RuneScape Forum Archive | You suck at fight writing

jagkilledme

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Have you ever heard of the web-series called "you suck at photoshop"? Well, this thread is kind of like that, except I'm not teaching you how to use photoshop, and this isn't a web-series. However, in tribute to that web-series (which I like very much), I will start this out the same way that it does.

Hello, my name is Zoe, and you suck at fight writing. You do, you're awful, and that's why you're here. Alright, let's get started.

(This is going to pertain mostly to martial combat because that is my personal preference and what I have the most training in and what I am most comfortable helping others with. Feel free to post with any feedback or questions and I'll do my best to answer or find someone that can, such as my sensei.) I am going to break your arm so that the bone juts out and then I will stab you to death with your own insides. I will win this chess game, is what I am saying.

24-Feb-2015 03:16:14 - Last edited on 24-Feb-2015 06:03:37 by jagkilledme

jagkilledme

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You roleplay a great warrior, so you should probably know how to fight like one, and there are many things to keep in mind as a combatant. As I once read, a lifetime of knightly training won't prepare you for getting cracked across the face with a barstool, but it's more then that.

On the subject of short fighters, I have a lot to say as a 5'2" martial artist. I also have a lot of pet peeves concerning this and will address them in points.

1. You're taking the quote "short fighters are better" out of context and don't understand what the people saying it mean. What they mean by short fighters generally being better is quite simple; they mean technique. To measure up against taller opponents, short combatants need to have flawless technique. If their form is bad, they have nothing to redeem the disadvantages of being short and even perfect form won't always save you.

2. Your reach sucks, which is why your technique needs to be better. Stand in front of someone taller than you and both of you hold your arms out. Yeah, there you go. Their arms are longer. Their legs are longer. They can fight very aggressively and very safely because you can't reach them.

3. Their blows are generally heavier. By this, I mean they hit really, really hard. It's painful. It's horrible. If you've never been decked in the face, I can assure you that it is definitely one of the worst feelings ever, though nowhere as bad as having your shoulder dislocated - it makes this gross, wet sound when it pops out of its socket and it is extremely painful.

4. You'll sometimes hear teachers say "fight like a girl", especially if you're taking asian martial arts. What they mean by this is simple, they mean that you need to keep your center of gravity low so that you're hard to knock off balance. This is the one advantage you have by being short - your center gravity is low and with good positioning, you're harder to knock off balance. I am going to break your arm so that the bone juts out and then I will stab you to death with your own insides. I will win this chess game, is what I am saying.

24-Feb-2015 03:16:20 - Last edited on 24-Feb-2015 03:22:01 by jagkilledme

jagkilledme

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5. Women aren't necessarily weaker, especially not as combatants. Power comes from the hips. If you just draw your arm back and punch, you won't have as much force behind your blow as you would if you rotated your hips. Women also have a higher pain tolerance than men, our bodies are simply naturally more resilient then men's.

Now that you've read my rant, it's time to git learned about fighting in this next part:

1. When you stand your ground and block, you are tanking straight damage. I say tanking damage because this is a term that most people understand. When you think tanking, you usually think shield, so we'll address that first.

Billyjoebob#75 brings a mace down at Coolknight#93, rotating his hips as he does so. Coolknight#93 raises his shield and blocks it. The shock resonates through his arm.

Alright, so now we have an example. Now, we'll grab a more serious one with some consequences.

Smartknight#5 draws his shield in closer to his chest, sword raised and shifts before outstretching his arm to shieldbash his opponent. Dumbdude#9's shield connects with Smartknight#5's and the force nearly makes him lose his footing. Smartknight#5 takes advantages of this and lunges at Dumbdude#9. Dumbdude#9 sustains an injury and his momentum for the fight is now ruined.

Force does not disappear. You're absorbing it. Into your arm that you're blocking with. If you block a blow, you're going to hurt yourself to varying degrees, depending on how much force is used.

Momentum is incredibly important, especially in fighting. Consider it like dancing. If you miss-step, it's harder for you to continue from where you were and easier to start all over again. When training in dojo, you practice the motions standalone if you're getting them wrong and then start from the top of the chain of movements (attack, defense, whatever you're doing). I am going to break your arm so that the bone juts out and then I will stab you to death with your own insides. I will win this chess game, is what I am saying.

