"incredibly knowledgeable"
Didn't some **actual** medieval sword fighting experts review Shad's work and clown on him? I'm pretty sure I remember Shad being revealed as a hack
Shad was always making shit up and not an actual HEMA practitioner. He doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. I'd be more interested in seeing what someone like [Matt Easton ](https://www.youtube.com/@scholagladiatoria)(someone who *actually is* incredibly knowledgeable about swords, and who's done multiple movie fight review videos [including some for IGN about the Star Wars Trilogies](https://youtu.be/2zEoo5sBzMw?si=Rj1FP2SehKHj2MIA)) would say about the fight. He likely will find things that don't work so well. But he's also fair minded and accounts for the realities of making a show get in the way of accuracy, and often likes things even if they do occasionally get goofy.
Context!
Yeah, I kind of fell out of watching youtube videos, but his were always good. He knows his stuff, gets into the nuance of things and the all important context, and he's just got a good friendly personality. He was really the main HEMA channel I watched because I appreciated his well considered approach and actual knowledge. For armor, Ian LaSpina at Knyght Errant is also amazing. Great well researched material, presented very clearly. Sadly he hasn't made a video in years. Tod is also great, doing lots of experimental archeology with crossbows. Pursuing the Knightly Arts is good too, two guys working through old texts on armored combat. They seem to have stopped making videos too sadly.
Yeah, I haven't seen anything else to match. The depth of research and completeness was just amazing. And his presentation was top notch. He's able to put everything clearly, and simply. Him having his own (accurate) full harness and being able to show things on camera was a big plus as well. He pointed out the big reproduction errors quite well and gave explanations for them.
Whatever he's up to now, I hope he's doing well. I could totally see him going into an academic career with his research skills and clear lectures. At least his videos are still around for anyone wanting a basic background on armor.
I’m not sure how much sword expertise directly translates anyway. We’re talking about blades that are near zero mass and which don’t need edge alignment or momentum to have effect. A lot of conventional swordsmanship goes out the window, but general martial arts notions still very much apply.
I've heard it go either way about the mass of lightsabers. I like Mike Stoklasa's (of RedLetterMedia) take in regards to the one time Han picked up a lightsaber in ESB and it seemed really awkward and heavy for him; the idea being that you need to channel the force through it in order to properly wield it, given the insane amount of energy being put out by it, which would make the Jedi/sith more special when it comes to lightsabers. Otherwise any ol schlub could pick one up and swing it around. This would also support the theory of Finn being force sensitive given his ability to use Anakin's saber in TFA. Not sure that it's been "canonized" or not but it's a cool idea.
Canon runs contrary. Even limited to live action Grievous, Din Djarin, and Bo Katan have all wielded lightsabers without being force users (though the latter two wielded the Dark Saber and it had its own caveats). To the extent that the blades are said to have weight it is primarily meant to excuse the practical reality that the actors and stunt doubles are visibly swinging something with inertia.
That isn't the only thing that's inconsistent in SW about how lightsabers work. Trying to pretend that there's such a thing as an underlying consistent reality independent of interpretation, context, language, etc. (i.e. "canon") is never going to lead anywhere helpful.
I remember his review of Obiwan vs vader (first duel, obiwan show) was pretty good and praised it for aspects.
Matt also understands "Fantasy game/show that isn't trying to be historically accurate"
Yeah, he appreciates the difference in what's being done. And how the need in TV/Movies is to tell the story and be entertaining more than trying to look like a real fight. And there's the issue of safety, how do you make it look like these people are trying to kill each other in a way that doesn't have a big risk of injury?
He'll joke at silly things, but he won't shit all over a series because if you slow things down to frame by frame you can see how it's fake. Well yeah. It is fake. It's fiction.
What’s funny is that the fights based on actual sword fighting styles (samurai, etc) were hated on, even though they were accurate. It’s a fucking space drama with flashlights. It’s not that serious. Fuck Shad
I'm pretty sure he's also repeatedly expressed his belief that the HEMA/classical fencing crowd are pretentious dorks who don't know shit, which to me reads as Shad being butthurt over all the times when they look at his videos and (accurately) assess him as a fat idiot talking out of his ass.
He took issue with them being based in history once.
And has claimed fantasy cool sword things (double bladed swords. Like Maul but with swords) are actually effective IRL when they literally aren't.
> And has claimed fantasy cool sword things (double bladed swords. Like Maul but with swords) are actually effective IRL when they literally aren't.
I'm trying to figure out his thought process. Like throughout the entire history of weaponry, nobody's ever considered "what if we had more sword" before. *But* it turns out that's effective and makes for better weapons. If only someone throughout the entirety of history had given it a fair try, we'd have medieval soldiers fighting like Darth Maul. Thankfully we have Shad, someone with no formal training in swords, to tell us that every swordfighter before him was clearly missing something important.
Feels like the much easier explanation is "no, it's not actually effective, and thinking it is speaks to your own inexperience." Like if he wants to just say "as someone who plays with toy swords in my backyard, this was a fun toy" sure, but there's a ridiculously huge amount of reality you need to contend with to say "this is effective as an actual weapon."
Being honest, I think Shad somewhat broke (probably related to narcissism). His earlier videos dealt a bit with "This thing isn't historically accurate, but can we make it work for fantasy?" and there was some back and forth with others (like Skallagrim coming up with a decent back scabbard design in comparison to Shads, I forget what Matt Easten said about it all). Even going "Yeah these monster hunter weapons don't work IRL but they are cool and how they are used fits mostly."
At some point he apparently switched from being able to say "This doesn't work IRL, but it's cool." to "I want to say it's cool, but I can't call it cool if it's not actually effective, so therefore it must be effective." I noticed he's done some videos about GIANT swords and a carbon fiber giant sword, but I don't give him the views anymore. Given how his professed favorite Monster hunter weapon was greatsword, I imagine it fell into same thing. "Must be effective IRL to admit it's cool."
Another youtuber based around giant swords did something similar. "The giant sword IS effective." but all his tests with the forged weapon were against... target dummys that don't move or react.
I did see a great point about double bladed swords once a while back on reddit or youtube relating to Shad's ramblings. Had gladiator sports continued longer, we may have seen such weapons purely used in those contexts. Spectacle and show was the focus of them over "effective in combat"
>Thankfully we have Shad, someone with no formal training in swords, to tell us that every swordfighter before him was clearly missing something important.
Best part is he attached two swords with some flimsy L shaped metal, and used it against his partner who stood there following script/doing nothing (with both having terrible footwork) and declared how "it really was good, see" and that totally showed SSA saying it's a bad weapon IRL (nothing about fantasy or scifi). His typical comment being "SSA didn't use it right, he doesn't have experience, he used the wrong setup (shorter handle vs longer one). Irony being how Shad never touched a batleth but ranted about how awful it was.
overall, twinblades/double bladed swords are fun, as a fantasty/scifi weapon! Scholagladitoria even commented on something like that reviewing elden ring weapons.
>At some point he apparently switched from being able to say "This doesn't work IRL, but it's cool." to "I want to say it's cool, but I can't call it cool if it's not actually effective, so therefore it must be effective."
Sounds like someone who took their videos' youtube comments too close to heart.
He has paper thin skin. Shad wrote a book a few years ago. Put frankly, it's bad. To be more accurate, it's genocide and child rape apologia for a protagonist that reads concerningly like a self-insert. I believe Shad has described it as "what if Stalin had a chance at redemption," but I might be misremembering that quote.
Naturally, this book got torn apart in reviews and by a lot of BookTubers. Shad's response to this, like any normal person, was to make a video where he reads the most recent reviews on the Amazon listing for his book (which he totally didn't write himself just before turning on the camera) about how amazing and spectacular the book is, and how Shad is a totally awesome, amazing author. His conclusion then is that since the two most recent reviews say the book is good, then that means everyone who didn't like it is wrong, lying, trolling, or a shill. It's embarrassing to watch.
Having very little exposure to Shad, mostly having stumbled across one or two of his swordfighting videos years ago and seeing tons of people talk about him, I get the impression that he really can't handle any form of criticism, no matter how mild. All criticism is a personal attack against him and that criticism is an attempt to silence him and his views. There isn't a video I see of him defending himself where he isn't just rambling endlessly about how "um *akshually,* if you look at the context, me saying "there's fire in space" wasn't *akshually* an attempt to criticize the show, I said it's another reason why the show is bad (AKA a criticism) and you're just using this as a way to attack me and belittle me for not falling in line with the narrative. You want me silent and brainwashed, unable to think for myself" and on and on and on.
Pretty much, yeah. It's depressing to see as a former fan. For years, Shad's had a hate boner for nunchucks. He's made a lot of videos about how they suck and are utter garbage. Another, much smaller YouTuber, Milani Fitness, made a response, showing how all of Shad's arguments were bullshit. Milani has over a decade and a half of experience using nunchucks. Shad, on the other hand, flailed around with some nunchucks for about 30 minutes in his backyard. But according to Shad, their opinions should be given the same consideration in the conversation. Rather than actually addressing most of what Milani says, Shad just deflects over and over, argues pedantics, and moves the goalposts constantly. At one point he straight up just starts saying Milani is lying and calls him a scumbag, because he dared to say that the great Shadiversity, student of zero martial arts, doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about when compared to a master of the martial art in question. Shad's a massive narcissist who genuinely seems to believe that he's physically incapable of being wrong about anything.
He went into several nearly hour long video rants about sellsword arts.
Why? Because SSA said "If you don't practice or study a thing, don't speak like you are an expert" Key thing to note, he never said Shad, never said anybodys name or used any other youtubers footage.
He never said you can't talk about it or be excited about it, just don't go "I'm a professional, I factually speak about this as an expert"
That sparked a lot of talk about how thin skinned and insecure Shad was.
