I was thinking the whole time I was reading it... "Damn I love these users and this site." I had a big goofy grin just remembering battle manuals and tactics I had drawn up for fantasy battles.
Ah shit, now you're bringing me down Memory lane!
I remember a time long, long ago, When I was younger and just getting into, err... fanfic writing and the like. I used to have a blogspot that was quite literally pages of that stuff. Full of the oft-repeated bullshittery that everyone copies down from some Victorian book or olde-school DnD manual. The shit you do when you have no prior experience and just don't bother asking the questions.
Unfortunately, over the course of like a year or two I discovered that most of my so-called
'research' actually turned out to be either unreliable or full of shit. So that blog got murderised and I haven't looked back since.
The crime of being young, gullible and believing the shit that enters most
'history' books, I suppose. When I realized that, I was like "Huh, Maybe I ought to try doing that shit." So that's what I did.
When it comes to learning about the past, I find that just going out and doing the shit yourself is a great way of finding things out for yourself. You never know what you might discover...
Like sewing. Beating people in armour over the head with a rattan club (Yep, I got to do that once!) Or fussing over fabric. I also used to do SCA type reenactment stuff (It wasn't for very long), but I don't do that anymore (For reasons I don't want to go into). I Got to fight larpers once though, they were easy lol, they just charged in to us no fucks given and got wrecked!
Nothing better than a thirty-year-old or so male giving me a hissy fit! His friends were like "WTF dude"... Ahhh those were the days!