Or, How Long-Distance Fighters Get Shorted
By Toboe LoneWolf
Battles and fighting systems can be categorized into several different camps, and each character shines in certain camps and not the other. We have the magic battle camp, the martial arts battle camp, the long-distance camp, and the short-distance camp.
Some fighting styles can be combined into two camps, such as Raven from the Teen Titans cartoon, who is primarily a magic user and long-distance fighter. Neji from Naruto is mostly martial arts and short-distance, although he could throw a kunai if he wanted to. Some characters can fight in all four, such as Starfire of the Teen Titans.
For any fighting system, the basic interest is to hurt the opponent and not get hurt yourself. Close-combat fighters such as Neji or Naruto do this by coming up real close and attacking and blocking. Long-distance fighters such as Tenten (of Naruto) and Raven do this by staying far away and chucking things at their opponent.
This automatically puts long-distance fighters in the background in a team situation, because long-distance fighters do best with a lot of space rather than up close fighting. Their strength is being able to nail their opponent fifty yards away before said opponent can either come close or skewer them back. Against a close-combat fighter, long-distance fighters are able to pound away long before their opponent can come close to hit them; and it is necessary to do so before the said close-combat fighter can come up close and clobber them. Thus, long-distance fighters are also naturally suited for supportive fighting roles as well.
Long-distance fighters emphasize accuracy and consistency. Naturally, to be any use, a long-distance fighter would have to excel at this. Legolas of Lord of the Rings would have been a failure if he missed even 10% of the time. (...Because that's just not cool, missing shots like that...especially with Gimli hacking away...XP)
In order to be accurate and consistent, a person must be very steady and follow a set of rules for every single shot to fly true every single time. A quivering arrow or a shaking hand means that the shot will not go the right away (barring sheer chance). There's a certain mindset that a marksperson follows that allows for the marksperson to shoot consistently and accurately.
So, by extension, a marksperson would have to be a very steady and calm person (at least while fighting). Wantonly chucking kunais would be very bad. The same goes for a modern example: one does not enter a fight scene brazenly spewing bullets (unless you have a shotgun or something of that order).
Ask any basketball player, or football player, or even soccer player. There are steps to doing a shot, and practice trains your hands to be steady and consistent no matter what the situation or angle is. If you're at the free throw line, you most definitely do not want your nervousness to affect your shot. Therefore long-distance fighters tend to be very stable and calm in character at the bottom line. You can be the wackiest, off the wall character, but when push comes to shove and the shot is on the line, even if you make it to be a casual shot, nevertheless your mind and hands are controlled and steady. Take Vash the Stampede from Trigun for example. Wacky he may be, but jitterbug with a gun or his principles he most certainly is not.
This is not to say that close-combat fighters do not need to be stable or steady when fighting; of course they do. But there's a difference in punching a stationary target accurately and consistently that is three feet away from you (a typical distance) than shooting an arrow at a stationary target accurately and consistently that is twenty-five feet away from you (a very basic and low level distance). And then you move into moving targets. =D While both fighting styles need to be steady in this situation, note that long-distance has more emphasis on the steady part overall. Not a waterfall's difference, but yes, a difference.
For instance, if you have two untrained guys fighting each other crazily in a fistfight, it may be wild and out of control, but some damage is pretty much guaranteed. Fighting with hands is fairly instinctual.
On the other hand, if you have two untrained guys shooting at each other crazily from a typical long-distance span (which is 50 feet or 15 m... archery competition ranges from 18m to 90m), damage is not guaranteed. Especially if they're trying to use archery. XP
The world operates on long-distance these days. If not in combat, then surely by The Cell-Phone. People fear an expert gunman gone wrong than an expert fistfighter gone wrong, because of a gun's quick lethality.
Now, another very subtle thing about long-distance fighters, particularly fictional characters that are long-distance fighters, is that they are usually more in the background than other characters. This is more valid for "medieval" type characters (because in a modern world, everyone has guns XP), but long-distance fighters are more often relegated to the background than the characters that use swords or close-up magic, barring the main character/minor/side character differences. They often are set back farther, stand a bit more outside, or simply are not "hemmed in as much."
Why? Because as a long-distance fighter, you do Not Want to get hemmed in. Getting hemmed in when you're a long-distance fighter means you're dead. It is difficult to nock an arrow and shoot a guy who is about to kill you and happens to be standing right in front of you. Long-distance is just that -- long distance, where you need distance between you and your enemy. Stay Far Away is the byline.
Not Getting Hit is the secondary heading. Obviously, it would a lot harder to aim if you got hit in the eye. Likewise, getting shot, or getting a knife stabbed into you would make it Very Difficult to concentrate and aim. While close-combat fighters can fight through such pain, it is not as "easy" for a long-distance fighter to do the same. While a close-combat fighter can eithier favor the wounded limb or count on adrenaline or training to ignore the pain, because throwing/aiming stuff requires steadiness and pain happens to be an automatic human response, it is much harder for a long-distance fighter to fight at his or her potential when they have been wounded. Therefore, it is in their best interest to not get wounded.
Because this interest, long-distance fighters will 1) stay in the background or away from people and 2) have very light armor. Being in the background gives the distance in order to get room to shoot people (=D). Having light armor serves the double purpose of making it easier to carry your arms (guns/throwing knives/bow/whathaveyou) and aim, as well as run out of the way.
