A Geek History of Time - Episode 69 - (niiiice) What the Jedi Could Have Been Part III

Episode Date: August 22, 2020

The World Disney Yes, beloved, beloved figure of our pop culture. That's how they get you. And out of Yada, she eventually causes her own husband to be born to death. And that makes me so happy on cold nights. Especially in the badly for the idiot Pecker Woods.

You have a bottle of scotch. Okay, that's twice that he's mentioned redheads. It is un-American to get in the way of our freedom to restrict people's freedom. That was the part I know plenty about this thing. I love me some Bobby Drake. Well, if that's all we've got then we're being really lazy. Yeah. Y'all both.

You can literally poke a hole in it as soon as someone gets pneumonia. Well, I'm not as old as you. Well, ha ha mother fucker, I got a wizard. This is a geek history of time. I'm a kid at the University of Illinois, one of his Ed Blaylock, a world history teacher here in Northern California, getting set to teach my classes in the upcoming school year via the wizardry of the internet. I am the father of a two and a half year old little boy who has now

learned enough to be able to say is a mystery about things. He is not quite able to comprehend or explain. And the most wonderful thing about that is he says it with this look of utter philosophical seriousness on his face. And he actually does spooky fingers when he says it. I'm not sure which parent that apes more. Yeah, it's a tough call. But yeah, so that's where I'm at right now, how you doing? Good, I'm Damien Harmony, I am a Latin teacher, feverishly recording, which I think I've said

like in the last four episodes, contents to put up because I don't trust my district to do things the right way. So I'm making sure that I have everything I need to make things asynchronous, that I can also adapt to being synchronous. I have an eight year old and a 10 and a half year old both of whom are very very very into playing the

Star Wars West End games role playing game now. They started last week. They are decided to be wookie twins and Jedi at that. So I said it 4,000 years in the past. So they could yes. So they could actually fight against Sith and like do some force power a stuff. Nice. And not just be hunted as escaped wookie. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. Yeah. They're over the moon about it. So I can't wait to... That's the brilliant. Yeah, unload my bag of tricks on them. So we had a really good time. So which one of them does a better wookie growl? They're both equally terrible at it, to be perfectly honest.

William does not have an ear for imitation. And Julia does not have... It's funny, he does when it comes to tone, but it doesn't when it comes to actual sound. And Julia, it could be the best in the world at it, but unless she thinks it's perfect, she ain't going to let it out. So they're both terrible at it. So I just downloaded the wookie app because that's a thing that exists in this world. And so yeah.

And see, that was that I actually got told back in high school I was not allowed to play a wookie. Oh really? By my my my circle of gaming friends Star Wars was you know I've told her to talk about this in the past that like you know every every Friday or Saturday and I was like all right we're getting together what are we gonna play? Right. All right well you know. Who's gonna run it? Yeah who's gonna run it? Okay well you know if I'm running and it's got to be this or this. And when we would play Star Wars, a couple of times I said, come on, just let me play a wookie. No. Well, well, come on, why not? Because because we've heard you try to do a wookie growl and it hurts.

All right, fine. Yeah. And so it's all I wound up playing an outlaw who was the one character I played, like consistently over and over and over and over again for like four years, whereas everybody else was bringing in kind of one shot characters. Sure. And so my character wound up being the one with the best stats of anybody in the party. Sure. And so my character wound up being the one with the best, you know, stats of anybody in the party. Naturally. Because I had all the experience points. And so, you know, by the end of it, even though he essentially refused to accept any kind of official rank within the, within the rebel military, you know, on paper, he was like, you know, a corporal. But he had the tactical acumen and was essentially given the responsibilities of, you know, at least the lieutenant commander because like, no, no, no, you know what you're doing.

The rest of these guys, they're cheap. We're giving you the orders. Okay, cool. Nice. Yeah, so we had, yeah. But yeah, no. So based on that, I have to say that the Wukiab is cheating. It is, but I have a children, so I'm okay cheating for the next time. Yeah, okay.

So, yeah, they're not 15 with their peers. They're 8 and 10 with their dad. But I have found that since we're not allowed to travel anywhere, we could, you know, explore in the theater of the mind. Yeah. That's, that's unfortunately how it has to be. So, yeah, no, yeah. Yeah. And just because we've completely given up on making things timeless on this show. The wall around the White House exists. Number one, it's a thing that I can say without any irony, the wall around the White House is now 13 feet high.

The federal troops have actually left Portland and the protests are remarkably peaceful, all of a sudden No connection there Imagine that And the president has floated the weather balloon of Well, you know, maybe we can't have a safe election in November So that's that's where we are you know, um, Mr. Trump. I just want to point out as a teacher of American history There was an election in 1864. Yeah, but what was going on there? I'm not going to.

There was an election in 1944. Yeah, but I mean, now I would actually argue that one was less an existential problem than the one in 1864 when you had an army within, you know, a hundred miles of capital. Within marching distance of the capital. Yes. But granted. Granted. Granted.

Well done. Well done. Yeah. I'll give you some leeway on that one. Sherman, you must be joking. Oh, don't stall. What's Stonewall me now? Ooh, nice one.

That's a long street. You're marching up. Oh, god damn it. That's a long street. You're marching up. Oh, god damn it. I ran out of general. Man, you really, you know what? You are the steward of all this knowledge. You really are. Oh, well, well done. Point full plane. Oh, shit.

Oh. Now you've blanked. Oh, I'm McClellan. All your friends, you're going to be so embarrassed. Oh, bitch, that was the name I couldn't remember. Which is funny because he wanted to be president in 1864. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I could remember that he was, you you know a pop and Jay and a and a poser and could have ended the war in 62 I'm bringing the chronology right and and refused to actually assault Richmond because he had a big beautiful army and didn't want to risk breaking it. Yes Fucking chicken shit and of course, there's also there's also the fact that, you know, he was not exactly pro Confederate, but not exactly anti Confederate. Right. Kind of like, yeah, if they want to leave, it's it's, you know, like, yeah, yeah, I went to school. These guys, you know, yeah, oh, Lord, there, you know, we could probably do so, so for the audience, before we started recording tonight, we were looking at, you know, what, what are some ideas for, for new, you know, ideas for the podcast,

for episodes we could do. And, and we're getting, we're getting to a phase where we're, where the label is getting very close to the bottom of the barrel. So send us ideas. the ladle is getting very close to the bottom of the barrel. So send us ideas. So, yes, please. Add us on Twitter with whatever you want to hear us talk about. But I just realized we could spend at least one episode, probably two, just letting me rant about what a fuck went Maclellan was. I mean, honestly, we could probably look back

to any episode that I've done on American history. And I could probably stitch together the times that you did do that and make a whole episode out. Well, not specifically about Maclellan, I haven't picked specifically on Maclellan yet. Oh, there are a couple times you did. Yeah, okay, yeah. So we probably got 15 minutes of material therapy, but So yeah, could have ended the war in 62. You say shit head. So, uh, yeah, so my kids are playing Star Wars with me.

Yeah, all right, cool, cool. Yeah, uh, we're getting off the subject. Um, but you know, interestingly, you mentioned that your kids are of course playing Jedi. Yeah. We're getting off the subject. But you know, interestingly, you mentioned that your kids are of course playing Jedi. Yes. And because like, I mean, come on. I that's that that was if I if I got the opportunity, if I was in a campaign where I could play a Jedi, usually I did. Yeah, what a shock. The guy who plays a paladin. I play as a paladin in D&D. Yeah, what a shock. The guy who lays a paladin. I was a paladin in D&D.

