A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry
A look at history and popular culture
This is the first part of our [I don't know; a few?] part series looking at the Siege of Eregion sequence from the second season of Amazon's Rings of Power and what we can learn by pointing out its missteps. And I'm not going to bury the lede here: this entire sequence is a mess. … Continue reading Collections: The Siege of Eregion, Part I: What Logistics?
This week we're going to have a bit of fun looking at some of the interesting armor choices for the recent Dragon Age: The Veilguard. In a way, this is an extension of the post on "The Problem with Sci-Fi Body Armor," because I think Veilguard provides a pretty exceptional example of visual character-design armor … Continue reading Collections: The Strange Armor of Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Last week, we started our nitpicking of Gladiator II (2024) by looking at the problems with the films chronology and its portrayal of the Roman army of the early third century, both in its equipment and in its battle tactics. This week, we're going to move forward to the main action of the film, set … Continue reading Collections: Nitpicking Gladiator II, Part II
This week (and next), I want to talk a bit about the recent release of Gladiator II. Now I've written a review of the film for Foreign Policy, which you can find here (behind the paywall). I also discussed it with Jason Herbert and Sarah Bond over at Historians at the Movies, which is a … Continue reading Collections: Nitpicking Gladiator II, Part I
This week we're covering the winning topic from the latest ACOUP Senate poll, which is a look at some of the odd designs and mechanics for futuristic science fiction body armor, particularly rigid 'hardsuits.' Naturally, this post isn't going to cover every variety of armor that appears in science fiction, so I want to be … Continue reading Collections: The Problem with Sci-Fi Body Armor
Fireside this week! I had hoped to have the start of the Imperator Teaching Paradox series ready for this week, but it has been a bit stubborn and I do not want to derail my book writing/revising schedule in order to push it out before it is ready. So that will almost certainly come next … Continue reading Fireside Friday, July 12, 2024
This week, we're going to take a look at a different aspect of ancient infantry tactics: how heavy infantry shield formations work. While I've framed this around 'shield walls,' not every kind of shielded heavy infantry fought that way and in practice the line between what is a 'shield wall' and what isn't comes down to … Continue reading Collections: Shield Walls and Spacing: Hollywood Mobs and Ancient Tactics
Hey folks! Fireside this week! I was hoping to have a post on Roman infantry tactics this week, in particular the oddity of the Romans not using spear-and-shield infantry (much), but it isn't ready yet and other things have me quite busy, so fireside it is. Fortunately, we have Ridley Scott to complain about. I … Continue reading Fireside Friday, November 17, 2023
This week we're taking a bit of a detour to critique some video-game armor, in this case the armor of Baldur's Gate III. I have been meaning to do a general critique of the Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition armor system from a historical perspective for a while, and the massive outsized success of BG3 … Continue reading Collections: The Gap in the Armor of Baldur’s Gate and 5e
This week we're going to take a bit of a detour to talk about how we should imagine the warriors of Gallic/Celtic armies were equipped and fought. I wanted to write about the topic because the YouTube algorithm served me up a video on it, which isn't ever fully wrong but struck me as importantly … Continue reading Collections: Who Were ‘the Celts’ and How Did They (Some of Them) Fight?