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Oh no, not another ninjas vs pirates thread!

 
  

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Sax
12:41 / 28.06.02
Well, no, actually. Not really.

Seeing that all the "ninjas and pirates" threads on Barbelith have just been bumped to the tops of their fora, I just have to ask the questions:

Am I completely alone in a world of ninjas and pirates?

Is there anyone else on Barbelith who isn't a ninja or a pirate?

Why do I completely fail to get this?

And, perhaps most importantly, it's interesting to see that everyone is very quick to nail their colours to one mast or another as soon as they are given the opportunity. "There are no sides." Hmmm.
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
12:57 / 28.06.02
Me - though Barbelith is so slow today that I might actually be the only other person here...

I tried to start a third column of highwaymen, but no one wanted to play...


... and my Kit Kat is stale. Life is tuough.
 
 
deja_vroom
13:00 / 28.06.02
(hssssssssssssssssssss)

Shit, I was almost cured.
(hsssssssssssssssssssss)
 
 
Loomis
13:06 / 28.06.02
If we're going to be the highwaymen, can I be Willie Nelson?

And on the off chance that you were referring to a different kind of highwaymen, then I'm still in. Remember that tv series about Dick Turpin? Genius. IIRC it used to be on before or after Mr Ed when I was a kid. A golden age for tv viewing my friends....
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
13:06 / 28.06.02
And, perhaps most importantly, it's interesting to see that everyone is very quick to nail their colours to one mast or another as soon as they are given the opportunity. "There are no sides." Hmmm.

Maybe that's why it got so popular: because you can pick a "side" and vociferously support it whilst safe in the understanding that it doesn't matter, it's just a game?
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
13:29 / 28.06.02
Wrong but Wromantic vs. Right but Repulsive... (am channelling 1066 and All That today)

Mordant is of course quite right. Moreover, when playing Ninjas vs Pirates one can exercise all one's powers of wit, pedantry etc, without worrying about a) offending someone or b) getting it wrong and looking like a twart.

Loomis - bags I Macheath from the Beggar's Opera.
 
 
Sax
13:35 / 28.06.02
So it's like a fiction suit for your fiction suit, which enables you to be pedantic, be offensive and get things wrong without any danger of really committing those barbe-sins?
 
 
Spatula Clarke
13:52 / 28.06.02
Where do I sign up?
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
15:07 / 28.06.02
Loomis: I always pictured you more as Dennis Moore, if we're talking highwaymen.

And I'll gut ye all, ye pirateless frogspawn!
 
 
Grey Area
15:30 / 28.06.02
As horses scare the living daylights out of me, I cannot be a highwayman. Nor would I want to, seeing as sailing's more my thing and who needs horses to get around anyway? Plus everyone knows that highwaymen are merely Victorian imitations of ninjas (on horses).

Facts:
- Highwaymen cover their faces (just like ninjas)
- Highwaymen have an obscure honour code (just like ninjas)
- Highwaymen are creatures of the night (just like ninjas)
- Highwaymen dress in dark colours (just like ninjas)
- Highwaymen aren't in it for the money (just like ninjas)

And I'd like to see the highwayman who can load, prime, aim and fire a cannon. All they've got is wussy liddle piftols and (sometimes) rapiers.

Arrr...
 
 
Loomis
15:30 / 28.06.02
If highwaymen made a noise I'd be making it right now.

(Squints from atop his horse with weary disdain and a roguish, superior grin)
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
15:34 / 28.06.02
Grey Area, you could always become a ruffianly footpad. Oh, and I hate to dispel your illusions but highwaymen are totally in it for the money - otherwise what would be the point? They're just so suave that no one notices...
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
15:37 / 28.06.02
Oh - and eighteenth century, not Victorian, you cur.
 
 
Grey Area
16:00 / 28.06.02
Suave eh? Hmm. (makes note, grins knowingly). And here's me thinking that highwaymen were Robin Hood-esque characters who took from the rich, gave to the poor and engaged in brief romantic encounters with buxom noble-ladies.

And I apologise for my time-keeping error. Highwaymen belong firmly in the 18th century, not in the Victorian age. The Management has been led outside, flogged, keelhauled and given an embarrassing tatoo on their forehead. The error will not be repeated. Arr.

Suggestions for highwayman's noises:
- Gentlemanly *ahem*'s
- Repeated cries of "ouch!", "ow!" and "that stings!" as they gallop through forest full of low-hanging branches.
- Fizzle of wet powder in flintlock.
- "No, I don't work for the internal revenue department..."
- Tagga-thump-Tagga-thump-Tagga-thump-Tagga-thump-Tagga-thump... (it's galloping, OK?)
 
 
Tezcatlipoca
16:09 / 28.06.02
- Highwaymen aren't in it for the money (just like ninjas)

I'd always assumed highwaymen demanded 'your money or your life' because they did need the cash (presumably to purchase far more pirate-orientated clothing).
 
 
rizla mission
16:13 / 28.06.02

- Highwaymen have an obscure honour code (just like ninjas)
- Highwaymen aren't in it for the money (just like ninjas)


how do you figure those two?

I mean, don't get me wrong, Highwaymen rule almost as much as pirates, but how are they anything more than villainous crooks with a sense of style? Just like PIRATES, in fact!
 
 
Grey Area
16:20 / 28.06.02
Oh pah-leeese! Highwaymen so do not have style! That cloak-clad horseback stuff is so last season!

And I based my comments on Highwaymen on my limited experiences (read half a plundered copy of Dick Turpin once) and personal perceptions. So yes, I've set meself up to blown out 'o the water, but it was worth it, so worth it!