Yeah, I know. Big surprise. And so, so with, you know, that being the case, you know, that's, that's appropriate because that's, of course, what we've been talking about for the last couple of episodes. And that's what I'm intent to tie up tonight, is what the Jedi Order could have been. What could have been instead of the Jedi Order, if George Lucas had known anything about history?

Right. Because it's always back on George Lucas night here at Geek History of time. Oh, absolutely. We love it. We love the universe you created George, but. Thank you now, leave. Yeah, you brought wonderful guacamole. I wish goodbye. Yes, yes, yes, yeah. So just just really quickly to kind of go back over to kind of reintroduce kind of where we've been. The Jedi, of course, inspired by G-Dec Geki, the samurai of what those of us in the West

usually would refer to as samurai movies coming out of Japan. That whole genre of period drama, period action flick, which has as one of its branches, Chonbara, which is literally sword fight movies. So it's, it's, there in Chonbara, I would characterize as being the Japanese version of Wu-Jia movies from China. Okay, which I would, I would would Chinese martial arts flex. I would and I would draw the parallel between those and spaghetti westerns Over here in the states and they're all happening roughly at the same time Well, okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna split a hair. Okay, with a lightsaber on that and I'm gonna say

rather than getting on that. And I'm going to say, rather than getting, rather than dialing it down quite so tightly to specifically spaghetti westerns, I'm going to say the western genre in general. Fair enough, fair enough. Because in Enrico Morconi and those guys doing that particular almost exploitation, is doing that particular almost exploitation subgenre of the Western is a very specific thing. That's true. Yeah, it's got very specific beats. Yeah, from a very specific kind of era of cinema. And I mean, they all are swimming in the same pool. Yeah. For lack of a better analogy there. Um, but, um, I think

if you're looking for the inspiration for it, you'd be better off looking at Tom Ford. Sam Peckinpaugh. Okay. Not Tom Ford. Uh, John Ford. John Ford. All right. John Ford, Sam Peckinpaugh. Tom Jones. Yes. Yes. Uh, uh... john for john ford all right john ford sam peck and pa uh... tom jones yes yes uh... uh... uh... tom and jerry no

no f***er stomas jane uh... no no jane curtain No, no, Jane Gerton did did did no K job is the Punisher, but no, Jane you ignorant slap. So but but if you're looking for if you're looking for inspiration, you'd want to look at a timeline or a point in time in the Western genre earlier than Morakoni and those guys. Okay, okay.

Because, you know, Kurosawa, you know, really started doing his stuff in the 50s and into the 60s. Right. If I'm right, my timeline right, and, you know, the spaghetti westerns were notably later where where they they had in turn been re invigorated re-inspired they were they were in turn borrowing visually and cinematically from uh... chanbra films

and and you know in in that kind of kind kind of, sickle-cull, yeah. Yeah. Kind of way that all of these genres influence one another. So, but the the GDaggeki heroes were just like the gunslingers of, you know, Western stories. They were essentially Knights-Arent. And we talked about it. And that's your Wuzha as well because yeah yeah yeah and and we mentioned in one of the last two episodes that you know the context the cultural context for having all of these

you know wandering samurai in a Gigi Geki movie is one of, there's been a war, one side won, one side lost, there's a whole bunch of guys who are essentially out of work mercenaries, right, out of work, their knights who are now out of work and don't have anybody to work for, right, and they're operating in this weird limbo where they have these privileges because of their class, but they're impoverished and they, you know, and they don't really have a job. But they do have an internal code that then obvites itself by the end of the film. Yeah. But they are wanderers who, I mean, they don't have a centralized authority whereas before there used to be one. Yes.

Yeah, it's very episode four. It's very Obi-Wan Kenobi in the desert. Oh, yeah, immensely. Yeah. And so the coming, coming from that set of tropes, all of the Jedi are trained martial artists. They're all, they all know how to use a lightsaber. They have the Jedi code, which is...

It's very loosely defined in the films, but it does get canonized later. Yes. To the point where there's also a Sith code, which also gets canonized at the same time, but that, here's what I love about the Star Wars universe and whatnot. Let's see if I can do this.

Georgia Lucas writes the movies, and then he licenses the book rights. I believe to Bantam. He tells them flat out, okay, I have full control creative control over all these characters But I'm not gonna micro manage instead here are the guidelines Luke can't get married No permanent romance you can have them romance, but you better end that romance because I plan to write the sequels He said that in 90 yeah sequels not prequels and You can't kill anybody major And all the books have to tie together

Then he licenses it out to very to West End games the role playing system the one that I'm playing with my kids Yeah, he did that in the late 80s if I recall maybe there really 90s. Yeah It was it was late 80s because I was playing the second edition of the West End game in 91.92. Okay, so he licenses that. There is an explosion in those books where tons of backfilling information,

like they explained to you how the Empire works and all this. All of that was also had to be consistent with what was in the books and the novels. All of it had to be internally consistent. It couldn't just be whatever. Oh another rule he had was you cannot you cannot ever reveal the race of Yoda and you can't really do shit with him either. And most of the books were set after episode six. And so then in the role playing games, you had all of this. In fact, the role playing game is where you first

have the name of the planet Coruscant. Yes. Then it bounces into Timothy Zon's book. Well, and then hold on. OK. Because also it's in the role playing game that I first saw anybody actually explain the timeline of how exactly did the Republic fall apart and turn into the Empire?

Yes. Which was in the Imperial, if I remember right, it was in the Imperial Source book, which then also like created and codified the entire fascist inner workings of, you know, siaops and all of those, all of the military, you know, law enforcement, you know, secret police arms, multiple, secret police arms of the Imperium and and one of those books was actually where a friend of mine in the Star Wars campaign he was playing in actually played a droid character who was S.O. 3 S.O. from K2 S.O. K2 S.O. 3S.O. Okay. From K2S.

K2S.O. Who, a repurposed imperial droid. Oh, cool. And he was specifically a destabilization droid, with a vectorly split personality. Okay. So most of the time he was happy, fluffy, happy, go lucky, and then when anything happened,, you know, his, his switch got flipped, he turned into a murderous computer hacker.

Okay. So you have all of those books, backfilling what's going on in the novels, and then he licenses out to dark horse, the comic books. Yes. And they decide what happened 4,000 years ago. And that's where you see the codification of the Jedi code. There is no ignorance. There is the force. There is no, you know, dada, dada, dada.

And it's, and then because of that, there's the Sith code, you know, and there is no weakness. There's the this. And then that code, and that all of this is part of the books and part of the EU, and people start categorizing Lucas Cannon, movie cannon, book cannon, like because sometimes, you know, like I said, he lets us play in his driveway and sometimes he back over our toys. But the best part though is that when he was doing, he had Dave Follone doing the Clone Wars cartoon.

Yeah. Uh, the most recent Clone Wars cartoon, when you meet Darth Maul, he is reciting the Sith code, which you can find in the old comics. And, and there's so many things and, and that's before Lucas sold it to Disney. Then once Lucas sold it to Disney, Disney's like, okay, that's all legends, but then they start plucking the best parts and just kind of re-skimming them.

