Another dash of cold water in the face of martial fantasy....
Something I often rail against is the blase, fantastic, fetishistic, and artistic misrepresentation of edged weapons violence play-acted in the Edged Talisman community (edged weapons martial arts) - even the serious ones. Maybe due to the fact that most in modern life are so far removed from real violence, and especially knife/edged weapons stuff, that entire martial disciplines have either been developed, or totally enervated, by the lack of real knowledge of what short edges in particular are actually capable of - and not capable of. Teacher after teacher, of classical, neo-classical, and modern systems bestow notional and downright mythical "wisdom" on edged weapons that has more in common with movies and fiction than what actually happens. My default position is to be dismissive of martial advice on edged weapons until proven otherwise.
Its frankly entirely the same thing going on with the Fire-Talisman (firearms) community as pertains to handguns as well.
From the JinRoh blog by way of Calderon's - warning! NOT for the faint of heart - graphic photo depictions, most look real:
http://jinrohblog.tumblr.com/post/13...an-edged-short
Along the same lines, it really bothers me when someone teaches knife stuff in a very casual, off-the-cuff, uke-falls-all-over-himself to be killed manner.. That people with no experience of such personal, visceral, and lethal things can present it as if its some kind of video game is offensive, to say the least.
I remember teaching a block at a benefit seminar for Japan, where most were practiced in a particular martial art that often uses facsimiles of edged weapons in their training. Our block was extremely realistic. Knowing our background, the next group, starting their yet-another-lesson in-vicarious- edged-enter-trainment, were careful to note within earshot that what they were doing was "not real."
At least a moment of self-awareness dawned. Hopefully it stuck.