*ahem*, Arr.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
17:38 / 28.06.02
They so have style. They have French cocked-hats on their foreheads, a bunch of lace at the chin, coats of claret velvet and breeches of brown doe-skin (that fit with never a wrinkle). I would also put it to you that their boots are up to the thigh, and furthermore they ride with a jewelled twinkle, their pistol-butts a-twinkle, their rapier-hilts a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

QED.
 
 
Ellis says:
18:06 / 28.06.02
I am a "Secret Agent"

I drink like a pirate, and enjoy the pleasures like a Pirate would.
But I am as cool, calm and collected as a Ninja.

Or maybe I am a Ninja who wishes he were a Pirate.

Or a Ninja who identifies with being a Pirate.
 
 
Sax
18:08 / 28.06.02
Hmmm. This worked a treat, then.
 
 
Baz Auckland
18:08 / 28.06.02
A Highwayman sounds like a nice mix between the two. They get to wear all black, but get the loot. Could pirates and nijas evolved into these sometimes Robin Hood, sometimes evil greedy bastards?

(given that I don't know much about highwaymen outside of Monty Python's Dick Turpin and Blackadder III)
 
 
Tezcatlipoca
18:22 / 28.06.02
From Ralph Wilson's 1722 confessions:

The next Morning after this Robbery, it is impossible for me to express under what Anxieties I labour’d, on a consideration that I had engaged in such base Actions which I then apprehended, as I have found since, bring nothing but Poverty and Shame to him that follows them: Besides, there is no Life so gloomy as the Life of an Highwayman; he is a Stranger to Peace of Mind and quiet Sleep; he is made a Property of, by every Villain that knows or guesses at his Circumstances: such a Life is a Hell to any Man that has ever had any Relish of a more generous way of living.

Never hear a pirate complain. Nosiree...
 
 
Abigail Blue
18:45 / 28.06.02
Wussy, whingey Highwaymen turn me stomach, matey. Arrrrrrrr.
 
 
Jack Fear
18:50 / 28.06.02


Stand and Deliver, baby.
 
 
Puzimandias
22:18 / 28.06.02
Great!
I just posted a highwayman idea to the other thread, then read further down the page to find people already at it!
Now I have to think of something even cooler so I can still feel individual!

Do great minds really think alike, or is it the drugs that make us that way?
 
 
Trijhaos
23:23 / 28.06.02
Highwaymen? That's an occupation for people who couldn't cut it as a pirate or ninja.

Either they didn't have the balls to steal a ship and start pirating, or they couldn't sneak well enough and botched an assassination.
 
 
The Monkey
23:59 / 28.06.02
You mean highwaymen have an existence beyond wooing lasses and getting untimely plugged by the British regualars? I'll be damned. I see them as a wishy-washy admixture of semi-pirate and sort-of ninja, with just enough gothic romance through in to turn the stomach. Except Sawney Beane. He was a hardass. And a cannibal.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
13:37 / 29.06.02
Sawney Beane didn't really cut a dash, though, did he?
Smugglers. (Sorry, "Gentlemen".) That's what us pirates approve of. They help us out with grog and stuff, y'know.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
02:05 / 30.06.02
...but, watch the wall, little darlin', while the gentlemen go by...
 
 
Grey Area
10:17 / 30.06.02
For your entertainment, Jolly Roger Productions Ltd. (broadcasting our pirate signal from a converted Spanish treasure galleon anchored off the coast of the Cayman Islands) is proud to present the following public service announcement:



Arr.
 
 
Ganesh
14:04 / 30.06.02
% Nice one, Sax. %

Anyone wanna play Jews and Muslims?
 
 
Rage
03:10 / 01.07.02
Have you LJ users seen this?

http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=ninjasvspirates
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
08:49 / 01.07.02
You Highwaymen are aware that you're all just poor copies of Bushrangers, don't you? Bushrangers were really pirate wannabes too, only it was kinda difficult to procure galleons in the middle of country NSW. Ben Hall would've had you all.

Well, until the hanging, anyway.
 
 
Loomis
14:07 / 01.07.02
Not only have highwaymen already advanced beyond being pirates, they've worked with concrete and sailed across the universe ... well according to Willie, Waylon, Kris and Johnny they have. And as you will see, we are unkillable:

"The Highwayman"

Written by Jimmy Webb.
(© Seventh Son Music/Universal Polygram International Publishing.)
From "Highwaymen", © 1985, Columbia.

I was a highwayman, along the coach roads I did ride,
With sword and pistol by my side.
Many a young maid lost her baubles to my trade.
Many a soldier shed his lifeblood on my blade.
The bastards hung me in the spring of twenty-five:
But I am still alive.

I was a sailor, I was born upon the tide.
And with the sea I did abide.
I sailed a schooner round the Horn to Mexico.
I went aloft and furled the mainsail in a blow.
And when the yards broke off, they said that I got killed:
But I am living still.

I was a dam builder across the river deep and wide;
Where steel and water did collide.
A place called Boulder on the wild Colorado,
I slipped and fell into the wet concrete below.
They buried me in that great tomb that knows no sound:
But I am still around.
I'll always be around,.
And around and around and around and around.

I fly a starship across the Universe divide.
And when I reach the other side,
I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can.
Perhaps I may become a highwayman again.
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain;
But I will remain.
And I'll be back again,

And again and again and again and again.
 
 
Saint Keggers
15:20 / 01.07.02
That song just proves that a highway man is an unevolved life form. Eventually it will reincarnate as sailor and then as pirate. If he has done bad in his pirate life he will be a damn builder or a drop of rain. If he has done real bad then he will go back to highwayman and if he's done the absolutely the worst possible he will be reincarnated as ninja. Such is the circle of life.
 
  

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