But Darth Maul reciting the old Sith code was always just a huge thing to me. I was like, oh my God. There, it's like the name of Coruscant being an episode one, you're like, oh my God, they're legitimizing the books. But then further, because this is the Sith code and he's talking about being a Sith, and it was really cool. So I'm sorry, the Jedi code thing, they have the internal code.

And it's camera. Yeah, and what I was going to say about the Jedi code is the parts of it that are most clearly inspired by Lucas or owed to Lucas are crackerjack box Buddhism. Yeah, the patchouly smelling Buddhism. Yeah, without anyouli-spilling Buddhism. Yeah, yeah, without without any you know context attached to it and And now we're getting to yeah, yes, I like it and now we're getting to Kind of where again, we have all of the stuff that got backfilled right in all of these other in all of these other areas And then it got back up and in this particular, it got picked up by Lucas and turned into what the Jedi order looks like in the prequels.

Right. And the funny thing is we have the Jedi, Jedi, Knight, who are clearly inspired by the image and the perception of the mythologization, Harry Pocketed. Sorry, had a Stephen Fry moment there, but the myth making of the wandering Ronin very clearly inspired what Obi-Wan's talk about the Jedi and the original trilogy looked like. And then we have all this other stuff developed and all this great wonderful backstory. And then we winded up seeing the Jedi Order show up. Right. And it winds up being this very hard left turn. Well, as what they were, like they were described as being and how they operate as an organization. as being and how they operate as an organization.

And I think, I think part of that is because the source material that Lucas had to go on was a few lines that he had written and Allick Guinness had delivered. And a few lines that Yoda had delivered. And a few lines that, you know, Frank Oz, and a few lines that, um, yeah. Yeah. Um, but like just there's a few lines strung throughout the original trilogy. Um, that's all you've got to go on and he's thinking, you know what everybody would like is, is for him to sound like Paulie the Puma apparently. Um, apparently, oh my God.

It's supposed to be Kermit or George Lucas or Harold Ramammus or Pauli Lepuma or yeah. Yeah. Oh wow. Okay. Imagine having a debate with them. George, oh, got must-eye. But what I was going to say is you have him saying, you know, everybody would like is to pay off what those things were. So here you got a glimpse, you know, they were, they were the force of civilization for 20, for a thousand generations. What does that look like? Well, you only heard that. So then he gets to backfill it with whatever he wants. Ergo, he goes back to what you're talking about. Yeah. But he does in some ways he is pinned into his own writing, including the part where he says, when I first met your father,

who's already an accomplished pilot. You know, that's so Wizard Annie, you know. But. Yeah, oh God, yeah. And all that, but like, so you had to, you had to somewhat stick to, or shoehorn into, you know, the fact that a 10 year old said, I'll try spinning, that's a neat trick.

And then he blew up. I think, yeah, I think shoehorning is a bit, one, shoehorning is a bit of verb there. Yeah. And, I mean, yeah, we could spend an awful lot of time talking about the narrative failures kind of involved and the way he went about doing that. I totally understand the logic behind the decisions

that he made on that level. You're right. That was like, okay, now I'm gonna pay off this little bit. This is what this looks like. Right. But as I mentioned before, if he had been a little bit more number one open to the other stuff people had written about the Jedi, you know, the whole XR Kun saga and the way, you know,

tutelage worked from master to pupil and decentralized structure, you know, in the 4,000, 5,000 years before the Republic, you know, or before, before, you haven't. You know, if you had paid attention to that, you could have gone with something that looked like that spun forward, you know, a couple of thousand years. You've had an idea that's always dangerous. It is. No, it's actually, it's a funny aside,

and you're gonna hate and love it. Okay. Star Wars typically before Disney bought it out, categorized things, and I thought it was in a dumb way, and it was at the Battle of Yavin. So it was BBY, ABY, before the Battle of Yavin, after the Battle of Yavin. And to me, that always bothered me because like you should do it from when the Emperor

died, because that's when the Empire starts to crumble, but what are, but BBY absolutely maybe think of BBW. And it was my mom's birthday just this last week. And we were all on a Zoom call with the whole family. And I've got Michigan family and Florida family and multiple generations. And so I absolutely dogwistled to my generation. But my, you know, because as family gets together,

they talk about the weather, which when you're in Florida and in Michigan and California, it's just so fascinating. And then, and then they talk about pests. And everybody had a pest story. And my cousin, or no, my uncle, was having trouble with a bat. And he was having trouble catching the bat and stuff like that.

And then somebody else had mentioned that they were having trouble with, like I forget like mosquitoes were in the wall or something like that, or I didn't quite pay much attention because it just pests. And then I was like, well, you know, and then there's also wasps. And they

said, Oh, God, yeah. And they go on and on about wasps. I said, there's especially a problem in Michigan, but you know, I hear their problematic everywhere. And my brother gets it, you know, and then I said, well, yeah, of course, your brother gets it. But, but then, you know, my grandma's there. She's 93. And my, you know, and I've got several other members of the family who are similarly naive. And so I said, if you guys are looking for pest removal, if you got a Craigslist, and you just type in BBW,

looking for BBW, you'll get exactly what you need. And... That's... So here's the question, did your brother actually have to turn his camera and his mic off he does such a good job of no selling things but you could see the look on his and his wife's face they knew what I was doing and that was and that was and that was all to pay off you needed oh yeah and one of

my cousins he was laughing his ass off off, and one of my other cousins, she got it, which I was kind of proud of her. But, and just like wanting to see how far the dog on the chain can run kind of thing with this, yeah. So, so I'm hoping that. So, so now, unfortunately, before the battle of Yavin is ruined for me. I'll come.

By, I just want to point out that you're own fault. Yeah, you ruined it just like Star Wars fans have done forever. Oh, ow, ow. You're not wrong. So, okay, not forever, not forever, not forever. Only since the beginning of the newest trilogy I'm going to say. But, no, that's just when it was most obvious, but people, people bullied the shit out of Jake Lloyd.

Yeah. As soon as, as soon as it stopped being the empty vessel and Joe, if Luke is started filling in the vessel, people had huge problem with it. Yeah, I know you're right. Okay. Never mind. So, okay. Anyway, so back to your, back to with it. Yeah, no, you're right. Okay, never mind. So. Okay. Anyway, so back to your story.

Back to your story. Yeah. The Jedi, BbW. So, you know, the Jedi, the Jedi could have been, you know, the, the, you know, the, the, what we saw in the XR Kun and the legends of the Jedi stories. Yes. Moved forward by, you know, 3,000 years. But what we wind up seeing is the Jedi Order, which has these very rigid rules and this very strict kind of hierarchy and,

you know, well, you know, the council doesn't like that and it's not like they hunt heretics down, but it's really clear, like, if you run a foul of the council, you know, your person on an undergrad and, you know, and, you know, stuff just, it makes your life a lot more difficult. Well, and it also is like way too bureaucratic, like you have to be a certain level of master to be able to access the, you know, the library at certain levels, like it's just ridiculous. And I mean, I'm a certain level

when you're dealing with, okay, you have an order of combative wizards. I can kind of understand like, okay, no, look, we don't want you to hurt yourself or anybody else like with getting access to stuff that you're not ready for or haven't been trained and how to use responsibly. I can understand that, but I do totally get what you're not ready for or haven't been trained in how to use responsibly. I can understand that, but I do totally get what you're saying. It's too dogmatic. Yeah, yeah, it is. Yeah, no.