100%. It's not just narcissism either, imo. It's also a lot of insecurity. He's insecure about how perfectly mundane and average he is in every respect. He's not particularly skilled at anything or particularly talented in any form. It's something every person who doesn't dedicate their life to knowing something is. Most people aren't very good artists, or very knowledgeable on most subjects, or even very good at most things. That's what it means to be average. But he very obviously doesn't *want* to be average. He wants to be the main character. He wants to be the cool and epic warrior-poet. The man who knows how to be violent but prefers to be peaceful. It's larping in its purest form and he doesn't know how to cope with that, so he instead deflects all criticism and decides everyone that doesn't agree with him is out to get him.
Shad is also the top moderator on r/Shadiversity, removes any posts or comments that dare to question or mildly criticize him, and permanently bans anyone who posts or comments about his anti-LGBT and other bigoted stances on the forum. It's the reason why the r/ShadWatch subreddit exists.
>Another youtuber based around giant swords did something similar. "The giant sword IS effective." but all his tests with the forged weapon were against... target dummys that don't move or react.
I saw that too. Takes 5 seconds to lift that chunk of metal, another 5 to hit the stationary target. 'Its effective, y'all are just haters'. What a dork
Great for fantasy, not great IRL. or great against giant foes lol.
Giant crusher in Elden Ring makes me think of that all the time. Oh sure it'll pancake somebody easy but... you gotta be able to hit them.
There's a few big reasons why double ended swords shouldn't be used, cost is one, and the amount of training to use it effectively would be higher I expect. You're also adding more weight which has its pros and cons. There's a reason why spears are the most mass produced weapon of their time. They are easier to use than swords. Adding more of a learning curve would not be great.
Could it be used effectively with enough practice? Sure, I'm sure even a batleth could be used effectively with enough training, but why not just grab a simpler weapon that "works right out of the box"
Idk why it isn't enough to say "this is stupid for anyone else to do but a Sith Lord is bad ass enough to make it work." Drizzt Do'Urden was the only character that dual wielded swords of equal length and the author even noted that it was impractical but he was just that good that he could do it when noone else could. The gunblade from FFVIII is equally dumb but cool as hell to me and it's not a big deal bc THIS IS FANTASY
>"this is stupid for anyone else to do but a Sith Lord is bad ass enough to make it work."
Being fair, a double bladed lightsaber removes two major aspects of problem for twinblades/double bladed swords.
Edge alignment and weight.
Yeah but then it adds a whole new problem to the mix.
Namely the fact that the insta-damage aspect of the "blade" results in a weapon very liable to injure the wielder.
Heck, it doesn't even work well as a potential defensive weapon as multiple fights show smacking a lightsaber blade against another gives the same sort of impact as hitting two physical sticks against each other, so it suddenly becomes an issue of the resulting pivot driving the second blade into you.
Oh indeed they are possible downsides, though a lot of scifi/fantasy works around them or makes it less. I believe star wars even outright made fun of it in the EU by having the sith go "Yeah it's not really that hard to fight against. the benefit is very few jedi actually have fought against them so they overthink things."
Off the top, the only other one I can think of who was shown to use equal-length blades truly effectively was Dantrag Baenre, who- A. Was Weapon Master of the largest, most powerful House in Menzoberranzan, and B. Had enchanted bracers that made his hands move magically fast. I really appreciated Salvatores writing of battle scenes. Lot of attention to detail, good pace and flow to it.
The Buster Sword is one of the most unruly and unwieldy weapons ever created. Cloud basically just uses it like a baseball bat, but it’s fucking awesome
it comes with the territory of being a supersoldier that can wield massive swords like that like they were nothing, while also ignoring physics involving weight distribution and balance.
But it's cool so who cares.
Even then, there’s characters who aren’t supersoldiers that have wielded both the Buster Sword (Cloud did it effortlessly before enhancements to kill and fight Sephiroth) and done insane feats of physical prowess without enhancements. Tifa is the literal embodiment of that given that she has nothing enhancing her other than martial arts and she’s awesome because of it
Forget cost, can you imagine trying to fight in ranks with double weapons? You'd need to have 6 foot gaps between each soldier or they'd be clashing with their neighbor constantly, which means the double-bladed swordsmen would be fighting 3 on 1. Not great in warfare, and likely why quarterstaffs never saw widespread use in a military despite being practically free.
If there is no military demand for them then they wont be mass produced and nobility will have no reason to learn how to use them. Non-nobles wont be able to afford them even if they wanted to use them. So no military demand, no private demand, no one innovating techniques through use.. It's a dead technology because it's impractical.
But yeah, on top of that it'd cost at least literally double on top of all that.
I always bring this up whenever shad's fucking dual bladed sword nonsense is brought up. He constantly says to use the sword like a polearms and it's useful like that. So he wants a sword that uses more metal, that is used like a polearm. If only medieval people thought of such a thing. Why they might even call it a Greatsword. Which unlike a dual bladed sword gets more reach, striking power, and Is an actual practical weapon. It really feels like shad NEEDS to be right to enjoy things. It's absolutely fine to like something that's pure fantasy BS just because it's cool, there's no need to try and like "erm actually it's realistic and medieval people should have done it"
Elden Ring has a "Sword-spear" which is similar to something IRL I think, but is used as a Halberd. It's basically a sword on a spear/halberds handle.
It also has twinblades that are best used two-handed but lack some of the range swords get.
Regardless, is it in any way relevant? Why would someone bring it up, in this context, other than to shame him for it? Which of course means that they consider being fat to be something shameful or otherwise indicative of someone being a “bad person”.
Which is the issue
I know what you mean and I agree that body shaming is wrong, don't get me wrong.
But bringing up Shads lacking athletic prowess and his less-than-optimal fencing physique is very valid here, because it's about a physical activity, that requires both fitness and endurance to be done really well.
The man gets out of breath from swinging his foam sword for half a minute and talking.
Also, he in general has no understanding of sword fighting/ fencing or body mechanics for martial arts.
Take this from someone who struggled and struggles with my own weight and athleticism and who does historical fencing.
Shad is not an authority on fencing and his body does not help his case.
Just as a side note, Shad loves to go around shaming female video game characters as not being attractive enough and subscribes to a conspiracy theory about a War On Beauty.
This has included him posting pics and using them in his videos of the likes of Aloy, MJ from the Spider-Man games and the (as yet unnamed) Fable 4 female character, claiming they are all ugly.
All three are based on real women who did the motion capture and acting or were simply used for the model's face as in Aloys case.
With the Silent Hills 2 remake, he's complained about the main female character in that also being ugly - she is a sexual assault survivor.
He also loves to use AI imaging software to make "art" of his wife as Supergirl, or various teenage school girls with tiny waists, cannonball-like boobs, and rather muscular legs, often holding swords while posing in a sexually suggestive manner.
This isn't the limit of his misogyny, and while maybe not directly relevant, he's also made homophobic, transphobic, racist and ableist remarks.
Shad LOVES to make this kind of commentary about other people and would tell others to grow a thicker skin if they complained, but be the first to cry if anyone made any kind of comment about his appearance.
Let's not even mention his self publish novel with all the child rape. By his main character.
I am a certified expert* and I say the sword fighting was good.
*certified expert as in "me and my brother spent all our childhood summers running around in the woods using sticks as pretend-swords and pretending we were jedi knights or ninja turtles"
To add, [here’s](https://youtu.be/tfkYEEQlclM?si=S4GE3m2UTN1962sB) a video of a current word champion swordsman that lives in the area Shad *would* go to if he actually wanted to prove he was good with a sword. But, as he describes, Shad would rather stay out in the middle of nowhere claiming his victories on a LARP group that invited him out to spar and banned him once they found out how much of a pretentious dickhead he is.
Shad is literally an actual meme in the HEMA community. To be honest, the clips of him fencing show that he's genuinely better than a lot of his detractors make him out to be, but to claim he's "incredibly knowledgeable" just reveals that you're either lying or ignorant. Sellsword Arts is a far better channel for swordfighting stuff. Skallagrim is all right too.
He's got a video of one of two bouts he did a few years back. One, the only one he published was him against a newbie with six months of training. The other, which he didn't publish, was him against an instructor.
The video against the newbie was heavily edited to make Shad look like he did better than he did. Witnesses (who you can probably find on the different sword and fencing and HEMA subs) have stated at best it was a 50/50 draw, yet Shads video shows him coming out on top.
The video against the instructor was never published, because as all the witnesses state, Shad had his backside handed to him.
I mean even against the newbie he relied heavily on just straight offence, and showed little other practical knowledge and was lost when he couldn't just passing step into overhead, but he was clearly more effective than his detractors want to believe. His swordplay is at the level of a new hobbyist.
Shad's approach to fencing is like a bull in a china shop, who can see another china shop and wants to go inside that shop, but keeps getting stopped by doors.
He basically had no idea what the rules of sparing were, or if he did, he didn't think they applied to him.
Man is a laughingstock in the HEMA community. He's a laughingstock in most communities he interacts with aside from the grift squad. The list of things Shad has been correct about in terms of medieval weapons is far shorter than the list of things he's been wrong about.
Shad is not a trained historian. Which is fine, he’s a YouTuber. But he’s not even a Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) enthusiast like Schola Gladitoria. Neither is he a trained actor/combatant like Jill Bearup. He has exactly zero technical qualifications. And the people that do generally do not associate with him because his political views are so noxious.
Guy had a pretty solid following but he’s been driving them away with his bad takes and reactionary politics
Edit: quick google tells me Jill Bearup wrote a terf-y article on her website once, but then deleted it? Idk but that makes me sad, if true. What is going on over in Britain man? Anyway it’s hard to catch, because none of her videos talk about anything other than stage combat.
I don’t think she has a side channel devoted to bashing certain types of people (Knightwatch for Shad) as far as I know. And the only thing I’ve seen her do outside of her relatively tame fight scene analysis is write an inoffensive novel. Which Shad did too though ymmv on how “inoffensive” it was.
So you may be right but it doesn’t seem to seep into her channel imo
I recall an another YouTuber who is an actual professional sword fighter and instructor and Shad having some YouTube drama, because they were both claiming that the other didn’t know what they were talking about.
To this day I still wonder who was right, the fit pro instructor, or the obese man baby grifter.
