Something we all gotta remember about implausible weapons is that some of them are actually kinda terrifying and are mostly rare on account of difficulty to learn vs the advantage you might get over other weapons being debatable
See also that one place in eastern or central europe that was famous for 2 handed flails
Fucking THANK YOU
Is the dangly dagger lady hot? Absolutely. But the dangly dagger itself is comically impractical, not to mention profoundly fucking stupid
As a good friend of mine likes to say: “if it’s stupid but it works, it might still be stupid: but it does work” xD
And fundamentally she is absolutely nailing those ceramics - if you said to me “Oh Dandelion, you must fight this rope dagger asshole” I’d at minimum want a rotella-sized shield and either something that could hook the rope or a cut-centric sword with a non-zero chance of severing the rope. Probably the former if I’m honest, flexible weapons are a right shit to defend against.
I mean, ideally get me full plate harness with a visored helm and a big ol’ spear but even then I might prefer something like kite shield and sword
As much as I agree with the sentiment, we have to ask ourselves the question: but does it work?
Because, one way or another, no matter how cool all the swirly moves look, we have to understand that by tying a length of rope to a throwing dagger we haven’t so much invented some new, unheard of wunderwaffe, as we have a throwing dagger with a length of rope tied to it.
Now, let us consider the wider ramifications of this breakthrough in weapons development, namely: how do we use this bloody thing
1. We could do acrobatics with it, as shown on the video. This works amazingly well, so long as your opponent happens to be a ceramic pot hanging from a frame.
2. We could throw it, much as one would throw a dagger. The problem with this is, it will be considerably less convenient to throw — and, once thrown, perform worse than a normal dagger — on account of the length of rope we have tied to it.
3. We could use it to stab or slash, again, much in the same way as one would use a dagger. This generally works, but your performance will be diminished by virtue of a length of rope hanging from your hand, getting in the way of fighting
So far, it’s looking dangerously like we have created a worse throwing dagger. It can, however, do some things a regular dagger cannot:
4. We could use the length of rope to swing the dagger around, giving it extra range and velocity. This, once again, works extremely well when what you’re trying to accomplish is decommissioning some pottery — when faced with an armed opponent, however, there arise a few difficulties which must be considered. For one, this opponent is very likely to get in the way of your swinging. This is good, no? That’s what we want. Well, not exactly. To have any significant effect, our weapon has to hit with the actual dagger bit. Hold the rope too short, and you’ll swing and miss. Hold it too long, and the dagger will pass by our opponent, the rope will catch onto him, causing the dagger to decelerate rapidly, and either wrap around, doing minimal damage, or lose momentum completely and fall to the ground. Either way, we no longer have a way of swinging the dagger around, as our opponent has now closed in, and presumably stabbed us in the kidney.
This leaves us with
5. Use our brilliant invention as an approximation of a rope sling, that is, swing it around in our hand to build up momentum, and release in the right moment to launch the dagger at our opponent. This has a similar effect as using a sling, but is hamstrung somewhat by the fact we have robbed ourselves of the range advantage of a sling, as well as the fact that our projectile will be handling worse on account of the rope tied to it (see: point 2)
Also, any use of armour by our opponent immediately renders our weapon useless in all the above cases, save the one where we resort to just stabbing the fellow.
In conclusion, what we have on our hands is essentially a nunchuck scenario — where the nunchucks are a stick made worse by cutting it in two and tying it back together with a bit of rope, this is a dagger made worse by tying it to a bit of rope, or, if you’re not into that, a sling made worse by tying it to a bit of rope.
I actually have to disagree with your conclusions.
Have you ever fought against flexible weapons?
Back when I was doing HEMA, I sparred against training versions of a 2 handed flail, and let me tell you, they are genuinely a right bastard of a weapon, chiefly in the fact that you cannot defend against them normally:
if you intercept a strike via the head it may flip around and you get clonked by the pole and/or the head, not uncommonly in the face.
If you intercept the pole, the head may swing around your guard and slap you in the head
Additionally “rock on a rope” is a historical and historically effective weapon. I personally know it from a specific german husband vs wife trial by combat (it’s a whole thing that shows up in the combat manuals, don’t ask) but it pops up elsewhere (usually earlier on in history iirc) and making said rock sharp metal is hardly going to make it less effective
So let me address your points, such as they are:
Firstly, all “wunderwaffe” in the original context of the word were ineffective money-sinks that harmed the nazi war effort, helping the allies close out the war faster. So it’s kind of odd to mock a historical (if unusual) weapon that did see actual use (the chinese ones were mostly a performance art, but 10 minutes on Wikipedia and you can find several weapons of the type (or at least, that were used specifically because of features you mocked) that were used in warfare) in the same vein as what I can only describe as the most famous set of failures in military science.
The next thing of note is that it’s entirely idiotic to claim a weapon could only ever be effective against a target simulator. Your various criticisms sound like someone whose just been told about plumbata and goes on a rant about how superior throwing axes are by comparison - you’re kind of just ignoring any benefits, somehow completely missing the actual downsides, and concluding that someone who just absolutely nailed 3 targets in a row couldn’t do that to your face because you’d totally move out the way.