And so we have this, as you say, very dogmatic, very rigid, very high bound organization, bound organization that is, that has this really bizarre, like quasi-official relationship to the Republic government. Yeah. You know, like they get deputized to go do shit on the government. And it's like, as members of the Jedi Order, we're sending you on this diplomatic mission on, you know, and it's like, as members of the Jedi Order, we're sending you on this diplomatic mission on, you know, and it's like to deal with the trade dispute. To deal with the trade dispute, and it's like, I mean, I can understand how it might be a thing for the Republic to turn to the order as a non-governmental organization and say, for example, we need you to send

Watchmen. We would like it. We're asking you the favor of, can you send a Watchmen? Again, I'm going back to the XR Kunzara. Can you send a Jedi Watchmen to Naboo? Right. Or a media. Sure. Can you even... A media? Yeah, just a media. A not and one that we both agree on. Like they even talk about that in the books. Jora Saboth. He he would insert himself as a mediator. Like you know, a little too much. But um, but yeah, like if you're going to be a mediator, be it make it like a real mediator where you are. What am I thinking? Like you are approved by both groups as a third party. You're a neutral, you're a neutral honest,

you're an honest dealer. You're not an agent of one side. Yeah, you're not, yeah, but when they show up to Naboo, they're there in a republic gunship. Yeah, like a military vessel, which, okay, wait, you know, I mean there's just there's all these layers where like this relationship doesn't make sense and and the order is this very specific thing and and you know they've taken the idea of

non-attachment and detachment and emotionlessness and all of this to this to this ridiculous kind of extent. You know, like here's the deal. It would be one thing to say do not act in anger, but to say suppress all of your anger do not angry, is destructive and unhealthy. Yes. Because anger gets shit done, man. Yeah. And like, yeah.

You know, when you, I mean, like to say, when you ignite your lightsaber, you can't do it because you're pissed off. That would be different. You would be one thing, yeah. It would be one thing, would be reasonable. But, you know, to anyway, according to the three o'clock, it rule, if you have a lightsaber and there are slaves, you need to do something about that. Mm-hmm. Well, and, well, if there

are slaves and you are on a world where slavery is seen as bad, where it's not just baked into the like, I kind of emote. Actually, no, I take it back because Star Wars doesn't have a prime directive. Never mind. No, no, Star Wars does not have prime directive. Yeah, so you're right, you're right. If you have a lightsaber and there are slaves, you do something about that. And if you don't, it's because you're going to go get more to go do it the right way or something. Yeah, or like we're literally like the explanation in, in episode one could have been. We are, we are on the run right now. That would have been so easy. And if we do, and if we do anything, yeah, to, you know, attract

onto attention, we could get our cells killed and the princess killed and all of a bad shit's going to happen. And like, no, we can't, that's like a catastrophe. And it is, it is disgusting that we can't do anything about it. But right now we just can't. Right. Yeah. But we will be back.

Like, but like, we're definitely going to report this to, to republic authorities. And we're going to make sure something gets done about this shit. Well, but like we're definitely gonna report this to Republic authorities and we're gonna make sure something gets done about this shit. Well, they do have a line, they do have a line in episode one where she says, I can't believe they still have slavery and she's like, we're so far from the public, they don't care. Shmi says that.

So that takes care of that, but you're right, saying I will be back or we will come back and deal with this. And you can easily, because the writing that he did do was, I didn't come here to do that, actually. And it's like, well, motherfucker, you pay attention to living force, don't you?

How can you be the guy who's always like, just trust your instincts, don't think, just do? And then you turn around, you're like, well, it's, just trust your instincts. Don't think just do. And then you turn around and you're like, well, you know, it's not according to my plan. So, yeah. Which is like, which is like shitties and like to begin with. Yeah. Yeah. But like, so yeah, I agree with you. And I would say that also they, they are so, I think deputized is really the best word there. They're so deputized and co-opted by the very government that is ultimately they're sitting there going like, well, you know, we sense a plot to destroy us. There's, you know, there's all these other things that are interfering on some levels

that they, that their position of power is inherently dependent on the government. By virtue of the fact that they don't just have an annex office in Washington DC, they have the capital building. Yeah. Yeah. So, and you know, so that's what we see when Lucas sits down and codifies, okay, this is what the Jedi Order looks like. That's what we wind up getting. And it's kind of problematic as all fuck on like a number of levels. And again, the thing is,

I'm going to get into what that actually looks and awful lot like out of history. But first, I would like to furnish a guess on that before you do. So tell me when to guess. OK, go ahead and guess now. Oh, OK. It sounds to me, and again, with my very limited knowledge

of this period of time. But honestly, it sounds to me like a Franciscan monastery close enough to Rome that they actually get letters. You're very, very close. Hey, okay, cool. Anyway, back to you. You are very close. Okay.

So, however, I'm actually going, the example I'm going to talk about is from the Holy Roman Empire. Okay. And in, in, started in the very late 1400s up into the early 1700s, into, into the 17th and very early 18th century. Okay. And I got to talk a little bit about historic European martial arts before I get there. So like I mentioned before, this is like when I say, well now I have to talk about pro wrestling. A little bit. Yeah. Yeah, but I'm not going to take up like the rest of the episode with this. I mean, like, you know, a third.

The episode is young. I mean, like, you know, a third. Yeah, the socials, yeah. But, you know, yeah. So, so in Asian traditions of martial arts. And I think weapon arts may be in particular, but that's kind of a guess. The lineage of schools of martial arts is a really big deal. Very much so during, you so during the pre-modern period and even to this day, practitioners of some arts can get really heated with each other over whether a particular school is legitimate or not based on whether the line of teaching went from the master to the first student

or the second student, or how that got handled, which student got the scrolls, which student got, you know, what relic, you know, was it passed on from father to son or was it, you know, passed on from seafood to student instead of like seafood to his own son. Yeah. And I mentioned that a little bit talking about Nietzsche Ryu last episode. Nichen, Nichen H.E.R.U. Last episode. And so this isn't really universal, but it's kind of in the background of those arts.

And in some ways, and the way those lineages kind of develop in the way those arts kind of develop, is mirrored in the way that Chinese philosophies kind of developed from Confucianism, you wound up having Confucius had all of his students and then there was like a mainline Confucianism and then you had another group of students, you know, one of his students, you know, taught somebody who became the teacher to Mozart, who then founded Moism, which took Confucianism and said, no, no.

The family is the most important. The state is the most important. All humanity is most important. Right. And pacifism is crucial. And the only good war is a defensive war. And so like most scholars actually became siege engineers, defensive, specifically defense in siege engineers.

Okay. Because of their philosophies' intense belief that the only reason to fight a war was in self-defense against an aggressor. So yeah, logically the only thing you could do in a war would be yeah that makes sense. Yeah. So and then and then go another few generations down the line and you get to Hanfei too, who develops legalism. Okay. Which winds up which which which is very clearly a response to Confucianism, but it's been transmitted through five or six or eight generations. And Han Fei-Zu basically says Confucius got these things right, but he was basically

immoral in that he placed the family over the state. The state is everything, the ruler is everything. and legalism was the philosophy of the first chin emperor who unified China and it was an incredibly harsh system that actively hunted down Confucianist scholars because they're so it was like going full sift like from from a confusion standpoint, it was full palpatine. So I got a question for you, like, do Confucian scholars dress a certain way, or was it just like you could tell by the schools that they had? You could tell by the schools they had scholars, scholars in general tended to dress a certain way.