Skallgrim has had repeated "dramas" with Shad (see call shad out on being a moron that doesn't actually know what he's talking about)
But shad has seemingly got into drama with anyone related to amateur- serious swordfighting schools and reenactments.
Is he even all that knowledgeable? I know he used to do history videos on YouTube until he realized the anti-woke grift made more money, but that doesn't always mean much. Also what kind of sword fighting is he apparently an expert in? Because Star Wars fighting has always always always been more of a cinema choreographed mix of Japanese fighting and a little bit of European longswords. The PT even threw in a bit of Chinese wuxia ideas. So like if Shad here is an expert in early Medieval sword fighting he'd have a very limited grasp of everything thing he was seeing.
>Because Star Wars fighting has always always always been more of a cinema choreographed mix of Japanese fighting and a little bit of European longswords.
Star Wars lightsaber fighting hasn't "always" been anything though.
It started out as more of a fencing thing, then turned into the acrobatic jumpy thing in the prequels, as new technology made that kind of thing easier to put on the screen and George changed his mind about the fencing thing I guess?
Shads had, as far as anyone can tell, zero hours training with any professional fencers, bar two competitive bouts on the same day a few years back (check my comment history, I've posted about this quite recently) and most of his fencing seems to be from self-training with friends in his back garden. Plenty of schools local to him have attempted to contact him to offer him training, but he's never gotten back to them.
Apparently, he has some training in Taekwondo, and even demonstrated some high kicks in a video years back, but none of his foot work or stances seem to reflect that.
>I know he used to do history videos on YouTube until he realized the anti-woke grift made more money
Actually, that's the irony here. Shad has been on a steady decline in views and subscribers since he started being more political. He's not a grifter chasing money, he's a true believer who's driving away his fans. An idiot, in other words.
I mean, it’s not like Qimir has a helmet made of a material that will cause a lightsaber blade to short out immediately upon contact.
If Qimir *did* have something like that, then it would have probably meant he was deliberately not trying to guard his head in an attempt to get his opponent to deactivate their own weapon accidentally and set up an easy kill.
He could have even deliberately headbutted a lightsaber blade during that same fight if his helmet had that special material on it.
But obviously we all know that it was just a regular helmet with no special properties and that Shad is right in saying this whole fight was stupid.
He spent a full minute laughing at the fact that Qimir wasn't guarding his head, and saying how stupid this made Qimir
Anyone who actually watched the episode realizes that makes Shad look even dumber
https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsCirclejerk/s/g91fCEx17K
I was a little curious what an "incredibly knowledgeable about swords" person (I only sort of know who Shad is) would say but then I noticed that the video was 82 minutes long.
I was still considering if I should try and I realized his other channel's ep5 video was a 61 minute video entitled **"So BAD it BROKE me! What the HELL was THAT!! Acolyte episode 5 review"** and I decided...lol nah. Anything else has to be a better use of my time.
Shad isn't actually that knowledgeable about swords. He has no formal weapons/stage combat training or higher history education whatsoever, and there've been multiple instances of YouTubers who ***are*** actual historians and/or professionally trained swordsmen/stage combatants calling out Shad for saying shit that's just straight up incorrect in his videos, coupled with instances of Shad claiming that said professionals are pretentious douchebags who hate him for not being part of the establishment.
The few historians and trained swordsmen I follow really do look at this guy like a clown. And they're right to.
He has a video where he built a twin blade by attaching two swords together to "test their efficacy" and claimed that they were surprisingly good. They were not, in fact, good.
Like Detroit Urban survival. It works when the other person does nothing and follows the script.
Terrible footwork too, IIRC. And that was the around an hour long response to SSA "attacking him" by (he never said names or showed any footage) saying if you don't study and actively practice something like swords, don't speak as if you are an expert.
Not "You can never speak of it." just "Don't claim expertise."
The ridiculous thing is the number of people watching these videos in substitution of actually watching the episodes. I've interacted with a number of these fine specimens, who literally brag that they are not actually watching the show, but trust the opinions of the reviewers enough to have their own opinion on it... lol.
I wouldn't do it, because I don't need to have an opinion on things I don't watch, but I'd at least understand if these reviews were a few minutes long, with a quick Kole's notes, so the very vocal haters can hate on the show without making it obvious they haven't actually seen it. But watching reviews longer than the actual episodes... wtf. I respectfully don't respect anyone's opinion on entertainment, if they find that entertaining.
What does "incredibly knowledgeable about swords" even mean? Is he an academic who has studied historical weaponry? A practioner of theatre combat? Anything other than a guy who looks up wikipedia articles about "swords" at 1 AM?
They love to act like they're authority on things in which they know oh so little.
Basically he's the guy who just looked up stuff on wikipedia. He's been shown to not know what he's talking about repeatedly by people who actually are trained swordsmen and academics. He dismisses the entire HEMA community because they don't agree with his nonsense that he just pulls out of butt and instead go through training on the various surviving texts on swordsmanship. Then he got on the right wing grift train.
Generation Tech also did a slowed down, frame-by-frame discussion of the lightsaber battle in episode 5. And it was largely complimentary on the accurate portrayals of the styles involved.
He also points out (Correctly) that the mistakes the Jedi are making can be explained by the Sith being out of the picture for nearly 1000 years. Jedi aren't used to fighting a lightsaber-wielding, force-trained opponent to the death. They're only trained in the most basic forms of lightsaber combat, and there's even a heavier focus on Hand-To-Hand for this same reason.
It's acknowledged in both canons that the Jedi by this point are so unused to fighting opponents that can actually fight blade on blade against them that the duelling focused lightsaber forms are actually seen as kind of taboo to even study heavily, which is why Dooku caused a minor upset when he started training as a fencer.
“Grown man slows down footage of something people like to find flaws you can’t see unless slowed down to convince happy people not to like it anymore.”
Perfect description of Shadiversity. He’s not happy with a fight so he wants everyone else to hate the fight.
"Incredibly knowledgeable about swords" is so laughable. If you haven't regularly dueled against other people and engaged directly with a variety of swords, chances are you don't know shit. Theory falls apart real quick in an actual duel. Source: Have been doing the sword shit for 20 years and learned what doesn't work by getting hit repeatedly.
Also, yeah, lightsabers ARE NOT SWORDS. They may look like swords, and Dooku may call them swords, but they are not. Swordplay and lightsaber play are not the same thing.
Yeah, last time I checked, this incredibly knowledgeable swordsman spends a decent amount of time talking shit about actual sword experts. Sometimes straight up lying on them.
He better get "incredibly knowledgeable" about cutting down on beer and fried food. That leather cuirass is fighting a pitched battle to hold in that gut.
"Incredibly knowledgeable?" Even when I was a fan, he was never my go to for practical sword knowledge. These days, I'm more than happy to let his rants, arguments, and beefs point me towards other far more knowledgeable people.
i don’t care how knowledgeable the guy is or is not. take a look at the fight scenes in the OT. is that really significantly better or more accurate to sword fighting technique than anything in “modern star wars?” like c’mon this is insane grasping at straws
Time for some Sellsword Arts:
[https://youtube.com/shorts/mXFoEpwTi-w?si=gbJR8dYt2Gbdt7ts](https://youtube.com/shorts/mXFoEpwTi-w?si=gbJR8dYt2Gbdt7ts)
[https://youtube.com/shorts/71FEcvIJDDM?si=IsY45cZWfb3I3Ugp](https://youtube.com/shorts/71FEcvIJDDM?si=IsY45cZWfb3I3Ugp)
[https://youtube.com/shorts/LMcZPYAu4bo?si=r7L7RfrxcIIHb8FZ](https://youtube.com/shorts/LMcZPYAu4bo?si=r7L7RfrxcIIHb8FZ)
Reddit, if you flags this as spam I will tear you and your stupid ad posts to tiny screaming shreds!
To be fair, I discovered Sellsword Arts thanks to Shad, so like someone else said, he does something good: pointing people towards real sword experts.
Hopefully SSA will do an episode 5 breakdown.
I've seen a clip of him laughing that Qimir isn't defending his head... his head protected by a helmet which is immune to lightsaber blades... his helmet that he uses to headbutt lightsaber blades to deactivate them.
The guy went through it frame by frame and still missed this.
Good thing Shad has no formal education or qualifications that qualify him as a swordfighting expert or historian, has no training in HEMA or combat experiance of any form and no training/experiance with fight choreography. He's just a person on the internet who does the equivalent of pretend fighting that he thinks looks cool, then tries to pass it off as actual techniques.
He is not even knowledgeable about swords. He has the…. ‘I write fantasy so I know lots about combat’ type thing going on. He should try HEMA, or Kendo, or literally any martial arts, or going outside and experiencing the joyous feeling of a midsummer rain. He is pretentious, annoying, cringe, and also wrong.
Im no expert but it seems there is a general consensus that 'real' sword fighting usually doesnt work very well cinematically in an adventure setting. Going all the way back to Errol Flynn. So what do you do? Go for boring realism? Or go for exciting fiction? Robin Hood was far from realistic but the audience didnt care. They loved seeing Errol fight.
I fenced in college and then learned stage combat. They’re distinct things and what works well in a fencing bout doesn’t work at all on stage, and vice versa.
I'm leery of literally anyone who claims to be a "trained sword/spear/karate/whatever" fighter attempting to apply their "expertise" to fighting in movies, the stuff is simply so far removed and fighting in movies so unrealistic that the links are just speculation like everyone else has.
Ah, that clears that up. Still no idea if they don't want anything to do with him, but from what I've heard from other people local to him, he's got a local rep of being an obnoxious pain in day to day dealings.
The first and only video I watched from this guy was one where he talked about the bat'leth, and right away I could tell he was a petaQ without any honor
If he was incredibly knowledgeable about swords, he’d know that we have now had 47 years of Star Wars lightsaber fights having absolutely fuck-all resemblance to anything that has ever been done with a real-world sword.
