The Jim Butcher Files: Dresden . Codex Alera . Cinder Spires & More

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by alansplace

Did you catch both his (Rupert Grint) and Alan Rickman's performances in CBGB?

CBGB? Have not heard about it. That something I should watch? I am a little behind when it comes to movie consumption lately.

[alansplace]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

CBGB? Have not heard about it. That something I should watch? I am a little behind when it comes to movie consumption lately.

The short answer is YES! It's been on cable. IMDB link

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by alansplace

The short answer is YES! It's been on cable. IMDB link

Ah thank you, I will keep that in mind. Have to convince my dvr to keep an eye out for it.

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by jemc

True enough. I was just pointing out that they are effectively the same name. I suppose it really depends upon which side of the Ionian one is standing for any true relevance...

It is Kerberos, not Cerberus. Just like it is Herakles, not Hercules when we are talking about the Greek (semi-)deity.
Both Cerberus and Hercules are their roman equivalent, but they are different. If you are talking about the greek god of the underworld, it is Hades and he has a monster/dog called Kerberos. The roman god of the underworld, Pluto, has named his dog Cerberus.

If we are talking about Hades, the Greek deity and not Pluto, his pet is Kerberos, not Cerberus.

It is probably my classic education, but I really get annoyed when Roman and Greek names are mixed. They are not the same. The Romans have adapted the Greek mythology to their own liking and kept adapting it depending on the society conquered.

[bizzybody]

CBGB ended up being one of the birthplaces of punk and where many famous heavy metal bands played early gigs.

It was going to be in the movie "Bandslam" but it closed and a clothing store moved into the building borfore production began. That didn't stop it from being in the movie. They built a recreation of its basement interior and sidewalk frontage aboveground in Texas. Lots of location switching during the exterior scene. When the actors are shown from the front, they're in New York, looking at the clothing store with the actual street scene behind them. When shown from behind they're in Texas, standing on an elevated platform in front of the set.

[jemc]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

It is Kerberos, not Cerberus. Just like it is Herakles, not Hercules when we are talking about the Greek (semi-)deity.
Both Cerberus and Hercules are their roman equivalent, but they are different. If you are talking about the greek god of the underworld, it is Hades and he has a monster/dog called Kerberos. The roman god of the underworld, Pluto, has named his dog Cerberus.

If we are talking about Hades, the Greek deity and not Pluto, his pet is Kerberos, not Cerberus.

It is probably my classic education, but I really get annoyed when Roman and Greek names are mixed. They are not the same. The Romans have adapted the Greek mythology to their own liking and kept adapting it depending on the society conquered.

All of which I already knew (classic education here as well), but thanks for the quick refresher on one of my favorite topics. I just try not to let my own annoyances get in the way of my enjoyment of urban fantasy discussions.

Anyway, I suppose you missed my usage of the word "effectively" in this case since this is a discussion of name usage in a modern urban fantasy. As I mentioned earlier, I'm good with Alan's suggestion of Fluffy.

[alansplace]

[alansplace]

JimButcher on

The army of Mordor took a wrong turn and goes up against the Roman Empire at its height.. by Mikay55in whowouldwin
[–]JimButcher 1 point an hour ago

Spoiler:

Let's say you have an elf a thousand years old. He's kind of a young one, because he doesn't even remember the Last Alliance. From age 15 or so, he is combat training. Not a lot of combat training, because Elves are basically hippies who would rather drink wine and smoke weed and spout poetry and sing elven karaoke. Let's call it hobby level training. 4 hours per week. Saturday afternoons, they go out and work with swords.

In a year, he has (52x4) 208 hours of training under his belt.

In a thousand years, he has (208X1000) 208,000 hours of training in combat.

Some Saturdays it rained. Or there was a moon festival or something. Call it 200,000 hours of training, to make it simple.

For argument's sake, your average roman Legionary starts training at age 15. He trains daily until the peak of his experience and physical ability, around age 40. 25 years of infantry knowhow.

For simplicity's sake, we'll say that he trains in weapons 8 hours a day, seven days a week. (It won't actually be that much. He also has to march, build roads, clean and secure his camp, cook, do KP, tend herd animals, and dozens of other things, but for the argument's sake, he spends all day learning to fight.)

At the end of the week, he's had 56 (7x8) hours of training.

At the end of the year, he's had 2912 (56x52) hours of training.

At the peak of his fighting career, after 25 years, he's had 72,800 hours of training.

The relatively young elven /hobbyist/ has three times as much training time as an absolutely peak, hardened professional roman legionary.

Never mind the elven part-time guys.

Never mind the professional elven soldiers.

Never mind the /old/ elves.

Of course, elves are neat and fictional, whereas the Romans /actually did this stuff/. Roman legions routinely fought battles outnumbered 10 to 1 by larger, stronger opponents /and routinely won them/.

It had nothing to do with how big and strong they were. It had to do with how intelligent and /disciplined/ they were. Romans worked together en masse, were extremely tough-minded, had excellent armor and discipline that has rarely been matched, historically.

Also, Romans were masters of getting places faster than their enemies could predict. Partly because of their roads, but largely because their legions trained tirelessly to walk a really long way a whole lot faster than people who weren't as crazy as legionaires could possibly do it. Speed of manuever is an absolutely critical (yet generally un-dramatic and therefore rarely highlighted) component of warfare. Ditto for supplying food to your army, an issue which Mordor really gets to largely ignore as a fantasy army.