Confucians had, I mean, to call it a uniform would be a bit much, but yeah, there were there were traditions and things that they that they didn't they had that were ways of being recognized. Okay, so like, so Confucian books and scrolls were rounded up and burned on mass. I mean, it was really, it was nuts. It was, it was full on several centuries BC, you know, fascism. And did that, did that lead to a lot of, like, unrest or instability, or did it actually stabilize? Oh, it led to the rest of the chin emperors lifetime being rest of the chin emperors lifetime being peaceful and unified under the crushing heel of the chin dynasty.

And then the chin emperors died of mercury poisoning. Right. But like, was it, was it like, it sounds like though it was super iron fist keeping everybody happy or calm. it was super iron fist keeping everybody happy or calm. Keeping everybody under control. Under control. Okay. So it was, all right. So this anti-confusion didn't lead to confusion.

And the the chin emperor ground everybody under his heel. Yeah. And then there was a second chin emperor. So now you've doubled your chin emperors. So they have a double chin emperor grinding everybody under their heel to the confusion of nobody. Yes, precisely. All right. Well done. Thank you. Well done. Thanks. I don't think it was a gold medal. I think it was a quick route to a silver medal. I'd say so. Quick to the silver. Yeah.

Fuck you. That was good. Yeah. Well done. Thank you. Thank you. So, in the West. Yes. In Western martial traditions, there are definitely schools of practice and theory. Lichtenauer, Meyer and Fiora are kind of three of the biggest names who were authors in the

early modern period who wrote fighting manuals in German, because I'm a myerite, so everything I do is in German rather than Italian. So fetched book. Fetched book. Right. That's where they fight to see who can grab the book the quickest. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And so each of them had their own system. They had different things that they emphasized. And so hemotypes, more studied than I, can and do have very intense detailed debates over the strengths and weaknesses of each system, which one is the most authentic, etc. And they have magnetic weapons because they're made of hematype. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yes. So polarity is a very important part of any kind of fencing stance. No,

the north side south side of your blade. Exactly. No. No. So now what's interesting is in the modern era, all of these schools are something that we are working to try to reconstruct and we're rediscovering things as a community from all of these manuals. And so the intensity of vitriol between, you know, fiori guys and mire guys and lichtenar guys, I'm sorry, you're saying fiori guys. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I know. Right. I missed it. Yeah. You know, it's then the funny thing is they're really hard to miss it tournaments because they all have the spiky hair Exactly and they've set themselves on fire just at the bottom of the clinics. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah That's his forehead folks So so the the disciples as it were of fiora versus Myar versus Lichtenauer, have these debates

about this stuff. But because we're all trying to take what it is that these guys wrote and kind of rebuild it in practice, we don't have the living tradition of Asian arts to carry the, oh, well, you know, three generations ago, you know, that kind of fucked our master over. And so, you know, we remember that. And so, you know, we have this, we have this institutional grudge that's like this real rivalry that I mean, I'm not saying it's like endemic, but it is it is Part of the lore in those in those cultures and it and it doesn't exist in anything like the same intensity in Western and in Western traditions because

There's no there's no chain of memory like that But there are there are debates in rival, and we give each other a hard time. My Fencing Instructor, of course, always says, this is a friendly match, so no stabbing unless the other guy is from an Italian school. Okay. And I'm actually going to get into some distinctions in period about stabbing versus slashing that are important, but I'll get to that later. I should note, of course, that of those three main schools, Meyer is, of course, the best

one. Obviously, it was shout out to the Meyer Freifactor Guild, Region 6, Vassist, Auburn, Mind Volk. Any, I totally know. I just put you to the German there, but whatever. What's up with people? Apparently the Italian fenders do that regularly, so. No, they know. No, they poke holes. They poke. Okay. Stabby, stabby, stabby, do Italian stuff is a lot more stabby. Got Gotcha. That's why you guys are more able to just kind of endure things. After an hour, you've defeated them.

That's why it's called licked an hour. Licked an hour. Nice. Nice. So I have a question for you. Okay. You have a good deal of ties to your Scottish heritage. Why didn't you go into any kind of Scottish fencing club or anything like that?

Because the short answer, anybody with the Scottish heritage in the audience is going to get a laugh out of the short answer because Colodon, anybody who doesn't have the Scottish heritage, that's the battle where the Scottish islanders were crushed by the redcoats, ending the Jacobite rebellion effectively and putting an end to the highland way of life. And the longer version is there are manuals that talk about fighting with the broadsword specifically. But the way that a highlander actually fought with a targ and a dirk and a broadsword. Now a targ is the shield that has the knife on it. Yes, yeah. And very frequently, what would happen is you'd be gripping, you'd have the shield on your left forearm.

And it may or may not have a spike sticking out the center of it. And then in that hand, usually held point downward, you would then have your Dirk, which is essentially a short sword. Like D&D stats call Dirk slash Dagger. A Dirk should be a short sword. Yeah, it's like a long knife. Sons. Yeah, it's a sizable blade.

And so you'd have that inside the shield. So you'd swing the shield block and then you could potentially try to stab with that jerk at the same time. You'd fight with it in very many ways, the same way that Vikings would fight with, or Saxons, I should say, would fight with the Sacks in an earlier time period, because they're descended, the jerk is descended from the Sacks.

But anyway, those arts were essentially lost, because everybody who fought that way got crushed under the heel of the British army effectively. And when Scott then joined the British army in order to be allowed to wear a tartan as part of their uniform and have that connection to their culture, they were then taught how to fight like line infantry.

Which was with a musket in a bayonet and the Highland charge and broadsword in targ and all that disappeared. Gotcha. And the kind of the dirty little secret of of hemoscools is that the biggest differences between all of us aren't like we use different moves. It's what gets emphasized differently between us. Okay. You know, there's this there's this vast difference in unarmed martial arts, like, sorry, different than... Sorry, different than...

Depart of a penis. Okay. Well, I mean, when you're doing the Highland Charging, you show you're killed, you show off your vast difference. So... Oh, nice. And you show them your dirk, you know, and it's usually been muddy there,

so there's more clay on it. So you're showing off your clay more than anything else. Nice. Thank you. Hold up. And then you're going to go using it on your woman later on. So it's your broad sword. All right.

All right. You're, wow. You're in, you're in some kind of form. So, but anyway, what I was getting to was, you know, the differences between one school and another school in European arts tend much more to be, well, this one is like, you're in a fight, use everything. So like, I'm going to teach you how to do this with a sword, but when you get in close, you're just gonna throw the guy to the ground and beat the shit out of him.

Because. Kick him a lot while he's down. Yeah, kick him a lot while he's down. Here's the wrestling moves you need to use, whereas with others, Italian schools emphasize the point because it tends to be faster. Sure. And so the differences are emphasis rather than actually

like a different art. Okay. And so, you know, so they're all these different traditions, but it's really crucial to our subject at hand that throughout Europe there were literally guilds of fensers in early modern Europe. I'm going to focus on two of them right now. The Marx brooders, and I'm just waiting. And the fader fetchers. Yeah, and I do recall there was a conflict between them over the horse fetchers and the duck soups.

Very good, very good. I was waiting for it. I knew I knew those were coming. How could I know? Yeah, well, yeah, no, I know. So to get to them, I need to talk about the Lonsnect. Are you familiar with who the Lonsnects were? I think that was a group in a Dr. Seuss book.