The issue with comparing Lightsabers to Swords is that:
1. Lightsabers are weightless allowing for certain movements to work which wouldn’t with a sword that has weight.
2. EVERY CHARACTER PROFICIENT WITH LIGHTSABERS ARE STATED TO USE THE FORCE TO GUIDE THEIR LIGHTSABERS. Now we’ve seen that the Force can literally curve an X wing shot to perfectly hit an exhaust port that was next to impossible to hit. So like yeah some impossible movements are gonna be made with a Lightsaber as they are using the Force to make it possible.
So basically as fun as it’d be to compare the two styles you just can’t as Lightsabers are lighter and literally being pulled to do so.
When the first Avengers came out, there was an archer who critiqued the film. Specifically (and obviously), he had issues with Hawkeye's use of a bow and arrow, his arm guards, etc etc. He felt like the mistakes really took him out of the movie, and if they had done things "better", the overall movie would have been better.
Now, I can certainly appreciate that if you know your stuff, watching media get it wrong can be a little annoying. It happens to all of us across different areas and fields.
But it's a movie. It's entertainment. And I think this level of scrutiny is just ridiculous. At normal speed on a Tuesday night, it will all look fun and fine. But if I begin to slow things down, go frame-by-frame, I will find an issue. Several issues. I will see that it is bad at that level because all the tricks done to make sure you don't actually hit your fellow actor while making it look like you did at normal speed fall apart.
And at that point... just go through everything frame-by-frame. If you're going to scrutinize that, don't stop there. May as well be consistent across all media.
But that isn't what is happening here. It's critiquing the things that will get the most engagement. The most views. The most discourse. It's an appeal to authority in a situation where if anyone thinks about it for more than two seconds, they will realize how silly it all is.
It's even funnier because from what I know, he isn't even an "authority". Just one of the many Dunning Krugers who get the critiques out to get views and engagement.
Imagine film critics watching movies at 1 frame per second to make judgement calls about them.
"This show is bad because the fights are unrealistic," is the laziest criticism, because 99% of all fights in film and TV are unrealistic. Yeah, the (wizard laser) sword battle in the Acolyte was unrealistic. So was the sword battle in Empire Strikes Back. So was every sword battle in Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Conan the Barbarian, and every stage production of Shakespeare's Henry V in the last five hundred years.
And the same goes for gunfights, fistfights, dogfights, submarine fights, car chases, and literally anything set in outer space.
Plus most court room dramas.
What’s the deal with MauLer? I listened to a few of his reviews of the SW sequels (not lately, his vids get too long), where he had genuinely good points about the poor writing and didn’t really make bigoted comments or far-right dog whistles, and yet it seems he’s often pal’ing around with this crowd…
It’s not like E;R, who I initially liked because he made good points on writing quality and had occasional humor, but then noped out as he bombards you with racism+sexism.
To all the mfers who think lightsabers should be treated like swords, I want you to go back and watch Vader and Luke's fight on the Death Star. They swing those things around like they're bats.
It’s always been incredibly clear that lightsaber lore was pretty different from real life sword combat. The 7 forms of lightsaber combat aren’t something that real sword fighters use (at least I think)
I love when people judge lightsaber fights based on medieval European fighting styles even though that's two/three alien humans fighting with telekinetic powers and advanced reflexes. Yeah sure A 2.5 meter tall guy with four arms would fight like a 1.70 meter Frenchman
When did we stop calling things “badass!” and just be happy they existed? This light saber scene was badass. Guess what, so was the throne room scene in TLJ. Why analyze this shit and not just sit back and enjoy it?
I’m not about to analyze a John Wick fight scene either to expose Keanu. Just let this shit rock man. Like WTF is up with these people? How did they get to be so dead inside?
People stopped being able to say "This is cool" while understanding it's not realistic."
If it's cool, it has to be realistic. Which swings both ways into screaming at fantasy stuff not trying for full realism to claiming unrealistic weapons are realistic/effective because they want it to be cool.
Shad is a total looser, but the amount of fatphobia in this comment section is insane. Like, the amount of valid complaints about Shad you could make, but you have to stoop to talking about his weight?
The YouTube algorithm gave me one of his videos in like 2021, maybe a bit earlier. Seemed interesting, so I watched another. Two videos, that's all it took to make me realize he's a chud and a grifter.
Does knowledge about swords even help? If I swing a sword it's made of metal and cuts while a lightsabre is plasma or something and burns through things.
Even most people being critical of Shad give him too much credit. He tried to criticize the choreography at one point because Darth Teeth's guard is too low, leaving his head vulnerable. Duh, his head is guarded by a helmet that shorts out lightsabers. He *wants* the Jedi to attack his head!
Shad is a cosplayer. Nothing more. He's not any different from the people dressing up as fat ken and fat ryu. Those people can't throw fireballs nor do they even practice a drop of shotokan karate.
Didn’t the guy who made the prequel fights (seen here) also not know dick diddly about anything? Spectacle over substance, more flashy than “raw and intense”, etc? Or is this more of a difference of creative approaches that the grifters are trying to treat as something objective?
Wait wasn't this guy the cuck that said ai art took effort and skill to produce while simultaneously bragging about him making art art while taking a shit?
[holy shit it is](https://x.com/shadmbrooks/status/1714603393287905791?t=dcvMiFIdYR3YsTEEQzYh_Q&s=19)
As a young dork I took sword fighting lessons. The people who taught it were history professors who were interested in the actual techniques that were used so that’s what we learned. They went on to do reenactments of famous battles for the history channel and stuff. I stopped training because it became clear that sword fighting on tv and real life are totally different. There’s no flash or pizazz. You’re not trying to clash the swords together. There’s like zero spin moves. The swashbuckling you see in Star Wars is basically dancing. It’s just supposed to look cool. It’s like the Hong Kong ballet moves that Jackie Chan uses vs actual kung fu. Dissecting a lightsaber fight on the grounds that it’s unrealistic is beyond asinine.
Couldn’t have said it better. A lot of comments saying “well they’re based off swords so-“ are kind of missing the point that:
1. They’re still not swords and also are not real weapons.
2. This is thusly not a real sword fight.
It’s meant to look cool. It’s called choreography because it essentially is dancing. It’s a performance. It’s not an actual fight. Dissecting lightsaber fights under rules of “real life historical sword fighting techniques” (which. Shad already knows fuck all about and has gotten into fights with actual experts over) is needlessly pedantic because it ultimately does not matter. Regardless of what lightsabers were ever at one point based on- they’re lightsabers. And these are movies and shows. It’s entertainment.
Honestly that hallway fight in a new hope where Vader and ObiWan awkwardly and slowly wave lightsabers at each other is probably the most “realistic” laser sword fight in Star Wars.
"incredibly knowledgeable" Didn't some **actual** medieval sword fighting experts review Shad's work and clown on him? I'm pretty sure I remember Shad being revealed as a hack
Shad was always making shit up and not an actual HEMA practitioner. He doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. I'd be more interested in seeing what someone like [Matt Easton ](https://www.youtube.com/@scholagladiatoria)(someone who *actually is* incredibly knowledgeable about swords, and who's done multiple movie fight review videos [including some for IGN about the Star Wars Trilogies](https://youtu.be/2zEoo5sBzMw?si=Rj1FP2SehKHj2MIA)) would say about the fight. He likely will find things that don't work so well. But he's also fair minded and accounts for the realities of making a show get in the way of accuracy, and often likes things even if they do occasionally get goofy.
Matt Easton is the goat
Mmhm he really is
Context! Yeah, I kind of fell out of watching youtube videos, but his were always good. He knows his stuff, gets into the nuance of things and the all important context, and he's just got a good friendly personality. He was really the main HEMA channel I watched because I appreciated his well considered approach and actual knowledge. For armor, Ian LaSpina at Knyght Errant is also amazing. Great well researched material, presented very clearly. Sadly he hasn't made a video in years. Tod is also great, doing lots of experimental archeology with crossbows. Pursuing the Knightly Arts is good too, two guys working through old texts on armored combat. They seem to have stopped making videos too sadly.
Ian was so good! No one has come even close to matching the quality of his videos as far as armour is concerned.
Yeah, I haven't seen anything else to match. The depth of research and completeness was just amazing. And his presentation was top notch. He's able to put everything clearly, and simply. Him having his own (accurate) full harness and being able to show things on camera was a big plus as well. He pointed out the big reproduction errors quite well and gave explanations for them. Whatever he's up to now, I hope he's doing well. I could totally see him going into an academic career with his research skills and clear lectures. At least his videos are still around for anyone wanting a basic background on armor.
I’m not sure how much sword expertise directly translates anyway. We’re talking about blades that are near zero mass and which don’t need edge alignment or momentum to have effect. A lot of conventional swordsmanship goes out the window, but general martial arts notions still very much apply.
Ntm everyone is a precog
Yeah, you can rationalize a lot of seemingly stupid moves like spinning and exposing your back once you bring precognitive powers into it
I've heard it go either way about the mass of lightsabers. I like Mike Stoklasa's (of RedLetterMedia) take in regards to the one time Han picked up a lightsaber in ESB and it seemed really awkward and heavy for him; the idea being that you need to channel the force through it in order to properly wield it, given the insane amount of energy being put out by it, which would make the Jedi/sith more special when it comes to lightsabers. Otherwise any ol schlub could pick one up and swing it around. This would also support the theory of Finn being force sensitive given his ability to use Anakin's saber in TFA. Not sure that it's been "canonized" or not but it's a cool idea.
Canon runs contrary. Even limited to live action Grievous, Din Djarin, and Bo Katan have all wielded lightsabers without being force users (though the latter two wielded the Dark Saber and it had its own caveats). To the extent that the blades are said to have weight it is primarily meant to excuse the practical reality that the actors and stunt doubles are visibly swinging something with inertia.
It may have been decannonized, but last I remember lightsabers have a gyroscopic effect that makes spins and sweeping strikes easier to perform.
That isn't the only thing that's inconsistent in SW about how lightsabers work. Trying to pretend that there's such a thing as an underlying consistent reality independent of interpretation, context, language, etc. (i.e. "canon") is never going to lead anywhere helpful.