In a more logistically realistic world, how the hell are orcs surviving longer than a few months? They don't raise animals, except for the damned wolves. They're too dumb and undisciplined to be farmers. You /can't/ supply a large army with sufficient food to have strength to march and fight by hunting all your food. For an orc force that large to assemble and stay together, they'd have to be constantly moving forward, constantly grabbing (and eating) their enemies, constantly raiding new grain silos and cattle ranches.

If you stop them in their tracks, they begin to starve. They can only have so much hobbit-jerky on them. They can only eat so many of their own before their already fragile morale begins to fall to bits and the horde disperses, exactly like barbarian hordes did repeatedly throughout history when confronted with the well-supplied and well-disciplined Roman legions.

Rome wouldn't /have/ to win a series of epic battles against Mordor. All they'd have to do would be to to find a bottleneck (of which Italy offers lots of nice ones), wall the orcs off (Romans were /good/ at that) and starve them out, the same way they starved out Hannibal when he was on the loose in Italy, the same way they starved out Spartacus and his army.

Romans weren't afraid of a fair fight, or even an unfair one, but they didn't see the point in going into one straight up when they could wear you down and take you on in a weakened condition first. Ceasar was particularly good at that kind of thing.

What made the Legions so successful was how good they were /at every phase of warfare/. A legion was a mini-Rome walking, able to build fortifications and cities, to forge and repair and create its own weapons and gear, to plant, raise, and defend its own crops, to tend to its own herds, to build roads and bridges and a miniature Roman civilization wherever it went.

Roman legions didn't just defeat the barbarians because they were badasses. They did it because they had /civilization/ in their pocket. That's a resource that the orcs, by definition, do not have and will never have.

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The army of Mordor took a wrong turn and goes up against the Roman Empire at its height.. by Mikay55in whowouldwin

[–]JimButcher 2 points an hour ago

The Spartans got a comic book and an epic movie. Plus their king dropped one of the very first recorded Action Hero Badass quotes.

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The army of Mordor took a wrong turn and goes up against the Roman Empire at its height.. by Mikay55in whowouldwin

[–]JimButcher 3 points an hour ago

You kidding? Troll is like five feet taller than the average roman. They'd just drop a lance through its upper chest or neck and never endanger their own formation.

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The army of Mordor took a wrong turn and goes up against the Roman Empire at its height.. by Mikay55in whowouldwin

[–]JimButcher 3 points an hour ago

Aragorn fought the troll for like fifteen seconds and it stomped him in that time. His personal strength, slightly stronger than peak human (questionable, there's no demonstration of that in the novels) or not, it doesn't matter if you're a weightlifter or a cross-country runner when you're wrestling a rhinocerous. The rhino wins.

What Aragorn had that let him stand up to the troll for a very limited amount of time was skill and courage. The Romans had plenty of that. Yeah, a legionaire might die holding that troll still for five or six seconds (instead of fifteen) but they had a whole lot of legionaires. A roman squad could pin the troll down long enough for a ballista crew to put a six-foot lance through its chest, even if it took losses doing so. It's not much different than a WWII infantry squad confronting a tank. Some members draw its attention, and quite possibly get killed, while the guy with the rocket launcher takes the opportunity to aim and fire. You pay a price, but you kill the tank.

Troll isn't much different. But probably smellier.

Spoiler:

[bizzybody]

I tend to think of how well various fantasy monsters *wouldn't* stand up to a mecha with a shoulder mounted 30mm GAU-8 Avenger cannon with the magazine backpack mounted.

Or how about a dragon legend inspired by a time rift that has an A-10 Warthog blip back in time just as its pilot fires the gun? Big, noisy, flying thin with what looks like clawed wings, it has a toothy mouth and it make an ungodly roar as it spits out its firey breath of destruction!

14 ounce projectiles with depleted uranium cores, fired at a velocity of 3,250 feet per second at a rate of 3,900 per minute. Burst rates are limited to 1 or 2 seconds. It takes a second to spin up to full speed so the first second's firing rate is on an increasing curve.

The magazine can hold only 1,174 rounds so the total firing time available (if it could instantly spin up to full rate) is just over 18 seconds at 65 rounds per second. So the typical total firing time available to an A-10 Warthog is somewhere around 30 seconds.

Sooo, how well would the Dresdenverse's nastiest physically tangible monster hold up to 120 rounds in two seconds from an Avenger cannon?

See also almost every movie ever made that has machine guns. Except for ones like the old Thompson with optional 100 round drum, you get about three or four seconds out of one magazine. If you want to see what a real firefight with full auto weaponry is like, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejD1Gml-ZGc

[alansplace]

[alansplace]

[Nyssa]

Originally Posted by alansplace

I totally agree with him!!! That IS awesome!!

[BuyMore]

Originally Posted by Nyssa

I totally agree with him!!! That IS awesome!!

By the way, love your avatar, too. Cute!

[Nyssa]

Originally Posted by BuyMore

By the way, love your avatar, too. Cute!

Thank you! The wonderful alansplace gifted it to me!

[red_phoenix]

I do so enjoy seeing all the Halloween avatars.