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15th Apr '13 11:37:54 AM JIKTV

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-->'''William of Stonham''': ''This is a story about the English and the French and why the English hate the French. Which is because they eat frogs, they smell bad, and they're twenty five miles away.''

Crécy; "The Death Of Chivalry", "How Nightmarish AnnoyingArrows ''Really'' Are", or "How BadAss English Archers Made French [[CountryMatters Cunts]] Stop Invading England". [[invoked]]

A short black & white comic written by Creator/WarrenEllis & illustrated by Raulo Cacares published in 2007 about the historical Battle of Crécy.

!!Tropes:

* AnnoyingArrows: ''Crécy'' is all about how ''truly'' annoying arrows really are, as in how widespread archery put an end to medieval warfare. A ''lot'' of work was put into making arrows into incredibly lethal weapons. They discouraged crossbows as longbows could be quickly strung or unstrung - this meant drawstrings could be removed during rainstorms to keep them dry. Archers were trained to use them as {{Swiss Army Weapon}}s; they carried [[TrickArrow three types of arrowheads]] - normal arrowheads, bodkins for piercing plate armor, swallowheads for killing horses. They sometimes applied the heads to the arrows with candlewax, but they usually just spit on the ends of the shaft to secure them - this ensured that trying to yank out the arrow would cause the head to detach, meaning that one would have to aggravate the wound in the process of removing it. Finally, they stuck the arrows in the dirt prior to firing them - this ensured that contaminants would be carried into the wound. English archers were thus able to take better care of their weapons than French crossbowmen, and those weapons were both more versatile and inherently more lethal.
** The narrator points out the Genoese mercenary crossbowmen hired by the French were brutally lethal as well: they had the training and equipment to shoot an arrow a hundred and fifty yard every ''seven and a half seconds'', and the ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavise pavise]]'' they crouch behind renders them invulnerable save the ''exact moment they shoot.''
*** The catch is that the damned things weigh around ''twenty pounds each'', meaning they're too heavy for a crossbowman to carry as part of his ruck while marching - they had to be brought to the battlefield by baggage train. And a good archer can shoot a TrickArrow ''two'' hundred and fifty yards every ''five'' seconds. Crossbowmen were meant to slaughter infantry, not exchange arrows with people who can actually shoot ''back.''
--> '''William of Stonham''': ''These things may look primitive to you, but you have to remember that we're not stupid. We have the same intelligence as you, we simply don't have the same cumulative knowledge you do. So we apply our intelligence to what we have.''
* CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkeys: It is pointed out that the French at the time were the BadassArmy and the English were this trope (speculated to be parsnip eating surrender monkeys). This comic is about The Heavily Outnumbered English Army giving France one of the most one-sided {{Curb Stomp Battle}}s in History (guess who lost). With AnnoyingArrows (annoying as they kill the fuck out of so many [[Film/MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail silly French kaniggits]] that they eliminate the ''concept'' of knighthood).
* CountryMatters: It features this gem:
--> ''In England, the word "cunt" is punctuation.''
* DeliberateValuesDissonance: The book is a warts-and-all depiction of the famous Battle of Crécy in 1346. The narrator acknowledges the dissonance, describing himself as "a complete bloody xenophobe who comes from a time when it was acceptable to treat people from the next village like they were subhumans" and admitting that by modern standards his side have been "acting like evil pricks", but reminds the reader that the other side are even worse.
* HundredYearsWar
* RainOfArrows: The comic explains how it's done in real life. Basically, you teach all your soldiers to shoot at the same range, then everyone looses arrows at once and ''something'''s bound to get hit.
* ShoutOut: The scene where the French taunt the English from the top of a castle wall seems very familiar. Except this time the English have a lot of longbows.
* VSign: The main character is an archer who does this at the end of the book. This refers to the urban legend that the offensive V-sign came from the French cutting off the fingers of captured English longbowmen.
-->''I can kill you from three hundred yards away with '''these.'''''

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15th Apr '13 11:29:08 AM JIKTV

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15th Apr '13 11:24:45 AM JIKTV

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3rd Mar '13 3:42:49 PM Doryna

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Removing Nightmare Fuel potholes. NF should be on YMMV only.

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22nd Dec '12 9:36:18 PM MAI742

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15th Dec '12 6:01:59 AM SeptimusHeap

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Zero Context Example of renamed trope. The example doesn't say how it qualifies for the trope criteria and has been removed. Don't readd unless you can tell ''why'' it qualifies for the trope

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18th Nov '12 2:57:01 PM phobos

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18th Nov '12 2:52:06 PM phobos

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18th Nov '12 2:51:37 PM phobos