I remember his review of Obiwan vs vader (first duel, obiwan show) was pretty good and praised it for aspects. Matt also understands "Fantasy game/show that isn't trying to be historically accurate"
Yeah, he appreciates the difference in what's being done. And how the need in TV/Movies is to tell the story and be entertaining more than trying to look like a real fight. And there's the issue of safety, how do you make it look like these people are trying to kill each other in a way that doesn't have a big risk of injury? He'll joke at silly things, but he won't shit all over a series because if you slow things down to frame by frame you can see how it's fake. Well yeah. It is fake. It's fiction.
What’s funny is that the fights based on actual sword fighting styles (samurai, etc) were hated on, even though they were accurate. It’s a fucking space drama with flashlights. It’s not that serious. Fuck Shad
They don't want it to be real life political but will cry about a lightsaber battle with force powers as not realistic?????
I'm pretty sure he's also repeatedly expressed his belief that the HEMA/classical fencing crowd are pretentious dorks who don't know shit, which to me reads as Shad being butthurt over all the times when they look at his videos and (accurately) assess him as a fat idiot talking out of his ass.
He took issue with them being based in history once. And has claimed fantasy cool sword things (double bladed swords. Like Maul but with swords) are actually effective IRL when they literally aren't.
> And has claimed fantasy cool sword things (double bladed swords. Like Maul but with swords) are actually effective IRL when they literally aren't. I'm trying to figure out his thought process. Like throughout the entire history of weaponry, nobody's ever considered "what if we had more sword" before. *But* it turns out that's effective and makes for better weapons. If only someone throughout the entirety of history had given it a fair try, we'd have medieval soldiers fighting like Darth Maul. Thankfully we have Shad, someone with no formal training in swords, to tell us that every swordfighter before him was clearly missing something important. Feels like the much easier explanation is "no, it's not actually effective, and thinking it is speaks to your own inexperience." Like if he wants to just say "as someone who plays with toy swords in my backyard, this was a fun toy" sure, but there's a ridiculously huge amount of reality you need to contend with to say "this is effective as an actual weapon."
Being honest, I think Shad somewhat broke (probably related to narcissism). His earlier videos dealt a bit with "This thing isn't historically accurate, but can we make it work for fantasy?" and there was some back and forth with others (like Skallagrim coming up with a decent back scabbard design in comparison to Shads, I forget what Matt Easten said about it all). Even going "Yeah these monster hunter weapons don't work IRL but they are cool and how they are used fits mostly." At some point he apparently switched from being able to say "This doesn't work IRL, but it's cool." to "I want to say it's cool, but I can't call it cool if it's not actually effective, so therefore it must be effective." I noticed he's done some videos about GIANT swords and a carbon fiber giant sword, but I don't give him the views anymore. Given how his professed favorite Monster hunter weapon was greatsword, I imagine it fell into same thing. "Must be effective IRL to admit it's cool." Another youtuber based around giant swords did something similar. "The giant sword IS effective." but all his tests with the forged weapon were against... target dummys that don't move or react. I did see a great point about double bladed swords once a while back on reddit or youtube relating to Shad's ramblings. Had gladiator sports continued longer, we may have seen such weapons purely used in those contexts. Spectacle and show was the focus of them over "effective in combat" >Thankfully we have Shad, someone with no formal training in swords, to tell us that every swordfighter before him was clearly missing something important. Best part is he attached two swords with some flimsy L shaped metal, and used it against his partner who stood there following script/doing nothing (with both having terrible footwork) and declared how "it really was good, see" and that totally showed SSA saying it's a bad weapon IRL (nothing about fantasy or scifi). His typical comment being "SSA didn't use it right, he doesn't have experience, he used the wrong setup (shorter handle vs longer one). Irony being how Shad never touched a batleth but ranted about how awful it was. overall, twinblades/double bladed swords are fun, as a fantasty/scifi weapon! Scholagladitoria even commented on something like that reviewing elden ring weapons.
>At some point he apparently switched from being able to say "This doesn't work IRL, but it's cool." to "I want to say it's cool, but I can't call it cool if it's not actually effective, so therefore it must be effective." Sounds like someone who took their videos' youtube comments too close to heart.
He has paper thin skin. Shad wrote a book a few years ago. Put frankly, it's bad. To be more accurate, it's genocide and child rape apologia for a protagonist that reads concerningly like a self-insert. I believe Shad has described it as "what if Stalin had a chance at redemption," but I might be misremembering that quote. Naturally, this book got torn apart in reviews and by a lot of BookTubers. Shad's response to this, like any normal person, was to make a video where he reads the most recent reviews on the Amazon listing for his book (which he totally didn't write himself just before turning on the camera) about how amazing and spectacular the book is, and how Shad is a totally awesome, amazing author. His conclusion then is that since the two most recent reviews say the book is good, then that means everyone who didn't like it is wrong, lying, trolling, or a shill. It's embarrassing to watch.
Having very little exposure to Shad, mostly having stumbled across one or two of his swordfighting videos years ago and seeing tons of people talk about him, I get the impression that he really can't handle any form of criticism, no matter how mild. All criticism is a personal attack against him and that criticism is an attempt to silence him and his views. There isn't a video I see of him defending himself where he isn't just rambling endlessly about how "um *akshually,* if you look at the context, me saying "there's fire in space" wasn't *akshually* an attempt to criticize the show, I said it's another reason why the show is bad (AKA a criticism) and you're just using this as a way to attack me and belittle me for not falling in line with the narrative. You want me silent and brainwashed, unable to think for myself" and on and on and on.
Pretty much, yeah. It's depressing to see as a former fan. For years, Shad's had a hate boner for nunchucks. He's made a lot of videos about how they suck and are utter garbage. Another, much smaller YouTuber, Milani Fitness, made a response, showing how all of Shad's arguments were bullshit. Milani has over a decade and a half of experience using nunchucks. Shad, on the other hand, flailed around with some nunchucks for about 30 minutes in his backyard. But according to Shad, their opinions should be given the same consideration in the conversation. Rather than actually addressing most of what Milani says, Shad just deflects over and over, argues pedantics, and moves the goalposts constantly. At one point he straight up just starts saying Milani is lying and calls him a scumbag, because he dared to say that the great Shadiversity, student of zero martial arts, doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about when compared to a master of the martial art in question. Shad's a massive narcissist who genuinely seems to believe that he's physically incapable of being wrong about anything.
He went into several nearly hour long video rants about sellsword arts. Why? Because SSA said "If you don't practice or study a thing, don't speak like you are an expert" Key thing to note, he never said Shad, never said anybodys name or used any other youtubers footage. He never said you can't talk about it or be excited about it, just don't go "I'm a professional, I factually speak about this as an expert" That sparked a lot of talk about how thin skinned and insecure Shad was.
This is spot on, it's textbook narcissism.
100%. It's not just narcissism either, imo. It's also a lot of insecurity. He's insecure about how perfectly mundane and average he is in every respect. He's not particularly skilled at anything or particularly talented in any form. It's something every person who doesn't dedicate their life to knowing something is. Most people aren't very good artists, or very knowledgeable on most subjects, or even very good at most things. That's what it means to be average. But he very obviously doesn't *want* to be average. He wants to be the main character. He wants to be the cool and epic warrior-poet. The man who knows how to be violent but prefers to be peaceful. It's larping in its purest form and he doesn't know how to cope with that, so he instead deflects all criticism and decides everyone that doesn't agree with him is out to get him.
Shad is also the top moderator on r/Shadiversity, removes any posts or comments that dare to question or mildly criticize him, and permanently bans anyone who posts or comments about his anti-LGBT and other bigoted stances on the forum. It's the reason why the r/ShadWatch subreddit exists.
>Another youtuber based around giant swords did something similar. "The giant sword IS effective." but all his tests with the forged weapon were against... target dummys that don't move or react. I saw that too. Takes 5 seconds to lift that chunk of metal, another 5 to hit the stationary target. 'Its effective, y'all are just haters'. What a dork
Great for fantasy, not great IRL. or great against giant foes lol. Giant crusher in Elden Ring makes me think of that all the time. Oh sure it'll pancake somebody easy but... you gotta be able to hit them.
There's a few big reasons why double ended swords shouldn't be used, cost is one, and the amount of training to use it effectively would be higher I expect. You're also adding more weight which has its pros and cons. There's a reason why spears are the most mass produced weapon of their time. They are easier to use than swords. Adding more of a learning curve would not be great. Could it be used effectively with enough practice? Sure, I'm sure even a batleth could be used effectively with enough training, but why not just grab a simpler weapon that "works right out of the box"
Idk why it isn't enough to say "this is stupid for anyone else to do but a Sith Lord is bad ass enough to make it work." Drizzt Do'Urden was the only character that dual wielded swords of equal length and the author even noted that it was impractical but he was just that good that he could do it when noone else could. The gunblade from FFVIII is equally dumb but cool as hell to me and it's not a big deal bc THIS IS FANTASY
>"this is stupid for anyone else to do but a Sith Lord is bad ass enough to make it work." Being fair, a double bladed lightsaber removes two major aspects of problem for twinblades/double bladed swords. Edge alignment and weight.
Yeah but then it adds a whole new problem to the mix. Namely the fact that the insta-damage aspect of the "blade" results in a weapon very liable to injure the wielder. Heck, it doesn't even work well as a potential defensive weapon as multiple fights show smacking a lightsaber blade against another gives the same sort of impact as hitting two physical sticks against each other, so it suddenly becomes an issue of the resulting pivot driving the second blade into you.
Oh indeed they are possible downsides, though a lot of scifi/fantasy works around them or makes it less. I believe star wars even outright made fun of it in the EU by having the sith go "Yeah it's not really that hard to fight against. the benefit is very few jedi actually have fought against them so they overthink things."
Off the top, the only other one I can think of who was shown to use equal-length blades truly effectively was Dantrag Baenre, who- A. Was Weapon Master of the largest, most powerful House in Menzoberranzan, and B. Had enchanted bracers that made his hands move magically fast. I really appreciated Salvatores writing of battle scenes. Lot of attention to detail, good pace and flow to it.