Is that okay? Sneaches? No. No, something to go with. Oh. All right. It's rare that I see you actually perturbed and I clearly have gotten a little under your skin with this.

Oh yeah. So only a little, but wow, you're again, you're in some kind of form tonight. So in the 1480s, the man who was later on going to become the Holy Roman Emperor Maximeleon I needed a bunch of soldiers because he wanted to give the Belgians and the Dutch, Alesson and proper manners. They were making all this noise about their their rights and their freedoms and leaving to the Dutch to think about rights. Yeah, yeah, like oh my god. So, you know, and so he needed to go in there and, you know, beat the shit out of him. And so he needed a bunch of soldiers. And so the mercenate would be in order to get those soldiers, because as a ruler

and a feudal state, you know, one of the biggest limitations you have on your ability to raise an army is, you know, how many, how many nobles actually are there in your kingdom at a given time? Right. People who can actually levy troops for you. Yeah. And, and so he just said, no, you know what, I'm sending a call out to all able-bodied men across the empire, I will pay you cashy money to come to join the army

and teach the Belgians and the Dutch a lesson. And so essentially, we see an evolution in the way that military science kind of starts working at this point because this is the 1480s. So by this time, firearms and gunpowder have been around for a while, but they're still not ubiquitous.

They're still not the primary weapon of common soldier. But what we have seen is more and more and more and more over time, we've seen that masked pikemen have become the kind of the standard of an army is now made up mostly of ordinary soldiers with, you know, 12 to 14 foot long sticks with big metal points on the ends of them. And so they're their ordinary men, not they're not knights, they're not people who have trained from the age of seven to be, you know, horseback military machines. They're not, they're not, you know, tanks basically. Right. But you now have large armies of men who are fighting for money. Do these men, by the way, do they have armor on? Generally speaking, not very much if any.

In a in a pike square, you might have, you might have somebody with, it would, it would depend. Like there's light infantry and there's heavy infantry. Some of them, the ones that are particularly well equipped that are particularly like elite are going to have a curus. Okay. They might, they might have like a male vest. Everybody's going to have heavy gauntlets on. Everybody's, you know, they may be wearing buff coats. Okay. So quilted at a vest usually. Yeah, quilted or what you might call kind of soft leather armor. And you're going to see helmets probably more often than not. Sure. You want to protect your brain bucket. But so they're ordinary soldiers,

and so they're equipped with whatever the best thing is, you can afford a lot of it once. So they were raised like militia or even as militia. And what we see a lot of is guilds forming and sponsoring military units. Okay. So there'd be the Lensnack to were raised by the Butcher or the Glassmakers Guild, okay? Okay. And so he sends out this call and he gets a huge response and we have the beginning of the Lonsnack tradition.

And he has plenty of able-bodied men who are now willing to go beat up the Flemish and Hollander's for pay, because that sounds like fun, right? Sure. What he needed next was a group of professionals to train them. Okay. Because a pike is actually a pretty complicated weapon handle. It's 10 to 12 feet long, sometimes longer.

And if you're going to handle it in a pike square, you have to know how to move as a unit. You have to know how to, you know, this is the beginning of drill as we know it today. Right. In an military, you know. Well, because you're industrializing the process to some level, or you're democratizing it rather, instead of you have to, the Romans did this too. Instead of you have to be able to afford to go fight, which means you're gonna send your richest out to fight,

which means if you're gonna go fight, you'd better make it worth it. Now you can just call up peasants, but the tradeoff is you do have to train them. And you do have to do that. And now your attacking strategies need to be boiled down to the most simplest, easy to teach to large groups of people practice.

So that makes a lot of sense that you're starting to see drill because you didn't see drill in Rome. Well, you saw drill in Rome once you started having a senator outfitting an entire century, then he's got to take care of that century. But when it was just your best citizens, your richest citizens, then you didn't necessarily have drill because they were expected to do that shit on their own.

Well, when you have enough wealth and reserve that you don't have to dig in the dirt or do a job to survive. You can spend the time to be a full-time warrior. Yes. And that's not what, at first anyway, that's not what these guys were. Right. Okay.

And so now, now Max has plenty of able-bodied men ready to go do this for him, need somebody to train him, and a guild, a fencing guild called the Brothers of St. Mark had been founded in 1487, and Max granted them the special right to certify Masters of the long sword Okay, they were of these these guys this this was a group of fensors who had established her reputation as being guys who knew what they were doing Okay, and so Max a million gave them the imperial License or the imperial seal said, these are my guys for this thing.

And it was, if the Marx-Bruters, brothers of Saint Mark, give you the certificate that you are a master of the longsword, then you know your shit. So that's two layers of bureaucracy right there though. He's going to them and he's saying you are all my certifiers now. You know, keep up your skills but also you from now on can certify and then whoever you certify they can go around and teach. Yes. Yeah, oh wow, that's. So here's the thing. Yeah.

The Brothers of Saint Mark is the patron saint of Furriers. These guys had initially been attached to the guild of Furriers. Now they're professional swordsmen and masters. If you wanted to get paid as a doppelsoldier, so now we got to talk about different roles as a Lonstack. So when you signed on to get paid to go kill Dutchmen, you were an ordinary soldier. Your main weapon was a pike and you would probably carry a backup short sword that was a relatively straight-bladed slashing short sword. Okay. And your primary job in a fight was to stand next to, you know,

300 of your best friends and essentially fight in much the same way that the Spartans and the Athenians had fought. Yeah, it's going to say it sounds like a fail-enx or a manopul. Very much like that. Yeah, and you know, hit the other pike line and stab and push. Right. Okay. Well, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Because you're also going to be able you're also going to be able to disrupt cavalry charges With the Kaikman. Yeah. Yes. So you're nerfing that as long as as long as you're in you're in good good order Yeah, right right and so so the thing is now okay So if I'm if I'm in charge of a bunch of guys with long pointy sticks and we're gonna be running at another group of guys with long pointy sticks

guys with long pointy sticks and we're going to be running at another group of guys with long pointy sticks. How am I going to do to get myself an advantage over that other group of guys with long pointy sticks that doesn't involve like set up before the battle. Like what am I going to do to try to win the fight once it actually turns into a fight? Well, the solution the Germans came up with was the head guys named double solners. And they were called that because they got double pay. Okay. Oh, and knowing my Roman history, I can imagine where they were placed.

Right up front. Yeah. Way, as a matter of fact, as a matter of fact, not just right up front, way out front. Yeah. A double solner carried a long sword, something between the long sword and Montante. So in D&D terms, we're talking about something between a bastard sort and a great sword, two handed sword, and always wielded with two hands. And your job was to run out ahead of your unit on the battlefield and use that big honken sword to cut the heads

off of the enemy's pikes. Right. So your buddies are gonna be running out and with pointy sticks and they're just gonna have sticks. They're gonna have pool cues. Yeah, basically. And you're like, ow, that bruised and you're all dead. That really bruised and you're bleeding out, yeah.

Basically. And now so here's the thing, and you're all dead. That really bruised and you're bleeding out, yeah, basically. And now so here's the thing, but like how do you get qualified to be a double-soldier? You have to get tested. You actually have to get a certificate showing that you've learned enough about how to use a longsword to be trusted, to be trusted with one. Can you imagine the professional development seminar for that? Though like Jesus Christ. And look, I already know how to do most of this.

