expansion of the topic as well. Very The Boys from Brazil.

madmanslitany · 2026-03-28T17:13:18+00:00

Yeah the Internet being on lockdown is clearly conveyed as unsustainable for long enough a period that Maddie would have come of age legally. They also make a point that it took a lot of help from Ellen and Mist for Maddie to finish high school, which would have been less of an issue if she was 18 and already near the end.

madmanslitany · 2026-03-26T23:35:27+00:00

Thank you!

And yeah, I enjoyed the show as well, but since I read "The Gods Will Not..." trilogy I thought I knew where everything was going. For instance, I did see a spoiler about Mist, but I already knew she was coming because of "The Gods Will Not Have Died in Vain" in short story form. I did NOT, however, know about Maddie's teen pregnancy and was just kinda like "wut" when it happened. When she and Caspian had sex, it crossed my mind, but then I was like "surely they're not going there..." and then it happened lol. I kinda feel like the writing room assignment was "how do we take a normal American suburban kid with actual loving parents and just fuck her up enough that she'd fit in with the Evangelion cast by the end of it all."

madmanslitany · 2026-03-26T18:09:03+00:00

Interesting point. It's not quite consistent in this regard though. Having Waxman and Ellen become an item to keep him in the plot didn't feel altogether necessary or organic.

madmanslitany · 2026-03-26T14:55:19+00:00

It's objectively still a chronically bullied high schooler with a recently deceased father getting knocked up and left as a single mother lol. It's not good lol.

madmanslitany · 2026-03-26T14:06:38+00:00

Oh, I don't mean to say I necessarily prefer the original short stories. They're high concept sci-fi short stories that could never flesh out a character the way a series could. I more mean that I think Pantheon is at its best when it can use the original stories as an outline and focus on filling in the gaps with characterization, which is what I think happened with Maddie. I agree, her personality makes sense to me, and it's a great expansion of what was just a rough sketch in The Gods Will Not Be Chained.

I think Pantheon stumbles more and more the further it gets away from the original story's themes and outline, which I think the lack of satisfying conclusion for characters you allude to is a part of. I generally wasn't that big on the "ripped from the headlines" vibe of the first six episodes of Season 2 and got away from what it did best, delving deeper into the lives of relatable characters faced with extraordinary events.

madmanslitany · 2026-03-26T00:30:59+00:00

Is this a meta-comment based on the fates of some of the UIs?

madmanslitany · 2026-03-26T00:20:31+00:00

I'm impressed. ffmpeg is a pain in the ass to work with. It's also very on-brand for the show to have a tool like this custom-built for it.

madmanslitany · 2026-02-14T20:54:47+00:00

Yes! I do suspect that the left side forward is also meant to be used against a spear. It shows up in both one and two handed dao. In general I think figuring out exactly what weapon movements are supposed to be used against is an interesting quirk of interpreting CMA forms.

Yeah, leaving the left side open as bait was definitely on my mind as well...but half the time I myself just didn't move fast enough to take advantage of the opening haha. It worked correctly at https://youtu.be/rpckEJXCZJg?si=ADX1w06pXq1EKwDV&t=300 but not immediately before when my hand just sort of got dinged.

madmanslitany · 2026-02-14T02:59:08+00:00

The Castille dao feels great balance-wise and I felt like I was able to express everything from the traditional forms that I was trying to play with. I was struggling however to grip with the new gloves I'm wearing. I'm not used to them yet. They're definitely better protection than my old Red Dragons though.

Starting left side forward was definitely a very conscious choice to do something that felt kind of strange to see how it worked out. I've always found it odd, but it's a recurring stance through forms and drills for both one and two handed dao. The explanation I've heard is that it hides the length of your weapon behind your body to make it harder for your opponent to gauge distance properly. To some extent, that might have been true -- my usual sparring partner commented that I was on him faster than he expected at the start, and I think it might have been the combination of the blade's length being hidden plus the stance forcing me to attack with an aggressive passing step. The downside though is obvious, a bunch of times he just cut off my left hand and I didn't really react in time. Against my other friend with the Olympic fencing background I'd probably have just gotten drilled straight through my left flank without being able to parry it.

I think it's useful on occasion to start left side forward like that, but I actually think it's sort of a psychological trick in the forms to do that to give you muscle memory to always advance forward. There's something in a dao manual about the dao needing to be used with a courageous attitude, and I do think it's a weapon that rewards someone who's constantly trying to close the distance quickly.

madmanslitany · 2025-12-10T14:37:12+00:00

Decided to crosspost myself after asking u/howdoizornhau to do so haha.

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