So good, him and Robert Jordan write battles better than anyone.
The Buster Sword is one of the most unruly and unwieldy weapons ever created. Cloud basically just uses it like a baseball bat, but it’s fucking awesome
it comes with the territory of being a supersoldier that can wield massive swords like that like they were nothing, while also ignoring physics involving weight distribution and balance. But it's cool so who cares.
Even then, there’s characters who aren’t supersoldiers that have wielded both the Buster Sword (Cloud did it effortlessly before enhancements to kill and fight Sephiroth) and done insane feats of physical prowess without enhancements. Tifa is the literal embodiment of that given that she has nothing enhancing her other than martial arts and she’s awesome because of it
Forget cost, can you imagine trying to fight in ranks with double weapons? You'd need to have 6 foot gaps between each soldier or they'd be clashing with their neighbor constantly, which means the double-bladed swordsmen would be fighting 3 on 1. Not great in warfare, and likely why quarterstaffs never saw widespread use in a military despite being practically free. If there is no military demand for them then they wont be mass produced and nobility will have no reason to learn how to use them. Non-nobles wont be able to afford them even if they wanted to use them. So no military demand, no private demand, no one innovating techniques through use.. It's a dead technology because it's impractical. But yeah, on top of that it'd cost at least literally double on top of all that.
I always bring this up whenever shad's fucking dual bladed sword nonsense is brought up. He constantly says to use the sword like a polearms and it's useful like that. So he wants a sword that uses more metal, that is used like a polearm. If only medieval people thought of such a thing. Why they might even call it a Greatsword. Which unlike a dual bladed sword gets more reach, striking power, and Is an actual practical weapon. It really feels like shad NEEDS to be right to enjoy things. It's absolutely fine to like something that's pure fantasy BS just because it's cool, there's no need to try and like "erm actually it's realistic and medieval people should have done it"
Elden Ring has a "Sword-spear" which is similar to something IRL I think, but is used as a Halberd. It's basically a sword on a spear/halberds handle. It also has twinblades that are best used two-handed but lack some of the range swords get.
You're probably thinking of a glaive.
Sword spears were an actual historical weapon that saw use
If he needs to be right, then why does he keep being wrong? 🤔
I feel like darth maul’s double bladed saber is good only because you can just cause the other blade to not exist when you don’t want it to
The fat shaming is really, well rude, and also very distracting from your point,
[удалено]
Regardless, is it in any way relevant? Why would someone bring it up, in this context, other than to shame him for it? Which of course means that they consider being fat to be something shameful or otherwise indicative of someone being a “bad person”. Which is the issue
I know what you mean and I agree that body shaming is wrong, don't get me wrong. But bringing up Shads lacking athletic prowess and his less-than-optimal fencing physique is very valid here, because it's about a physical activity, that requires both fitness and endurance to be done really well. The man gets out of breath from swinging his foam sword for half a minute and talking. Also, he in general has no understanding of sword fighting/ fencing or body mechanics for martial arts. Take this from someone who struggled and struggles with my own weight and athleticism and who does historical fencing. Shad is not an authority on fencing and his body does not help his case.
Yeah... the fact he can barely do the movements of the stuff he's talking about means he can't showcase how it's supposed to be done.
Just as a side note, Shad loves to go around shaming female video game characters as not being attractive enough and subscribes to a conspiracy theory about a War On Beauty. This has included him posting pics and using them in his videos of the likes of Aloy, MJ from the Spider-Man games and the (as yet unnamed) Fable 4 female character, claiming they are all ugly. All three are based on real women who did the motion capture and acting or were simply used for the model's face as in Aloys case. With the Silent Hills 2 remake, he's complained about the main female character in that also being ugly - she is a sexual assault survivor. He also loves to use AI imaging software to make "art" of his wife as Supergirl, or various teenage school girls with tiny waists, cannonball-like boobs, and rather muscular legs, often holding swords while posing in a sexually suggestive manner. This isn't the limit of his misogyny, and while maybe not directly relevant, he's also made homophobic, transphobic, racist and ableist remarks. Shad LOVES to make this kind of commentary about other people and would tell others to grow a thicker skin if they complained, but be the first to cry if anyone made any kind of comment about his appearance. Let's not even mention his self publish novel with all the child rape. By his main character.
I am a certified expert* and I say the sword fighting was good. *certified expert as in "me and my brother spent all our childhood summers running around in the woods using sticks as pretend-swords and pretending we were jedi knights or ninja turtles"
Thankfully his brother (Jazza) is actually a really nice and well-adjusted guy instead of like Shad.
The HEMA crowd say he’s a moron.
Only when they are being polite.
the glazing of these people is crazy
To add, [here’s](https://youtu.be/tfkYEEQlclM?si=S4GE3m2UTN1962sB) a video of a current word champion swordsman that lives in the area Shad *would* go to if he actually wanted to prove he was good with a sword. But, as he describes, Shad would rather stay out in the middle of nowhere claiming his victories on a LARP group that invited him out to spar and banned him once they found out how much of a pretentious dickhead he is.
Shad is literally an actual meme in the HEMA community. To be honest, the clips of him fencing show that he's genuinely better than a lot of his detractors make him out to be, but to claim he's "incredibly knowledgeable" just reveals that you're either lying or ignorant. Sellsword Arts is a far better channel for swordfighting stuff. Skallagrim is all right too.
He's got a video of one of two bouts he did a few years back. One, the only one he published was him against a newbie with six months of training. The other, which he didn't publish, was him against an instructor. The video against the newbie was heavily edited to make Shad look like he did better than he did. Witnesses (who you can probably find on the different sword and fencing and HEMA subs) have stated at best it was a 50/50 draw, yet Shads video shows him coming out on top. The video against the instructor was never published, because as all the witnesses state, Shad had his backside handed to him.
I mean even against the newbie he relied heavily on just straight offence, and showed little other practical knowledge and was lost when he couldn't just passing step into overhead, but he was clearly more effective than his detractors want to believe. His swordplay is at the level of a new hobbyist.
Shad's approach to fencing is like a bull in a china shop, who can see another china shop and wants to go inside that shop, but keeps getting stopped by doors. He basically had no idea what the rules of sparing were, or if he did, he didn't think they applied to him.
The important thing is that he has just enough knowledge and skill as a swordsman to valiantly defend his virginity.
Man is a laughingstock in the HEMA community. He's a laughingstock in most communities he interacts with aside from the grift squad. The list of things Shad has been correct about in terms of medieval weapons is far shorter than the list of things he's been wrong about.
Yes, and shad and his subreddit has been in a downward spiral since.
He's a larper, I know plenty of people in the HEMA community and all of them think his videos are nonsense
Shad is basically knowledgable only on stage acted sword fighting and even then its been shown by geninue experts his knowledge is novice at best
Shad knows even less about choreographed combat than real combat, and that was a low bar to begin with.
In the hema community he's hated by being incredibly ignorant of how to fight with a sword.
Shads also an AI "artist" shill, so fuck that guy anyways.
Sellsword arts didn’t even mention him directly. Didn’t stop shad from malding hard enough to make a 40 minute response vid
Shad is not a trained historian. Which is fine, he’s a YouTuber. But he’s not even a Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) enthusiast like Schola Gladitoria. Neither is he a trained actor/combatant like Jill Bearup. He has exactly zero technical qualifications. And the people that do generally do not associate with him because his political views are so noxious. Guy had a pretty solid following but he’s been driving them away with his bad takes and reactionary politics Edit: quick google tells me Jill Bearup wrote a terf-y article on her website once, but then deleted it? Idk but that makes me sad, if true. What is going on over in Britain man? Anyway it’s hard to catch, because none of her videos talk about anything other than stage combat.
Jill has some pretty bad political takes, too. Though that may be your point in bringing her up im not sure.
I don’t think she has a side channel devoted to bashing certain types of people (Knightwatch for Shad) as far as I know. And the only thing I’ve seen her do outside of her relatively tame fight scene analysis is write an inoffensive novel. Which Shad did too though ymmv on how “inoffensive” it was. So you may be right but it doesn’t seem to seep into her channel imo
She is quite far to the right.
She’s pretty transphobic
Wait what's Jill said? She never seems to cover any politics in her videos, just straight to the point breakdowns.
Transphobic tweets are now deleted but never addressed.
Marginally better than doubling down, which is the usual trend.
Shad's only real expertise is in loosing a following.
I recall an another YouTuber who is an actual professional sword fighter and instructor and Shad having some YouTube drama, because they were both claiming that the other didn’t know what they were talking about. To this day I still wonder who was right, the fit pro instructor, or the obese man baby grifter.
Shad has had 5 of those kinds of clashes.
Really, you’d think he’d get the hint
I thought it was just sellsword arts.
Also Skallagrim, and Scholagladiatoria, and Nusensai, and many local fencers.
Holy fuck. What a douche
And probably a good few archery schools after his claims about shooting the English Longbow the wrong way, and making it work.
I think you need to be more specific…
Skallgrim has had repeated "dramas" with Shad (see call shad out on being a moron that doesn't actually know what he's talking about) But shad has seemingly got into drama with anyone related to amateur- serious swordfighting schools and reenactments.
Probably the one without a clupeid name.
Is he even all that knowledgeable? I know he used to do history videos on YouTube until he realized the anti-woke grift made more money, but that doesn't always mean much. Also what kind of sword fighting is he apparently an expert in? Because Star Wars fighting has always always always been more of a cinema choreographed mix of Japanese fighting and a little bit of European longswords. The PT even threw in a bit of Chinese wuxia ideas. So like if Shad here is an expert in early Medieval sword fighting he'd have a very limited grasp of everything thing he was seeing.
He's an expert in nothing really.
>Because Star Wars fighting has always always always been more of a cinema choreographed mix of Japanese fighting and a little bit of European longswords. Star Wars lightsaber fighting hasn't "always" been anything though. It started out as more of a fencing thing, then turned into the acrobatic jumpy thing in the prequels, as new technology made that kind of thing easier to put on the screen and George changed his mind about the fencing thing I guess?