Just show me like the quick keys that I need to hit so that you can sign my thing at the end. So like, do I really have to sign at the end of the thing too? You know what? I'll tell you what. Look, I've done this. I've done this three times before already. Right.

I got to do this every other year. So like I'll just be I'll just be in the back, you know, reading Dante, like, you know, writing, writing, I'm gonna work on my costume for the sex party after because clearly all of you are also furriers. So yeah. Furriers, not furriers. Oh, oh, so I'm going to work on my my

wookie costume because it's for your nice. Well, that, well, that. So, so anyway, if you wanted to get, if you want to get that job, because like who wouldn't, right? Right. Yeah, well, yeah, if you were if you were desperate or crazy enough to want that job, you also have a culture that's created of like that position is the bravest position though. Oh, yeah Yeah, being at the front like that like oh look at that guy He's a he's the Romans called it the um the first spear Mm-hmm, and that that is some serious fucking honor, you know, and yes, you get double pay But I just promised pile him. Yeah, Primo's peeling Primo's pretty much piano And that that is some serious fucking honor, you know, and yes, you get double pay, but

I just practice pile them. Yeah, Primo's P. Primo's, Primo's P. Yeah, I mean, it's essentially the same thing. And like, you know, no trouble getting laid ever. No, well, because you've got the best for your outfit. There is. Yes. So, you know, and, and, and so also since we're talking about Lensnacks and, you know, getting laid, and it's worth noting that the tradition or the fashion that we see developing into the 1500s of puffed-and-slashed clothing, where you have multiple layers with no big puffy sleeves

and then you've got another sleeve underneath that and And you've got cuts in it to show off the interior fabric that's that's actually developed from Lonsnack. Because they're bad and they're close getting fucked up. That's what I had a feeling. Yeah, that makes sense. It's so so let's let's talk about mating plumage shall we? No, shit. Um, so and and also, um, commentary from the time period, uh, churchmen actually complained about how garish and loud the colors were.

Oh, I remember that. Yeah, it's more, yes. colors were. Oh, I remember that. Yeah, it's more. Yes. You know, it's it's it's unsamely and ungodly and you know, I'm like, oh, I want to, you know, and well, yeah, no, I'm making I'm making enough money. I can afford, you know, fancy clothes. I'm going to show off, man. Yeah, I'm the original cross-color shirts. You know, kind of yeah, yeah, pretty much. And so if you wanted to get a certificate in order to teach other people, mm-hmm, as a Chensing Master, you wanted to make a living doing that. You had to get certified as a Master by the March Brewer.

Um, and if you wanted to compete in a Fencing Tournament to win some prize money, which is, you know, the the nightly tournament democratized. Right. You, the people holding the tournaments were the Marx Proofers. So they're running everything Marshall in that? Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. So, so Maximilian got a reliable professional group of weapons masters to train his soldiers and and not just in the sword but also in

the pullaxe the rapier They're called the pull I find that that's the proper term No Okay, so no you're right. How many howds doesn't take to screw in a light bulb? So, you know, speaking of garage clothing, by the way, my students, I always tell them, I always tell them, I'm like, okay, on your phones right now, because we talk about Caesar invading, helletsia and all this

I always tell them like they are badass fighters and they have a history of badass fighting for the last 2,000 years and I say if you don't believe me look up the Vatican guard look up the Swiss guard of the Vatican and recognize that those were the and recognize that those were the baddest asses in the continent and they all look them up like what the fuck kind of clothing or the wearing? I'm like they can do that because they will whoop your ass and he said and the reason The reason that they whoop your ass. I said look at that weapon and they look at it And like oh, that's really tall. I'm like not only that but look at it

It's got an axe and it's got a spike and it's got a hammer And it's got a magnifying glass and a fork and a corkscrew and And they're like really? I'm like yeah, it's a Swiss army pull arm and there's a god damn it So so they respond the same way that everybody else does yes, what you say? so Yeah, okay. So, but the Vatican Guard were, as a matter of fact, like the baddest of the baddest, the hardest, the hard. Yeah.

But anyway, back to your despair, it's come in from people of Eastern European descent. No, man, no. You said poll acts. Ah. Okay. Okay. Okay, for the record, Ed has nothing wrong or nothing against the Polish people. And he has no problem with that. He was calling out a weapon called the

whole hyphen X. Yeah. Because it's an ax on a long stick. So, but anyway, they were the teaching masters with the greatest cache in the Holy Rope Empire. And they wound up teaching an awful lot of people out of fence, like based on what we think of today, it's actually a surprisingly large number. Because if you lived in a town, as an able-bodied man, you were expected to fight to defend your home in the militia. As a citizen of a town in the Roman Empire, if you were able-bodied between the age of 15 and 50, you were in the militia. And if the town came under attack, you were going to go to the armory, you were going to grab a pole arm, or a crossbow, and man, balls, and whatever all.

If you wanted to get some pocket money and see the world, you'd sign up as a lawn snacked and get paid as a full-time soldier, even if you weren't going anywhere. And even if your community wasn't under attack as a member of the community in one of these towns in the Holy Roman Empire, you were expected to act as a night watchman periodically. That was a job that got passed around amongst the citizenry. Right. And you had to know how, you know, the right end of, you know, which one was the right end of a weapon appointed to the other guy.

You had to know how to hand, you know, you were expected as a dude to at least know a little bit about how to handle a sword. And there were actually laws on the books because of this in different towns, And there were actually laws on the books because of this in different towns listing penalties for male citizens who were not able to equip themselves to do these things. Okay. So you'd face a financial civil penalty for not owning a sword, and if you're going to own it, then you better know how to use it.

So it's the original pull tax? Yes, in a way. So now moreover, getting into a fight with a sword wasn't always a jailing offense. Okay. So, so we have to remember when we're talking about these time periods, we are talking about a very different culture and very different attitudes toward violence in particular, in this context. The threshold of violence was much, much, much, much lower.

The value of life was lower too. Yeah. Yeah. So, and so in a city in Germany, when we were in Germany, you know, Prussia, Saxony, you know, any of those, you know, all the principles. All the principles. And the principles. Generally speaking, if you got into a fight and somebody got hit in the head with a sword, there might be a fine. Yeah, a wearer girl.

Yeah, well, effectively. Yeah, it was more somewhat more codified by this time than wearer girl, but it was basically the same kind of idea. And if you got into a fight with a dude and somebody died, right? Um, then, you know, there were, there were very specific circumstances of what actually constituted murder versus, well, you know, you got in a fight and that's what happens. Yeah. And, and one of the distinctions that's really important

is you'll remember I said don't stab them unless they're an Italian. This is actually something Meyer says in his fencing manual is when we're when we're fighting amongst each other as Germans, we want to use the edge rather than the point as Germans, we want to use the edge rather than the point, because the edge is less inherently lethal. Right. Your intent is a block or perhaps to push someone away. Whereas if you're stabbing someone, you're trying to enter them. You are trying to fix them through.