24-Feb-2015 03:16:24 - Last edited on 24-Feb-2015 05:14:08 by jagkilledme

jagkilledme

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2. Strafing and deflecting is usually the better option when you're doing martial combat (hand to hand). We'll take a look at the first stance that is good for strafing that comes to mind, ichimonji (Which in case you're curious is from bujinkan ninjutsu).

I urge you to look up the stance, it's the one where one arm is up, and the martial artist has a hand hovering near their face. This stance functions with the same principle of the standard boxing stance where you keep one hand close to your face to defend it. In case you're lazy, look up "Learn Ninjutsu - Jodan Uke Tips - "upper block/strike" on youtube. Some of what this guy is doing is flat out bad (it happens a lot with 'learn martial arts online' series) but his stance at 0:48 is what I want you to look at.

That, there. You see how he's standing? That's a very favorable deflect + strafing stance. Don't bother watching the rest of the video.

So you're that guy now. Your left arm is up but relaxed (we won't go into this in text, it's difficult to explain, visuals are better) and your right hand is up, near your shoulder. Now go back and watch 0:41 to 0:47. Don't even bother listening to what he says. See that movement? It's fluid, easy. By standing with your feet at 90 degrees, you can strafe with ease and clear a fair bit of distance.

Always, always strafe before doing anything else. Inertia is your enemy. Inertia will get you killed. Think of it this way, by strafing first, you're reducing the risk of getting hit, or maybe you're managing to dodge the blow completely with just a strafe.

But just in case, you want to deflect. Watch from 1:09 to 1:16. That little circular movement he does with his left arm? That's a deflection. He demonstrates it at around 1:25. What you want to be doing, though, is clearing actual distance, which he isn't doing. Strafe, deflect. Strafe, deflect.

If your left arm is the outstretched one, you want to be moving your left foot in first and then sliding your right out. I am going to break your arm so that the bone juts out and then I will stab you to death with your own insides. I will win this chess game, is what I am saying.

24-Feb-2015 03:16:28 - Last edited on 24-Feb-2015 04:21:26 by jagkilledme

jagkilledme

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3. Having long hair is really nice. I like having long, flowing locks. You know that curly haired football player in the head and shoulders commercial that shakes his hair out? Yeah, that's me. Having long hair is amazing but having long hair also sucks if you're a fighter.

If your hair gets pulled, your body follows. If someone behind you is pulling your hair, you're going to jerk backwards. We'll call this pain protection. Your body will always, always follow. If you try to fight it and lean in the opposite direction, well, good job, you just hurt yourself.

This is why soldiers and martial artists with long hair put their hair in a bun - it's harder to grab. That really hideous pineapple updo girls tend to do also works for that.

4. Here's one I'm guilty of myself so I sympathize with people that do it. One hit kills don't really exist. By one hit kills, I mean like the typical thing most people know about such as driving the nose bone up into the brain!

First of all, it's mostly cartilage. Second of all, it's not long enough. Thirdly, you'd need ideal conditions even if it were possible to kill someone that way or it would be a massive accident. By ideal conditions I mean that the person's head is tipped up and you're using your palm to drive the cartilage upwards and somehow, you manage to drive it straight up. The odds of that are very slim. Fourthly, it wouldn't be able penetrate the bone anyway. So there's that debunked.

There are a couple of assured, legitimate ways of killing people and most of them aren't guaranteed unless we're talking large amounts of force.

Going for the windpipe is a scary thing. If you crush it, someone may very well suffocate to death.

Driving a knife through someone's eye, well that works. Aim upwards from the zygomatic bone (the bone right under your eye) and you'll likely drive it into the brain. There's nothing to protect it from the blow. RIP! I am going to break your arm so that the bone juts out and then I will stab you to death with your own insides. I will win this chess game, is what I am saying.

24-Feb-2015 03:16:31 - Last edited on 24-Feb-2015 04:54:28 by jagkilledme

jagkilledme

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5. Armor. OH MY SWEET MOTHER OF GOD, ARMOR. ****. I COULD GO ON ALL DAY. Alright, this one is going to be fast. Look up "armour aerobics" on youtube. Yes. That's right. You can do cartwheels in armor.

If you want a massive rant about armor, though, check Khaine's guides.