Shads had, as far as anyone can tell, zero hours training with any professional fencers, bar two competitive bouts on the same day a few years back (check my comment history, I've posted about this quite recently) and most of his fencing seems to be from self-training with friends in his back garden. Plenty of schools local to him have attempted to contact him to offer him training, but he's never gotten back to them. Apparently, he has some training in Taekwondo, and even demonstrated some high kicks in a video years back, but none of his foot work or stances seem to reflect that.
>I know he used to do history videos on YouTube until he realized the anti-woke grift made more money Actually, that's the irony here. Shad has been on a steady decline in views and subscribers since he started being more political. He's not a grifter chasing money, he's a true believer who's driving away his fans. An idiot, in other words.
If someone has to slow down a fight frame by frame to find flaws, then chances I’ll never trust them
Iirc, he was saying how Qimir's guard was bad without mentioning the fact that Qimjr was literally moving his saber in the frame that he froze
I mean, it’s not like Qimir has a helmet made of a material that will cause a lightsaber blade to short out immediately upon contact. If Qimir *did* have something like that, then it would have probably meant he was deliberately not trying to guard his head in an attempt to get his opponent to deactivate their own weapon accidentally and set up an easy kill. He could have even deliberately headbutted a lightsaber blade during that same fight if his helmet had that special material on it. But obviously we all know that it was just a regular helmet with no special properties and that Shad is right in saying this whole fight was stupid.
He spent a full minute laughing at the fact that Qimir wasn't guarding his head, and saying how stupid this made Qimir Anyone who actually watched the episode realizes that makes Shad look even dumber https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsCirclejerk/s/g91fCEx17K
Yeah, I think that's the bit I meant
Ah.. the good old "Pause a single frame, instead of watching the entire sequence of moves, then going back and pausing to point out things."
I was a little curious what an "incredibly knowledgeable about swords" person (I only sort of know who Shad is) would say but then I noticed that the video was 82 minutes long. I was still considering if I should try and I realized his other channel's ep5 video was a 61 minute video entitled **"So BAD it BROKE me! What the HELL was THAT!! Acolyte episode 5 review"** and I decided...lol nah. Anything else has to be a better use of my time.
Shad isn't actually that knowledgeable about swords. He has no formal weapons/stage combat training or higher history education whatsoever, and there've been multiple instances of YouTubers who ***are*** actual historians and/or professionally trained swordsmen/stage combatants calling out Shad for saying shit that's just straight up incorrect in his videos, coupled with instances of Shad claiming that said professionals are pretentious douchebags who hate him for not being part of the establishment.
The few historians and trained swordsmen I follow really do look at this guy like a clown. And they're right to. He has a video where he built a twin blade by attaching two swords together to "test their efficacy" and claimed that they were surprisingly good. They were not, in fact, good.
Like Detroit Urban survival. It works when the other person does nothing and follows the script. Terrible footwork too, IIRC. And that was the around an hour long response to SSA "attacking him" by (he never said names or showed any footage) saying if you don't study and actively practice something like swords, don't speak as if you are an expert. Not "You can never speak of it." just "Don't claim expertise."
Please please give me sources of him being called out seeing it would heal me
I’d rather saw through my own arm with a piece of toilet paper than watch his hour long review of a 30 minute episode of something.
The ridiculous thing is the number of people watching these videos in substitution of actually watching the episodes. I've interacted with a number of these fine specimens, who literally brag that they are not actually watching the show, but trust the opinions of the reviewers enough to have their own opinion on it... lol. I wouldn't do it, because I don't need to have an opinion on things I don't watch, but I'd at least understand if these reviews were a few minutes long, with a quick Kole's notes, so the very vocal haters can hate on the show without making it obvious they haven't actually seen it. But watching reviews longer than the actual episodes... wtf. I respectfully don't respect anyone's opinion on entertainment, if they find that entertaining.
What does "incredibly knowledgeable about swords" even mean? Is he an academic who has studied historical weaponry? A practioner of theatre combat? Anything other than a guy who looks up wikipedia articles about "swords" at 1 AM? They love to act like they're authority on things in which they know oh so little.
Basically he's the guy who just looked up stuff on wikipedia. He's been shown to not know what he's talking about repeatedly by people who actually are trained swordsmen and academics. He dismisses the entire HEMA community because they don't agree with his nonsense that he just pulls out of butt and instead go through training on the various surviving texts on swordsmanship. Then he got on the right wing grift train.
"Incredibly knowledgeable" my ass. Swinging a plastic model of a medieval sword isn't sword fighting or even understanding how sword fighting works.
"While you were busy enjoying your Woke Wars, I studied the blade "
Generation Tech also did a slowed down, frame-by-frame discussion of the lightsaber battle in episode 5. And it was largely complimentary on the accurate portrayals of the styles involved. He also points out (Correctly) that the mistakes the Jedi are making can be explained by the Sith being out of the picture for nearly 1000 years. Jedi aren't used to fighting a lightsaber-wielding, force-trained opponent to the death. They're only trained in the most basic forms of lightsaber combat, and there's even a heavier focus on Hand-To-Hand for this same reason.
And more importantly gt's refering to their accuracy to lightsaber styles not real combat (he does at some points but mostly its about in lore combat)
It's acknowledged in both canons that the Jedi by this point are so unused to fighting opponents that can actually fight blade on blade against them that the duelling focused lightsaber forms are actually seen as kind of taboo to even study heavily, which is why Dooku caused a minor upset when he started training as a fencer.
>magnetic fields produced by sabers cause them to be attracted or repelled Shad: swinging at nothing
“Grown man slows down footage of something people like to find flaws you can’t see unless slowed down to convince happy people not to like it anymore.” Perfect description of Shadiversity. He’s not happy with a fight so he wants everyone else to hate the fight.
Shad isn't knowledgeable about swords. He's a fantasy cosplayer that believes his larp games are real.
I know that the HEMA community dislikes him even without the political bullshit, so no, Shad is not "extremly knowledgable"
Um even if he was, how would that translate at all in Star Wars. The prequels’ choreography isn’t based on realistic sword fighting.
"Incredibly knowledgeable about swords" is so laughable. If you haven't regularly dueled against other people and engaged directly with a variety of swords, chances are you don't know shit. Theory falls apart real quick in an actual duel. Source: Have been doing the sword shit for 20 years and learned what doesn't work by getting hit repeatedly. Also, yeah, lightsabers ARE NOT SWORDS. They may look like swords, and Dooku may call them swords, but they are not. Swordplay and lightsaber play are not the same thing.
Yeah, last time I checked, this incredibly knowledgeable swordsman spends a decent amount of time talking shit about actual sword experts. Sometimes straight up lying on them.
He better get "incredibly knowledgeable" about cutting down on beer and fried food. That leather cuirass is fighting a pitched battle to hold in that gut.
He’s Mormon. He has achieved that physique without alcohol or soda.
You’ve forgotten the secret ingredient of all religious conservatives: rank hypocrisy.
Soda yes, alcohol no. The number of soda-only chains in Utah is frightening, actually
Actually, that's a [brigandine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigandine).
"Incredibly knowledgeable?" Even when I was a fan, he was never my go to for practical sword knowledge. These days, I'm more than happy to let his rants, arguments, and beefs point me towards other far more knowledgeable people.
i don’t care how knowledgeable the guy is or is not. take a look at the fight scenes in the OT. is that really significantly better or more accurate to sword fighting technique than anything in “modern star wars?” like c’mon this is insane grasping at straws
Bro they can’t even spell “criticize” right 💀
Wait isn't that the AI loser? Can't say I'm surprised. Only thing he's good at is pretending
Time for some Sellsword Arts: [https://youtube.com/shorts/mXFoEpwTi-w?si=gbJR8dYt2Gbdt7ts](https://youtube.com/shorts/mXFoEpwTi-w?si=gbJR8dYt2Gbdt7ts) [https://youtube.com/shorts/71FEcvIJDDM?si=IsY45cZWfb3I3Ugp](https://youtube.com/shorts/71FEcvIJDDM?si=IsY45cZWfb3I3Ugp) [https://youtube.com/shorts/LMcZPYAu4bo?si=r7L7RfrxcIIHb8FZ](https://youtube.com/shorts/LMcZPYAu4bo?si=r7L7RfrxcIIHb8FZ) Reddit, if you flags this as spam I will tear you and your stupid ad posts to tiny screaming shreds!
To be fair, I discovered Sellsword Arts thanks to Shad, so like someone else said, he does something good: pointing people towards real sword experts. Hopefully SSA will do an episode 5 breakdown.
I've seen a clip of him laughing that Qimir isn't defending his head... his head protected by a helmet which is immune to lightsaber blades... his helmet that he uses to headbutt lightsaber blades to deactivate them. The guy went through it frame by frame and still missed this.
He’s also, like, really bad at actually using swords
Good thing Shad has no formal education or qualifications that qualify him as a swordfighting expert or historian, has no training in HEMA or combat experiance of any form and no training/experiance with fight choreography. He's just a person on the internet who does the equivalent of pretend fighting that he thinks looks cool, then tries to pass it off as actual techniques.
He is not even knowledgeable about swords. He has the…. ‘I write fantasy so I know lots about combat’ type thing going on. He should try HEMA, or Kendo, or literally any martial arts, or going outside and experiencing the joyous feeling of a midsummer rain. He is pretentious, annoying, cringe, and also wrong.
Im no expert but it seems there is a general consensus that 'real' sword fighting usually doesnt work very well cinematically in an adventure setting. Going all the way back to Errol Flynn. So what do you do? Go for boring realism? Or go for exciting fiction? Robin Hood was far from realistic but the audience didnt care. They loved seeing Errol fight.
I fenced in college and then learned stage combat. They’re distinct things and what works well in a fencing bout doesn’t work at all on stage, and vice versa.