Yeah. That makes sense. And codified into law in some places was the idea that if the wound that killed somebody was a slashing wound, then the threshold was, the legal threshold you'd crossed was lower than if it was a stabbing wound. If you wound up stabbing somebody to death, you had to prove or have witnesses to prove for you, to state for you that it was in self-defense. And one of the things that would be a deal was,

if I would start, and you'd shout peace. And you'd shout peace again and you'd shout peace a third time. And if they didn't back the fuck off after you shouted peace a third time, then legally you could be considered in defense of your life when you said, all right, well, then in that case, it's the point for you. Right. And that's where we get the idea because they could still try to sue you, but you said, I said peace three times. So it's a three-piece suit. Nicely done. Thank you. Now, I would also point out that stabbing is a much more surreptitious

act. It's something that anybody can do, slashing, some training. So there's a bit of like, let's honor the art of it kind of thing and slashing everybody can see. Stabbing is you could hit anybody from behind with that. It's much harder to block a stab when you're in close quarters like that. I think about Appalachia with this and I mean they're big on knives too, but they talk about, you know, I'm just going to do a little sticking, and they'll stab a guy 30, 40 times before he gets to the ground, you know, it's, but, you know, it's Appalachia. Yeah, well, in later, later fighting manuals, when, you know, large scale militaries were the norm and it was we

need to train all of our guys in like all of our cavalrymen need to know how to use a cavalry sword. So we're going to have a standardized, you know, this is the English manual for the British manual for cavalry fighting. One of the things that became a truism was the point beats the hedge. Yes. Because mechanically, it's much faster to drive the point home that it is to, you inherently telegraph your move when you're slashing. Even if you're lightning quick, you know, somebody who is equally lightning quick is going to see what you're doing. Whereas with

a point, you can, you know, you can get in there. And also, if you push someone off their center line with a stab, they're still going to probably stab you. Like, yes, it's, you know, the stabs going to happen. Yeah. So in So, in any event, and so there's this kind of assumption, you know, in our society, generally speaking, the number of people who are really trained in how to use a weapon, I mean, here in the United States, we're aberrant from the rest of the world, but the number of people still, even in the, you know, gun-crazy United States, the number of people that are really trained

in how to effectively use a combat weapon is very, very small. True. The number of people who knew, at least a little bit, about fighting with a sword in early modern Europe, was much, much higher as a percentage of the population because of what I'm just talking about. And so the preeminent school for learning all of this stuff for a century were the Marx-Bruders.

Okay. They were the organization. And their members of the Brotherhood of Saint. Mark would, you know, travel to a town and demonstrate, look, you know, so we do three or four who are the best to your guys send them at me. Here we go and I'll you know, send them off and whatever and then get a license from the town council to open up a fencing school and that was what they did. Okay. Now they were not a monopoly.

Okay. We're free fenders or free fighters who were not tied directly to the Marx breeder. They did practice their arts. They did teach people. But having a certificate from the Marx breeder made it a lot easier to get a town council to give you a license.

Because you were affiliated with, you know, the Cadillac of of schools you had the Imperial imprimature. I was gonna say you also have like the Empire's backing you had governmental backing on this. Yes. Now important distinction. You had a governmental recognition and a license from the government, but the emperor didn't pay them anything. The emperor didn't provide them with the buildings that they had their schools in. They were recognized by the emperor as these are the masters and legally speaking, they have this this privilege, but they were not agents of the emperor. Okay. You get what I'm saying?

I think so. They they were not tied to the imperial authority. They were individually imperial subject. But the organization of the Marx-Britain was not a part of the court of the emperor. They were not a part of the army, if that makes sense. Well, yeah, I'm thinking back to what this original the point of this podcast is, and yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It's a very important distinction from the Jedi. Also they are named for Saint Mark, but they're not in any way shape or form of religious order.

They're named for the patron of what was the Furrier's Guild. They had an affiliation with Saint Mary know, St. Mary also, but that's because almost any kind of big organization like that in the early modern period did. Right. And, and so what they did was not mystical, it was not religious, it was very strictly, look, we're going to teach you how to fight with a sword. And you're going to be a burger, you're going to be a merchant, you're going to be whatever your job is, but you're also going to know how to fight with a sword. And if you decide you want to become one of the brotherhood of Saint Mark, then we're going to really teach you how to do this and you're going to become a master. Okay.

Okay. So, that was the Marx-Bruters. And then about a century after they're found again, 1575, the Frankfurt Council gives license to an upstart fencing guild originally from Prague called the fader effector or feather fighters and of course that the march brooder objected strenumously to this whole thing but the march brooder of course had been affiliated with saint mark and the fur ears the fader factor were associated with saint vitus who was the patron of scribes The Fader Factor, we're associated with St. Vitus, who was the patron of scribes,

which is where Fether Fiders comes from. Right, because the quills. Yeah, so was the pen mightier than this hoard? The Fader Fectors would probably argue it was a 5050 thing. Okay. And so the two guilds maintained and not always friendly rivalry well into the 17th century. And we do find that there were high ranking masters from each one of these organizations

that had positions at the courts of the Holy Roman emperors into the 1600s into late 1600s, early 1700s, but again, they had members of these organizations were part of the court, but those guys were consulted as being, well, you know, you're a high ranking member of the Fed airfetchter. What is your opinion on this matter of swordsmanship, honor, dueling, whatever, right? It wasn't, I am sending you as, you know, go to go to go to the center of the council, go, you know, do this thing. And so, you know, if, if that had been what, what the Jedi looked like, then it could have been, okay, look, if you're force sensitive, these are the guys to go train you. Right. And we can train you to control your powers, we can train you, how to do these things,

how to be healer, how to be, you know, a diplomat, how to be, you know, how to use these things for your community, how to do all this. And then if you really want to, and you decide that you really want to commit yourself to no No, this is what I'm going to be that you can be a Jedi Right, and this is this is what that's going to mean and this is this is how that's going to look and and You know imagine

The stories we could have gotten out of that. Oh, yeah You know the stories we could have gotten out of that. Oh, yeah. You know, well, you know, he's studied under the Jedi. You know, he knows how to do these things, but you know, everybody in the community knows him as, you know. A moisture farmer. Yeah, a counselor, you know. Yeah, you know, yeah.

And, but that isn't what we got for right, Chris right? Instead, you know, he saw a gideggeki saw a night air entry and and got stuck on night. Yeah, and we got a Jedi order that looks like a funhouse mirror version of the night's Templar. That is a lot to unpack and I would like us to have a full episode to do that. So why don't we stop it there and bring it back for the next week's episode because I studied a lot about the Templars. Just barely a grad student. So it'll be fun to see what I've forgotten. So if anybody wants to argue with you about the

Meyer-Lansky School of Pykman, I don't remember names as well. Where can they find you on the social media his? Oh Lord, okay. So if you want to get Italian on me and stab me virtually over, over stuff, I've undoubtedly gone wrong, then you can find me on Twitter at ehblaloc. And you can find me on Instagram at MrBlaloc. If you wanna take issue with the egregious level of hideous punting that got done in this particular episode, you can yell at both of us, which wouldn't quite be fair, but you can still do it at Geek History Time on Twitter.

And now if they want to yell at you over it, which would be fair, where can they find you? They can find me on Insta and Twitter at duh harmony. Two H's in the middle, duh harmony. You can also find me every Tuesday night on twitch.tv forward slash capital puns. It's been four years in the running. Myself and Daniel Humberger and Mark Berg to Sacramento

local comedians put on a pun tournament for your enjoyment. Get on there and suggest things to us and we will make you laugh even harder than Ed hit his head tonight. So that's where you can find me and find us. All right. Well, for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylach. Blaylach, Boudemot. And until next time, remember, and until next time, remember, a fear leads to hatred leads to suffering, and suffering leads to, I don't know how to end this.