Re-creating the Cap/Bucky fight, of course, requires us to also figure out how Cap works. (Note: This means that my roommate is humoring me in discussions now. You should not do this. Moggie learned early on that it is a bad idea to engage me on any idea you really think is too crazy to put into practice. I am too dumb to understand what stuff I'm not supposed to be able to teach myself.) The shield is a particular sticking point. Cap's fighting style, while creative, is nothing you can't figure out with a reasonable amount of enthusiasm and athleticism. The thing is, you can't actually do what it looks like you're doing, because no real world material behaves like Cap's shield. Captain America's shield is made of a vibranium steel alloy. Materials that experience elastic collisions compress into the point of impact and then expand back to their original shape, i.e., they bounce. Materials that experience inelastic collision dissipate kinetic energy i...
Posts
Behold, my new prop. Well, my new prop stand-in. Just because my current crop of friends wouldn't be alarmed to see me juggling a prop knife doesn't mean I know how to lay hands on one right away. I did briefly consider using one of our kitchen knives. Don't worry, I'm not dumb enough to do it -- I'd learn all wrong, they're all way hilt-heavy. The brilliant kludge there is one of my folding fans with a bunch of hair ties around the staves, one, keeping it closed, and two, adjusting the balance. It's not quite long enough, but it is slim enough to flip end over end, which is what I want. The knife the Winter Soldier uses in the film isn't a Ka-Bar, it's a Gerber Mark II . Those are thinner and more gracile than the famous Ka-Bar, and are sharpened symmetrically. More relevantly, they're considerably lighter than a Ka-Bar, which is a big burly thing that comes in at about a pound, sans sheath. The Gerber knife is half that. Eight ounces is...