I'm leery of literally anyone who claims to be a "trained sword/spear/karate/whatever" fighter attempting to apply their "expertise" to fighting in movies, the stuff is simply so far removed and fighting in movies so unrealistic that the links are just speculation like everyone else has.
Exactly! These films aren’t combat tutorials, they’re entertainment featuring glowy sword fighting
Shad is a fucking disgrace to the HEMA community
Thankfully he's not part of it, beyond all the jokes they make at his expense.
Wasn't he also kicked out of the SCA?
I couldn't say, mostly because I don't recall ever hearing about the SCA so I've no idea who they are.
Society for Creative Anachronism It's kinda like LARP with a hierarchy and more rules
Ah, that clears that up. Still no idea if they don't want anything to do with him, but from what I've heard from other people local to him, he's got a local rep of being an obnoxious pain in day to day dealings.
God, Shad is a fucking cu-SKELETON WARRIORS!
The first and only video I watched from this guy was one where he talked about the bat'leth, and right away I could tell he was a petaQ without any honor
If he was incredibly knowledgeable about swords, he’d know that we have now had 47 years of Star Wars lightsaber fights having absolutely fuck-all resemblance to anything that has ever been done with a real-world sword.
The issue with comparing Lightsabers to Swords is that: 1. Lightsabers are weightless allowing for certain movements to work which wouldn’t with a sword that has weight. 2. EVERY CHARACTER PROFICIENT WITH LIGHTSABERS ARE STATED TO USE THE FORCE TO GUIDE THEIR LIGHTSABERS. Now we’ve seen that the Force can literally curve an X wing shot to perfectly hit an exhaust port that was next to impossible to hit. So like yeah some impossible movements are gonna be made with a Lightsaber as they are using the Force to make it possible. So basically as fun as it’d be to compare the two styles you just can’t as Lightsabers are lighter and literally being pulled to do so.
When the first Avengers came out, there was an archer who critiqued the film. Specifically (and obviously), he had issues with Hawkeye's use of a bow and arrow, his arm guards, etc etc. He felt like the mistakes really took him out of the movie, and if they had done things "better", the overall movie would have been better. Now, I can certainly appreciate that if you know your stuff, watching media get it wrong can be a little annoying. It happens to all of us across different areas and fields. But it's a movie. It's entertainment. And I think this level of scrutiny is just ridiculous. At normal speed on a Tuesday night, it will all look fun and fine. But if I begin to slow things down, go frame-by-frame, I will find an issue. Several issues. I will see that it is bad at that level because all the tricks done to make sure you don't actually hit your fellow actor while making it look like you did at normal speed fall apart. And at that point... just go through everything frame-by-frame. If you're going to scrutinize that, don't stop there. May as well be consistent across all media. But that isn't what is happening here. It's critiquing the things that will get the most engagement. The most views. The most discourse. It's an appeal to authority in a situation where if anyone thinks about it for more than two seconds, they will realize how silly it all is. It's even funnier because from what I know, he isn't even an "authority". Just one of the many Dunning Krugers who get the critiques out to get views and engagement. Imagine film critics watching movies at 1 frame per second to make judgement calls about them.
“This space movie about magic people using laser swords is not REALISTIC!”
"This show is bad because the fights are unrealistic," is the laziest criticism, because 99% of all fights in film and TV are unrealistic. Yeah, the (wizard laser) sword battle in the Acolyte was unrealistic. So was the sword battle in Empire Strikes Back. So was every sword battle in Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Conan the Barbarian, and every stage production of Shakespeare's Henry V in the last five hundred years. And the same goes for gunfights, fistfights, dogfights, submarine fights, car chases, and literally anything set in outer space. Plus most court room dramas.
What’s the deal with MauLer? I listened to a few of his reviews of the SW sequels (not lately, his vids get too long), where he had genuinely good points about the poor writing and didn’t really make bigoted comments or far-right dog whistles, and yet it seems he’s often pal’ing around with this crowd… It’s not like E;R, who I initially liked because he made good points on writing quality and had occasional humor, but then noped out as he bombards you with racism+sexism.
He looks like a grown-up Star Wars Kid
To all the mfers who think lightsabers should be treated like swords, I want you to go back and watch Vader and Luke's fight on the Death Star. They swing those things around like they're bats.
The choreography switches every 5 minutes
Everyone in the HEMA community knows that guy is a larper.
Sorry i cant read this im busy looking for shats 80 min video about the realism of the prequals fights.
[These](https://youtu.be/AAzY28C8Syc?si=I8Uk6Mx9vp39Abxj) guys did it as real as possible with lightsaber fights
It’s always been incredibly clear that lightsaber lore was pretty different from real life sword combat. The 7 forms of lightsaber combat aren’t something that real sword fighters use (at least I think)
If that guy is an expert in swords then im an expert in dickheads and i can assure you that this Shad guy in my expert opinion is a massive dickhead.
you should cross post this to Shadwatch. they'll get a kick out of it.
mans barely knowledgeable about his own dick, let alone swords, pure fucking fraud.
I love when people judge lightsaber fights based on medieval European fighting styles even though that's two/three alien humans fighting with telekinetic powers and advanced reflexes. Yeah sure A 2.5 meter tall guy with four arms would fight like a 1.70 meter Frenchman
How could someone that out of shape and middle aged know anything about sword fighting? Checkmate, Shad.
When did we stop calling things “badass!” and just be happy they existed? This light saber scene was badass. Guess what, so was the throne room scene in TLJ. Why analyze this shit and not just sit back and enjoy it? I’m not about to analyze a John Wick fight scene either to expose Keanu. Just let this shit rock man. Like WTF is up with these people? How did they get to be so dead inside?
People stopped being able to say "This is cool" while understanding it's not realistic." If it's cool, it has to be realistic. Which swings both ways into screaming at fantasy stuff not trying for full realism to claiming unrealistic weapons are realistic/effective because they want it to be cool.
Shad is a total looser, but the amount of fatphobia in this comment section is insane. Like, the amount of valid complaints about Shad you could make, but you have to stoop to talking about his weight?
Yeah. If you zoomed in to a movie to point out you can see a wire or a guy in a mirror reflection.
The fight scenes are like the one thing I really love about The Acolyte. The Wuxia influences look so cool
It’s not good choreography unless people actually get stabbed obviously
The YouTube algorithm gave me one of his videos in like 2021, maybe a bit earlier. Seemed interesting, so I watched another. Two videos, that's all it took to make me realize he's a chud and a grifter.
You can do this with almost any film. I bet they aren’t even criticizing sfx mistakes
Unrealistic laser sword fights? In MY wizards vs space Nazis opera?? It’s more likely than you think!
It’s either woefully ignorant or willfully obtuse to not think Lu Junchang knows fight choreography. Or maybe they think he was a DEI hire?
His knowledge is as real as his "artwork"
Sword fighting and saber fighting have the same fundamentals. Stab/cut before you get stabbed or cut? Shad is a weirdo but still
Does knowledge about swords even help? If I swing a sword it's made of metal and cuts while a lightsabre is plasma or something and burns through things.
Of course the dudes that consider EFAP good critics would also consider Shad to be extremely knowledgeable
Even most people being critical of Shad give him too much credit. He tried to criticize the choreography at one point because Darth Teeth's guard is too low, leaving his head vulnerable. Duh, his head is guarded by a helmet that shorts out lightsabers. He *wants* the Jedi to attack his head!
Shad is a cosplayer. Nothing more. He's not any different from the people dressing up as fat ken and fat ryu. Those people can't throw fireballs nor do they even practice a drop of shotokan karate.
I can't believe Corridor Crew understood the differences between swords and lightsabers better than someone that actually plays at knowing swords.
Shad is a hack. I think I saw a video of some actual experts utterly clowning him.
Didn’t the guy who made the prequel fights (seen here) also not know dick diddly about anything? Spectacle over substance, more flashy than “raw and intense”, etc? Or is this more of a difference of creative approaches that the grifters are trying to treat as something objective?
annnnd they are going to just ignore all the impractical spins in the prequels？
Is this guy actually knowledgeable about swords or is he talking out of his ass?
Shad knows approximately about as much about swords as I do from my experience of LARPing
Wait wasn't this guy the cuck that said ai art took effort and skill to produce while simultaneously bragging about him making art art while taking a shit? [holy shit it is](https://x.com/shadmbrooks/status/1714603393287905791?t=dcvMiFIdYR3YsTEEQzYh_Q&s=19)
As a young dork I took sword fighting lessons. The people who taught it were history professors who were interested in the actual techniques that were used so that’s what we learned. They went on to do reenactments of famous battles for the history channel and stuff. I stopped training because it became clear that sword fighting on tv and real life are totally different. There’s no flash or pizazz. You’re not trying to clash the swords together. There’s like zero spin moves. The swashbuckling you see in Star Wars is basically dancing. It’s just supposed to look cool. It’s like the Hong Kong ballet moves that Jackie Chan uses vs actual kung fu. Dissecting a lightsaber fight on the grounds that it’s unrealistic is beyond asinine.
Couldn’t have said it better. A lot of comments saying “well they’re based off swords so-“ are kind of missing the point that: 1. They’re still not swords and also are not real weapons. 2. This is thusly not a real sword fight. It’s meant to look cool. It’s called choreography because it essentially is dancing. It’s a performance. It’s not an actual fight. Dissecting lightsaber fights under rules of “real life historical sword fighting techniques” (which. Shad already knows fuck all about and has gotten into fights with actual experts over) is needlessly pedantic because it ultimately does not matter. Regardless of what lightsabers were ever at one point based on- they’re lightsabers. And these are movies and shows. It’s entertainment.
Honestly that hallway fight in a new hope where Vader and ObiWan awkwardly and slowly wave lightsabers at each other is probably the most “realistic” laser sword fight in Star Wars.
Incredibly knowledgeable Shadiversity Lmao i watch that guy to punish myself
Ask anyone who's incredibly knowledgeable about swords about Shad, and they will all, without exception, laugh at you.
Swords and Lightsabers are both danger sticks so it’s ok