5.1. Well this one is also about armor, but it's about stuff this reference guide writing reference thing is about: kicking ass. It's going to be very short; armor doesn't offer leg support. What I mean by this is that if some ass hole kid runs up to your side, he can kick your leg in and break it because your leg isn't supposed to bend that way and nothing is going to save you from that. That example, however, is a bit fetched - are you really going to let someone walk up to you and bend your leg in? Probably not.

But you can break it with blunt weapon!

5.2 The back of the knee. That's the real terror for armor-wearers, your achilles tendon, so to speak. Here, you can't have any real protection or you'll restrict your own movement and you'll lumber around like someone wearing 5 winter suits piled on top of each-other if you try that hard. That's the danger-zone, this is what you need to protect. That's where the hamstring tendon is.

You can tear a tendon and maybe you'll be alright with some surgery, maybe you'll be a little crippled. For that, I can't say, I'm not a doctor. But if the hamstring gets cut, you drop. That's it. You might as well be dead already. If someone cuts your hamstring, they're probably going for your throat next (so to speak). They're going to finish you off, put you down like an old, lame horse. I am going to break your arm so that the bone juts out and then I will stab you to death with your own insides. I will win this chess game, is what I am saying.

24-Feb-2015 03:16:34 - Last edited on 24-Feb-2015 05:12:28 by jagkilledme

jagkilledme

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Writing a fight:

This can be a little harder when you're roleplaying then when you're just writing because you don't want it to be too long-winded, which is one of the reasons why I personally prefer to RP combat with public chat set to friends to keep clatter to a minimum but don't fret!

Now, you've got your jams on and they're jamming away, doing their jam thing and you're pumped and you wanna beat someone up, steal their lunch money and stuff them in a locker! You're ready.

So here, I'm going to explain something that is absolutely vital to writing combat. Kinetic energy. Kinetic energy in fighting is summed up to the weight of blows and the energy gathered from momentum. If you don't understand, that's fine, because I'm going to give you an example, though I'm going to clip the scene because some of it won't make sense to people that haven't read the book.

Original message details are unavailable.
He drew himself up to his full height and lifted his head to Khryl’s light —the last time a Khryllian Knight ever kneels is when he takes his Orders, unless he’s defeated and Yields in Combat* and when he slipped into the Old High Lipkan Ammare Khryl Tyrhaalv’Dhalleig, the head of his morningstar took on that St. Elmo’s fire glow that began to creep down the haft toward his hands and I took one long skipping step for momentum and leaped.

With my entire seventy -five kilos, plus all the kinetic energy I could cram into an exceedingly well-trained side kick, which made his two-handed grip into a fulcrum, the haft into a lever, and the seven-bladed head into Archimedes’ Earth.

It caught him full on the left temple. This would have killed any ordinary man. Khlaylock did*’t even fall down. The effect was pretty spectacular nonetheless.

A wet ripping crunch splintered his eye socket and cheekbone and fanned black blood spray into the mist; the impact turned his head and sent the morningstar on past, taking most of the side of his face with it. -- I am going to break your arm so that the bone juts out and then I will stab you to death with your own insides. I will win this chess game, is what I am saying.

24-Feb-2015 03:16:39 - Last edited on 24-Feb-2015 05:39:41 by jagkilledme

jagkilledme

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--

Original message details are unavailable.
The weapon flipped out of his slackening hands and he staggered, trying to turn toward me as I landed, trying to get his hands up— even stunned into next year he was trying to fight back— but his left eye dangled out of its shattered socket by his optic nerve, flopping against black -smeared teeth left exposed because his upper lip was lying on the grass somewhere still hooked to the head of his morningstar, and that had to **** with his targeting, because he was waving his head around like he couldn’t decide which eye he should be seeing with. Before he could figure it out, I threw my hip into a Thai roundhouse that slammed my right shin across his kidneys hard enough to capture his unsteady balance and send him stumbling toward the lip of the escarpment. I sprang after him, digging in my feet and jamming both hands into his spine to send him even faster, and y’know, if he’d been somebody else, somebody less the Legendary Warrior than Purthin Khlaylock, he still might have taken me, because another Knight would have fallen, and had a chance to get up again. Khlaylock, though, staggered to the very brink, caught his balance, and wheeled to face me.

