thirteen facts about samurai
May. 19th, 2013 09:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yamamanama1. Samurai were not mercenaries or condottieri.
2. They were a hereditary class
3. During long times of peace, samurai armor became even more ornate and impractical, with stag horns or bat faces or tiny intricate dragonflies and grass.
4. So there were generations of samurai who have never seen war.
5. Samurai rode horses and started out using very large bows.
6. And the horses wore armor too, fashioned in the form of dragons.
7. There are samurai helmets fashioned in the shape of eggplants. The purple ones, not the ones you see in green curry.
8. Some of them wore armor with dents in it, when they tested bullets on it.
9. They weren't very open to the idea of guns. They were primitive guns, and the benefit of guns is not accuracy of speed or penetration ability, it was being able to give a bunch of peasants guns, train them for a month, and send them off to war.
10. Star Wars is totally based on samurai films.
11. During peacetime, samurai were firefighters. They wore helmets with these drapes of cloth with a facehole cut out. They remind me of something, but I'm not sure what. Let me illustrate that for you. In my haste to post this entry, I forgot to post it. Silly me.
You already know I can't mouse draw.
12. A lot of samurai helmets had bushy mustaches of horsehair. And maybe it made them look intimidating, but I think they used the mustaches to filter out dust.
13. These arms/armor races happened with fish. Armored fish (placoderms and ostracoderms and the like) went extinct because their armor got thicker and thicker to protect them from stronger and stronger jaws, and it turned out maneuverability was better than protection. Or maybe they were just victims of various catastrophes.
I think Aristoi turned into Star Ocean when I was reading it.
I saw somebody dressed as a pirate at Boylston. I saw somebody doing the "I'm cold and it's unnaturally cold outside and I hope my dance wards off climate change" dance at North Quincy. But seriously, fuck climate change.
... um. I had a burning question/reference to Only Forward (a novel I think everybody should read if they get their hands on) about not having anything to do and feeling listless and everything seems like too much effort. But I realize it's incongruous to the way I'm actually feeling lately.
burning question: What misconceptions did you have when you were younger? I once thought that since they called Africa the dark continent, it meant it was always night there, like Fenrir was blocking out the sun.
2. They were a hereditary class
3. During long times of peace, samurai armor became even more ornate and impractical, with stag horns or bat faces or tiny intricate dragonflies and grass.
4. So there were generations of samurai who have never seen war.
5. Samurai rode horses and started out using very large bows.
6. And the horses wore armor too, fashioned in the form of dragons.
7. There are samurai helmets fashioned in the shape of eggplants. The purple ones, not the ones you see in green curry.
8. Some of them wore armor with dents in it, when they tested bullets on it.
9. They weren't very open to the idea of guns. They were primitive guns, and the benefit of guns is not accuracy of speed or penetration ability, it was being able to give a bunch of peasants guns, train them for a month, and send them off to war.
10. Star Wars is totally based on samurai films.
11. During peacetime, samurai were firefighters. They wore helmets with these drapes of cloth with a facehole cut out. They remind me of something, but I'm not sure what. Let me illustrate that for you. In my haste to post this entry, I forgot to post it. Silly me.
You already know I can't mouse draw.
12. A lot of samurai helmets had bushy mustaches of horsehair. And maybe it made them look intimidating, but I think they used the mustaches to filter out dust.
13. These arms/armor races happened with fish. Armored fish (placoderms and ostracoderms and the like) went extinct because their armor got thicker and thicker to protect them from stronger and stronger jaws, and it turned out maneuverability was better than protection. Or maybe they were just victims of various catastrophes.
I think Aristoi turned into Star Ocean when I was reading it.
I saw somebody dressed as a pirate at Boylston. I saw somebody doing the "I'm cold and it's unnaturally cold outside and I hope my dance wards off climate change" dance at North Quincy. But seriously, fuck climate change.
... um. I had a burning question/reference to Only Forward (a novel I think everybody should read if they get their hands on) about not having anything to do and feeling listless and everything seems like too much effort. But I realize it's incongruous to the way I'm actually feeling lately.
burning question: What misconceptions did you have when you were younger? I once thought that since they called Africa the dark continent, it meant it was always night there, like Fenrir was blocking out the sun.
