Breaking Radio Silence!

Aside from May Movie talk and info-dumps (and one screaming declaration of my own awesomeness), I've been rather quiet on LJ lately. My apologies. Here, have some news that I've been collecting in the interim:

There will be a Deadpool movie!
Thanks to mithras03 for the heads-up on that. I'm glad to see that even the comic writers behind the character admit that God invented Ryan Reynolds to play Deadpool. It's true, you know.
(FYI: We're all seeing this movie. I don't care how and who I have to bribe.)

Dear Christ, Mormons really suck have really sucky practices.
I'm still going to get in trouble for that regardless of my attempt to correct that, but yeah, the fact remains that they need not to do anything that they are doing. When, do you suppose, will they have their major decline like the rest of the Christian sects are facing? Because until I see any evidence that they, too, will wane (and not, in fact, take over the world), I'm going to remain very hostile about their practices. Which I honestly don't want to do. If they would kindly KNOCK THAT SHIT OFF, since they're not supposed to be doing it anyway (no baptisms for non family members!), I'd happily go back to ignoring them.

Also, I must point out that you don't kick ghouls, you behead them. Just, you know, FYI.

And, in case you hadn't already heard, the northeast kinda has a lock on being awesome right about now. Come on New Hampshire! Get your governnor to do the right thing!

Informal polling on the subject of warriors and weapons

So, I've made no secret about being totally fascinated with the show The Deadliest Warrior. The past two weeks have featured two of the more ridiculous match-ups ever. The first was "Pirate vs Knight;" the second was "Mafia vs Yakuza." I balked at both when I read the episode descriptions. I've come around after seeing "Pirate vs Knight" (more on that later) but the show loses real interest for me when it's just ballistics versus ballistics. Perhaps it's too uncomfortably close to modern warfare. It's definitely less elegant than the combat of more edged-weapon-centric warriors, for all that the Mafiosos (pardon me, the "Mafia experts") claimed there was any kind of beauty in reaching around to hug a guy and slitting his throat at the same time.

For that matter, I sort of object to anyone with a gun being called a "warrior." The Yakuza have more claim to the title than do the Mafia, though I'm certain their claims to Samurai ancestors and disciplined training are probably somewhat more minor than advertised. Do I believe they were brutally loyal and self-disciplined? Sure. Do I believe they were modern-day bushido-practicing, training-every-day warriors? No, I'm not convinced of that. Again, when you introduce guns, especially sub-machine guns, you sort of lose an edge to you that would qualify you as a "warrior" to me. Guns feel like cheating. Lots of people who use guns may be effective killers, soliders, and, yes, perhaps even warriors, but they feel less so to me unless they are impressively so. (For instance, I would say the Navy SEAL sharpshooters who killed those Somali pirates are most definitely warrior material.) After all, any fool can shoot a gun (maybe not without hurting himself, but still). It takes real strength to even lift a sword, much less use one effectively, and so on.

Am I wrong? Are there other weapons, non-ballistic ones even, that are "cheating" in the same way? That are easy to use for the average idiot and that are potentially lethal with minimal training? When does the weapon stop being an extension of the killing force/will within the person and just being a shortcut to mayhem?

I said I'd come back to the "Pirate vs Knight" fight, and I think it applies. That one was interesting to me after my earlier skepticism because the issue of ballistics became important in the sense of a pirate's fighting ability. Because the ability to use guns (and the fairly awesome blunderbuss) was a major advantage the pirate had over the knight, but the weapons themselves were not so sufficiently advanced that they would make any fight a foregone conclusion. (The guns misfired, powder could get wet, and the knight wore a shit-ton of all-covering armor.) They also chose a knight that wouldn't just ride down the pirate on horseback (or be totally incapacitated by being knocked off his horse), so it didn't just come down to Machine Gun vs Tank or anything so hyperbolic. So, provided there are reasonable, period-appropriate reasons for mitigation of the stopping power of a gun, it seems more competitive in a match-up.

To me, at any rate. I'm sure the rest of you have opinions. Do share!