So, that would be a more in-depth reason why those military games have heavily armored footsmen and lightly armored archers. XP
I want to expand a little more on the background thing with long-distance fighters. This is a very subtle thing that I'll bet not many people notice it. But yes, it exists. It's not that long-distance fighters can't be touchy-feely characters; it's simply that it's a basic instinct that has been drilled into their minds. Fighters train such that their movements become automatic. As such, long-distance fighters have trained to position themselves such that they would have the best possible advantage in fighting should the situation arise. This means being a little bit more in the background, a little bit more on the outside, and a little less hemmed in (or better yet, not at all XP).
For examples, observe Legolas of Lord of the Ring and Tenten of Naruto.
Long-distance fighters require distance in order to fight. It's perhaps the first thing a long-distance fighter makes sure of and calculates when fighting. Requiring that distance sometimes means the fighter stays on the outside fringes rather than completely and totally thrown into the central fray.
Now, in media, there is unfortunately a hidden bias against long-distance fighters. It may go back to our caveman days when all we had were clubs before we discovered slings or something, (XP), but there is a basic human instinct to like close-up fights rather than far away ones.
Short-distance fights are personal. They are physical. Your blood races, your breathing rate increases, you are In Their Face with Your Hated Enemy and all it takes is perhaps six inches to tell him that.
Long-distance fights require said fighters to suppress those feelings lest they affect their shooting hand. You must be calm and not fly off the handle, because wild shots rarely hit their mark.
It is very easy to make short-distance fights Very Dramatic. Why is there such a sinister, satisfying feeling when you clobber someone you don't like? Why is it, even after you've shot someone (going on theoretical here XD), that you feel an urge to walk up to the dead or dying body and say some final words or kick your opponent or spit on them? Why is there so much yelling involved, even going so far as to have a name for it (the "kai!")? There is a basic human instinct for being up close and personal (and having the last word).
Writers, animators and drawers know this. And funnily enough, it is easier for them to depict this.
Short-distance fights allow for close-up panels of both fighters, blown up to incredibly huge sizes. They allow for really close shots of ZOMG DRAMATIC SNARLING FACES, filled with ZOMG TENSION, filling the entire page or screen. It looks personal and angry and ooooooh, so utterly awesome.
On the other hand, long-distance fights, require quick, back-and-forth shots, with only close-ups of one character rather than both; and if the two are on screen, they are drawn smaller to denote distance. This, in general, is harder to animate because it requires so many different panel shots in so short a time frame.
Short-distance fights get to be in your face. Long-distance fights do not. With all of the close-ups short-distance fights allow, they are also easier to dramatize and grab the viewer/reader.
Which is why long-distance fights in media so often degenerate into short-distance fights, in the name of being dramatic, fast, and easy. One character or another loses their cool and charges. They both run out of bullets. One character swipes the gun out of the other's hand. Or stupidly enough, both fighters yell and charge at each other while spewing bullets before getting real close and start to clobber each other.
The animators (and viewers) go for
close-ups of intense, concentrating faces. So we have Starfire of the Teen
Titans cartoon flying towards Blackfire, flinging starbolts, so she can get
up close and personal and punch the snot outta Blackfire. Are fight scenes with
Starfire flinging starbolts really rememberable? No, unless Starfire comes up
close and punches/kicks/laser eye-beams the foe's lights out. Or in Titans
East, Raven vs. Speedy — two long distance fighters that for dramatic purposes,
come up close and fight hand-to-hand where really, it'd be a lot smarter to
stick to their strengths and fight long distance (not to mention have cooler animation,
but again, it is likely expensive and not as easy to dramatize).
Another reason why long-distance fighters get the cuff is that their fights are incredibly quick, fast-paced, and over, long before the average short-distance fight. They have to be; it's in their very nature to shoot and get it over with. It'd be incredibly stupid to have a gunfight between two expert markspersons directly shooting at each other without pause last over fifteen minutes. There aren't any pauses save for reloading, which have to be as short as possible before you get nailed. Unless there's a ton of cover, which then turns into split second free-for-alls before retreating. Always fast-paced.
However, short-distance fights can easily be extended to long-drawn out fights, filled with rants or monologues, lasting for two or three episodes. Of course, that's not to say they aren't fast-paced as well — but it is much easier to extend a short-distance fight than a long-distance one. And don't forget the ZOMG DRAMATIC SNARLING FACES that short-distance fights allow.
For example, the classic gunslinger showdown. Guns in holster, stance null. And then in like, five seconds with perhaps three shots total, one guy is wounded/dead and the other already putting his gun away.
Now try taking that same scenario and applying it to close-combat fighters. First, they have to run at each other. Then you get the first clash of sword/fist/kick/whatever. Assuming fairly equal levels, they continue. It's only when there is a complete and total overpowering that the match is over as fast as the gunslinger showdown.
In order to lengthen the gunslinger showdown, the writers/animators often add long rants/monologues/cut scenes/flashbacks/whathaveyou. Or they do something to force it into close-combat, like a good old cowboy brawl.
It's a hidden theme you see in media. Gunfights that don't kill the main villain until the main character slams a fist into villains face, easy deflection by every single character, only minor injuries, killings of only minor or filler characters, the taunt that takes characters lose it, or...they just plain don't exist. Ah well.
At least guns rule the modern world. =D
