Editing Sword (section)

=== Parrying all day long ===
	
If you have a sword and your enemy has a sword, one thing that you can do is use your sword to stop the enemy's blade. This is called Parrying and it is a valid action in a sword fight. However, in fiction (especially visual fiction) sword fights will often involve each side constantly slashing each other for minutes at a time hitting nothing but the opponent's blade. In real life this did not happen. Usually a sword fight is over in a few swings, especially one on a battlefield. Even in a "pure" sword duel (No shields), opponents do not slash and parry continuously like how they're stereotypically portrayed in media and instead only attack in short intervals before retreating and attacking again or until one of you suffers a fatal wound. This was the case for three reasons:
*Eventually, you will suffer from fatigue and make a mistake, costing you your head if you don't take a few seconds to catch your breath and your rational opponent will be thinking the same.
*Dodging the attack completely is preferable to parrying as it leaves your sword intact and actually leaves your opponent open for an attack.
*Unless both of you have Slaaneshi-tier reflexes and are telepathic, it is nearly impossible for any sword fighter to match their opponent's moves in that magnitude for minutes-on-end that doesn't involve the duel being choreographed like a play (even if you were trained by the same teacher).

A real sword fight is NOT parrying all day, as seen [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQMqlFY7T64 here]
	
The first reason why this is the case is simple, the objective in a sword fight is to get your sword to hit the enemy, not his blade. The second reason is (if you have one) a shield is better suited to staving off an enemy blow than a sword. The third is that in a battle situation, you are vulnerable to another attacker if you are occupied in endless parrying. The fourth is that swords are not magically immune to other swords. If you parry a blow, your sword gets damaged, which is why the sort of "edge-to-edge" parry you always see in movies are questionable. It would dig huge divots out of the softer sword, if not both of them at once. Sword fighters of some schools tended parry with the flat of the blade unless they're using a specialized weapon with flanges or notches to catch and disarm or break the other weapon, while in others edge-to-edge was considered an acceptable move, since it provided better grip, more reliable block, better use of cross-guards and inevitable blade damage could be repaired later, while your cracked skull could not. It was a matter of [[skub]] both when sword-fighting was relevant and in modern HEMA community.

For those wondering why movies do this if it's so unrealistic and bad, it's simple: most actors and stunt doubles aren't trained swordsmen. But, considering even a dull prop sword without edge is still a heavy lump of metal that can hurt someone very badly if taken fully in the face; parrying all day is performed for safety reasons. The trick here is that, while learning to correctly handle a sword takes a long time; it is easy to train someone that has never wielded one before to perform a couple of very basic and predictable routines that [[pretend|make it looks like]] they're trying to hit their opponent. Said routine is then mirrored by the other person they're 'fighting' with, resulting in safe moves where the swords rhythmically and repeatedly clang loudly against one another (a practice called "Flynning" or "pirate halves" after [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Errol_Flynn Errol Flynn] swashbuckling pirate movies; or "ferrailler" in French, i.e. clanging metal together.) The cool metal-on-metal sound effects give the impression both 'combatants' are really going at it, where in reality they actually are playing it really safe with moves both know are coming and how to deal with. Said impression of a dynamic can then easily be enhanced even further with taking shots from different angles and other camera tricks for a movie, and by having the two characters play off each other in various ways during the fight.