So let me cover some actual ground here
the main benefit of “throwing weapon on a string” is that you can retrieve it after you throw it and throw it again - will it be worse on an individual throw? Maybe, but you can throw it again
For the major offensive benefit as a melee weapon, I refer you to my earlier commentary on how fucking annoying it is to try and defend against flexible weapons. I imagine the exact physics works out differently for a weight on a rope than what is fundamentally a long stick attached to a shorter stick, but either way this can absolutely can wrap around your defence in unpredictable/unintuitive ways
You really need to account for the continuous force going into the rope from the wielder. It’s not a limp noodle when it’s being put under tension the whole time, and it won’t behave like a whip from indiana jones
Ok so I think that broadly covers the odd set of criticisms you had, so what about the actual disadvantages of the weapon? Why didn’t it see more widespread use?
Formations and collateral. The bow supplanted the sling because you could put more soldiers in the same area if you used bows. Skirmishers are a little different (and afaik did retain slingers for longer) but main formations wanted to be as dense as possible for most of the history of warfare. And uh. yeah. look it doesn’t take a genius to see how much space you need to use a rope dart to its maximum potential
Skill requirements. There’s a reason it was a performance art, that shit’s impressive - and takes a long time to learn. Much like dual wielding in the sense of two similar sized swords, even though there genuinely are advantages in some situations, learning to do it to a baseline level of competence (i.e without hitting yourself) is dramatically more difficult with flexible weapons than with literally anything else. And so you will only very rarely see this as an army level weapon for the same reason crossbows supplanted regular archery - it just costs more to train the soldiers (english/welsh archery is a notable exception to this rule achieved by a country-wide law prohibiting other sports on sundays, which is kind of insane behaviour but it did work).
Armour. This one’s more of a hunch, but I suspect this is one of the weapon types (like cut-centric swords, clubs, and really any number of weapons) that are disproportionately countered by armour. I think some actual testing would need to be done to confirm, and I cannot stress enough that for most of history that level of armour was not a factor
So yeah. Sure, not a common weapon, and not one commonly used in warfare (at least in china) but until you have actually done some sparring with someone with baseline competence in rope darts, please don’t show your ass by claiming they must be totally useless
Oh, and before I forget - nunchucks were a way around weapon prohibition laws. It’s wrong to compare them to weapons of war, you have to compare them to other concealable civilian weapons like knuckledusters. You have to tune out modern ninja mythos if you want to have useful opinions on weapons involved in it
Let’s also not forget the context in which this weapon is developed, this is a weapon not for infantry but for martial artist monks who a) peruse martial arts as a form of spiritual discipline b) are traveling across pilgrimage routes in need of personal protection.
In which case, the rope dagger is fucking awesome. It gives you the reach of a spear despite the fact that you can take it indoors and keep it secreted on your person. Most of the people you’re going to be using it against are lightly armoured (at best) bandits. It requires a high level of skill which makes it a laudable goal to set your sites on when perusing mastery. And if worst comes to worst, it’s flashy meaning you can put on a busking show (not that far from what that lady is doing) to earn enough money to get you to the next temple.
You can’t just look at a weapon with European warfare brain™️ or else you’ll miss out in the rich cultural tapestry that stuff like this clues us into.
it wasn’t “some reason”, it was 2D animators being unionized and 3D not being unionized. and the simple truth that capitalism kills art.
I remember when 2D faded out, the reason studios kept giving was “it’s because 2D is a lot more expensive to produce”. I was a child back then so I didn’t think too much about it, assuming it was about the process itself, but as I grew up and learned more about art as an artist, and gained friends who were professional 3D artists themselves, I started to question it. Because 3D is very different from 2D, but it’s definitely not easier or faster to make. Also, both European and Asian studios kept producing 2D animated movies
The answer was unions. The answer wasn’t “this kind of art is cheaper because it’s easier to make”, it was “this kind of art is cheaper because these artists can’t force us to pay them correctly”
…psychiatry assumes that society does not cause distress in biologically normal people, who are considered biologically normal at least in part because they are economically productive. This assumption permits the conclusion that if a person is distressed to the point of unproductivity, it is because that person—not society—is abnormal. Thus, psychiatry’s commitment to biological essentialism not only masks the role of the constructed sociopolitical environment in creating distress but depoliticizes it by characterizing that allegedly irrational distress as induced by biological abnormality.
– Kiera Lyons, “The Neurodiversity Paradigm and Abolition of Psychiatric Incarceration” (2023)
halo lore is so fucking funny to me. all it really needed to be was ‘youre john halo and youre a badass space marine that doesnt afraid of anything’ but instead youre a war orphan created by the space CIA to be a robo-pinkerton to put down galactic worker revolts, but luckily whole hordes of you were created right in time for the most evil alien empire to ever exist to make first contact with us by nuking a planet to glass
also, the evil alien empire isnt doing this because theyre evil, their trio of space popes asked an ancient sacred AI what the fuck humans were and the ai was like 'oh those are ants that god loves more than you’ and the popes immediately decided the only way to keep their cushy jobs and big dumb hats was to annihilate the human race. it almost worked, too! luckily, one of the robo-pinkertons is so freakishly lucky an AI noticed the statistical anomalies surrounding him and took him in as her favorite little meow meow and now they have a toxic co-dependent relationship and are going to nuke alien new york
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