History WebVideo / Lindybeige

Nikolas Lloyd, known online as '''[[https://www.youtube.com/user/lindybeige Lindybeige]]''' (or just Lloyd), is a Website/YouTube personality from the United Kingdom. With experience in filmmaking, history, archaeology, and dance, he makes videos on all these subjects and many more, but his showcase focuses on ancient and medieval warfare and technology, and occasionally addresses other subjects such as politics and evolutionary psychology. He often specifically addresses whether certain tropes used in films, television, and video games are realistic, and tears into inaccurate works with his characteristically sarcastic sense of humor. He also makes videos on wargaming and tabletop gaming, with instructions on how to play these games and to make miniatures and environments to enhance the experience. In 2014 he ran "Operation Crossfire", in which he coordinated a mass game of ''Crossfire'', a WWII wargame, with players from all over the globe.

In addition to instructive videos in which he talks to the camera about various subjects, Lloyd's channel also features several full-length videos, conveniently broken into chunks for easy Website/YouTube viewing, including:

In 2016 he successfully funded a [[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/smiletitans/in-search-of-hannibal-a-graphic-novel kickstarter campaign]] to produce ''In Search of Hannibal'', a graphic novel series about the Second Punic War, with artist Chris Steininger.

As of July 2020, he has 1.02 million subscribers.

For two weapons shows that many of Lindy's fans also like, see ''WebVideo/{{Skallagrim}}'', ''WebVideo/ScholaGladiatoria'' and ''WebVideo/{{Shadiversity}}''.

!!Works discussed or reviewed by Lindybeige:

!!Tropes appearing on Lindybeige's channel:

* GladiatorGames: [[NotSoDifferent Gets compared with]] ProfessionalWrestling and ProfessionalBoxing in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMK60O695r4 a video about Gladiators]]:

* [[invoked]]TrueArtIsIncomprehensible: The target of his rant [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN9iJCZ5Il8 Modern art insults me]], where he describes a visit to a Slovenian castle where they were showing a certain sculptor's work, and despite a program extolling it as being full of meaning, it just looked like a pile of refuse to him. What made him feel insulted was that the work made no effort to be understood. He compares this to when you throw a big fancy costume party and everybody dresses up, and if one guy shows up in jeans and a T-shirt, then it's kind of insulting to the host because he didn't put any effort into making the party a success like everybody else did. What most people appreciate is effort, skill, and an apparent attempt to please, and he thinks that all of these things are missing in a very great amount of modern art. In contrast, he thinks the critical establishment tends to look down upon artists such as hyperrealist sculptor Ron Mueck who puts a huge amount of skill and craftsmanship into his creations, but the public loves him because they see that the artist is making such an effort to show them something extraordinary.

As of May 2020, he has 971,000 subscribers.

* LimitedWardrobe: Although he wears a normal variety of clothes generally, Lloyd always wears a particular type of shirt which is beige and has a rounded collar. After receiving many comments asking if he was wearing the same shirt, he made a video explaining that he has many such shirts and how he makes them from more typical storebought shirts.

* [[invoked]]TrueArtIsIncomprehensible: The target of his rant [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN9iJCZ5Il8 Modern art insults me]], where he describes a visit to a Slovenian castle where they were showing a certain sculptor's work, and despite a program extolling it as being full of meaning, it just looked like a pile of refuse to him. What made him feel insulted was that the work made no effort to be understood. He compares this to when you throw a big fancy costume party and everybody dresses up, and if one guy shows up in jeans and a T-shirt, then it's kind of insulting to the host because he didn't put any effort into making the party a success like everybody else did. What most people appreciate is effort, skill, and an apparent attempt to please, and he thinks that all of these things are missing in a very great amount of modern art. In contrast, he thinks the critical establishment tends to look down upon artists such as hyperrealist sculptor Ron Mueck who puts a huge amout of skill and craftsmanship into his creations, but the public loves him because they see that the artist is making such an effort to show them something extraordinary.

* ''The Adventures of Stoke Mandeville, Astronaut and Gentleman'', a tongue-in-cheek DeconstructiveParody of {{steampunk}} about Victorian Britons in space. Only three episodes have been released thus far, because Lloyd is working on a nonexistent budget and having to do all of the postproduction work in his spare time.

As of September 2018, he has 652,369 subscribers.

For two weapons shows that many of Lindy's fans also like, see ''WebVideo/{{Skallagrim}}'', ''WebVideo/ScholaGladiatoria'' and ''WebVideo/Shadiversity''.

For two weapons shows that many of Lindy's fans also like, see ''WebVideo/{{Skallagrim}}'' and ''WebVideo/ScholaGladiatoria''.

* CallThatAFormation: One of his biggest pet peeves in movies. If a medieval/ancient battle scene shows people dueling individually rather than fighting in formation, expect him to gripe about it. In reviwing ''Ironclad'' he is pleasantly surprised to see the defenders form a shield wall as the enemy is about to break in, only for them to immediateately fall into disarray and engage the enemy in a series of duels.
--> "When is a fight choreographer going to have the audacity to show people fighting in groups with clear front lines? If people split up into many duels like this the casualities for ''both'' sides are going to be horrendous, which is what real people seek to avoid. But filmmakers like to show as many people being butchered as quickly as possible, and so that's what we get. Lots of action, kill off ''all'' the minor characters on ''both'' sides, so that it all boils down to a face-off between the main hero and main villain."
* CatchPhrase: "this episode is sponsored by _____ but more on that later"
* TheCoconutEffect: Talks about various sound effects such as gun noises that Hollywood does unrealistically because that's what people want to hear.