Just in time to catch both feet of my old-fashioned flying dropkick in the middle of his chest. He sailed out over the long, long drop with a curiously calm, flat look in his good eye, a look that bespoke absolute certainty that t his is not yet over, little man.

The hundred-meter fall to the highest of the Black Knife campfires below disagreed with him.

I hit ground at the lip and just lay there for a while, letting the black jolts drain away into the wet and the grass.

The waterfall was too loud for me to hear him land.
- Excerpt from Caine Black Knife by Matthew Woodring Stover. (No, this isn't really a spoiler, if you want to read it.) I am going to break your arm so that the bone juts out and then I will stab you to death with your own insides. I will win this chess game, is what I am saying.

24-Feb-2015 03:16:45 - Last edited on 24-Feb-2015 05:29:52 by jagkilledme

jagkilledme

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That right there is one of my favorite fighting scenes in the Acts of Caine series. It's bad ass and it portrays movement. I don't recommend that particular scene for realism, however, for obvious reasons. The character Caine kicks off a cliff is basically imbued with the power of the God of War and is super broken.

Here's another one:

Original message details are unavailable.
He struggles beneath me, but I’ve got him now and there’s no way I’m gonna let him go. I slam his head into the curving step, and again, and again and again ; the purple-veined marble is now artistically spattered with the crimson of Berne’s blood.

But he’s still conscious, and now he’s smiling up at me with those smeary lips and reddened teeth , and I have to choose between continuing to beat on him or just cutting his throat because those ogres will haul me off him in about ten seconds, and having to make that choice brings me back to something resembling rationality. At about this time I realize he’s been pounding the side of my head with his doubled elbow. He can** get any force behind it, lying down like that; he’s doing it mostly to distract me from his other hand, which is sliding up my neck to hook a thumb toward my eye.

As he swings again I rear back out of his elbow’s path and grab his upper arm, twisting him on around so his back’s to me now, pinning his scabbarded sword with my chest. The hair on the back of his head is matted with blood from a single cut where his scalp split against the edge of the step.

- Excerpt from Heroes Die, book one of the Acts of Caine series by Matthew Woodring Stover

Movement, movement, movement.

You have to get a sense for it. You want it to give a sense of propulsion, of momentum. You want your opponent to be able to properly imagine the weight of the blows and the amount of force coming at them so that they can properly react for the world of pain you're trying to visit upon them. I am going to break your arm so that the bone juts out and then I will stab you to death with your own insides. I will win this chess game, is what I am saying.

24-Feb-2015 03:16:51 - Last edited on 24-Feb-2015 05:38:41 by jagkilledme

jagkilledme

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Conditioning and combat:

When you're training in Muay Thai, which is a martial art that, in your first year of study, will have you in personal pain, you have to do a lot of conditioning. What I mean by conditioning for martial combat is pretty much desensitizing yourself - you want to remove as much potential for pain as possible. A lot of people call this "deadening of the nerves", though this isn't exactly true; you're not killing the nerves, you're killing off a lot of your potential for pain. You're numbing yourself to pain.

For MT in particular, you condition the shins because you do a lot of kicking using your shins. Proper conditioning takes years. You're gradually building yourself up. Consider it like a muscle - you don't just start off with a few hundred pounds, you start off small and you gradually improve or you'll injure yourself because your body is disagreeing with what you want it to do. You condition them by kicking a heavy bag (it doesn't have to be extremely firm).

You want to build strength in the bone because, well, you don't want to hurt yourself.

If you're roleplaying a character that does a lot of shin kicks, you probably want then to wear some kind of padding (it doesn't have to be massive). Speaking from personal experience and having attempted to look k00lies in front of the dojo boys by sparring without shin guard's, I have absolutely destroyed my shins from not properly conditioning them, not using shin guard's and all around being stupid about it.

Now, I know what you might be thinking - why did I condition if I'm just going to wear shin guard's? It's because shinguard's aren't 100%, so to speak. Shin guards are never bad, so you might as well use them. Remember that when you're hitting someone, you're also taking damage yourself. I am going to break your arm so that the bone juts out and then I will stab you to death with your own insides. I will win this chess game, is what I am saying.

24-Feb-2015 03:16:55 - Last edited on 24-Feb-2015 05:59:44 by jagkilledme

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You suck at fight writing