* CoolButInefficient: Points out that many weapons are cool in theory but not very useful in practice:

--> "''Film/{{Ironclad}}'' shows us the familiar Hollywood image of Medieval Times in which all peasants are covered in mud, and [[RealIsBrown everyone wears brown]]--Unless they're baddies, [[EvilWearsBlack in which case they wear black]]."

* FunWithSubtitles: Many videos feature subtitles providing additional context to whatever Lloyd is talking about, but often they [[SelfDeprecation poke fun]] or apologise for his habit of going off-topic at length.

* HollywoodHistory: Takes apart the inaccuracies of movies such as ''Film/{{Braveheart}}'' and ''Film/BlackDeath'', which make huge errors in their depiction of events, geography, chronology, religion, clothing, language, and customs.

* HollywoodTactics: Taken apart in many of his reviews, where he notes suicidal mistakes in siege techniques, battle formations, and strategy. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4-MkDLJJeA Ironclad: part five - tactics]] is a fine example, as he criticizes John's artillery placement too far from the walls to do much damage, trying to storm the castle walls with a useless charge across open ground instead of gradually advancing under mantlets and cover, sending men up on scaling ladders while endangering their lives by continuing the catapult barrage on that wall section (something Kenneth Branagh also did in his Henry V), and stopping for a breather under the gate which is the place most exposed to the defenders' fire. The defenders are stupid too, since their best idea to keep the enemy from forcing open the gate is to have just four guys lean against it, which is too little too late against a battering ram when they should have reinforced it with more beams earlier when they had the chance.
* HollywoodTorches: Has a whole video series called [[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLM5bKwQUA08ye59tygnx8vG8JbFwJ4_Pj Lindybeige about Torches]] nitpicking apart the inaccurate ways that movies use fire and torches. They randomly stick torches and braziers on walls and depict them burning even during the daytime, despite the fact that real torches burn out, produce a lot of smoke, are expensive, and by no means a good way of lighting an interior. He even notices a scene in ''Series/TheLastKingdom'' where they [[SpecialEffectFailure failed to conceal]] the gas pipe that was feeding a wall torch.

* [[invoked]]TrueArtIsIncomprehensible: The target of his rant [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN9iJCZ5Il8 Modern art insults me]], where he describes a visit to a Slovenian castle where they were showing a certain sculptor's work, and despite a program extolling it as being full of meaning, it just looked like a pile of refuse to him. What made him feel insulted was that the work made no effort to be understood. He compares this to when you throw a big fancy costume party and everybody dresses up, and if one guy shows up in jeans and a T-shirt, then it's kind of insulting to the host because he didn't put any effort into making the party a success like everybody else did. What most people appreciate is effort, skill, and an apparent attempt to please, and he thinks that all of these things are missing in a very great amount of modern art. In contrast, he thinks the critical establishment tends to look down upon artists such as hyperrealist sculptor Ron Mueck who puts a huge amout of skill and craftsmanship into his creations, but the public loves him because they see that the artist is making such an effort to show them something extraordinary.
* WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants: The videos are almost never scripted in advance, though sometimes Lloyd will work off of broad notes. In particular, this means the lengths of the videos are unpredictable and tend to get out of hand, and often we only see the last of several takes on the subject.

* TankGoodness: Had done a number of videos about tanks, and is very enthusiastic about them.

* AcceptableTargets[[invoked]]: Lloyd never passes up a chance to insult the French. He regards them as default enemies in many hypothetical war discussions; in a video on Nelson's Column, he sees defeating them as the pinnacle of human achievement and automatically worthy of a statue, regardless of one's other failings; and in a video on flails he starts to read from a historical French source about the effectiveness of said weapon before stopping and wondering aloud, "why am I not reading this in an outrageous French accent?" before continuing in that vein. In ''Stoke Mandeville'', an exaggeration of Victorian values, the steampunk characters consider Frenchmen their total enemies, killing them is allowed with little comment, and their cuisine is treated as inherently poisonous. However, he does avoid the lazy pitfall of regarding them as cowardly "cheese-eating surrender monkeys", and is careful to point out that the French are good at fighting. In short, he sees them as quirky {{Worthy Opponent}}s.

* BuxomIsBetter: Analyzed from an evolutionary biology perspective in "[[https://youtu.be/xcrxNBlqrbM Why do women have breasts?]]", where Lloyd briefly looks at the question of why some men find bigger breasts more attractive in the course of a larger effort at puzzling out why women evolved to have breasts ''at all'':
** Most animals have breasts that are hardly visible before pregnancy, grow along with the milk ducts while they are actually nursing a baby, and shrink away again after the baby is weaned. This is because they do not need breasts when they are not actually using them to feed babies, and in fact having breasts or udders makes it more difficult to do things such as run from predators. Only human females have prominent breasts both before they even have their first child and after they stop nursing and become fertile again. Humans have better ways of protecting against predators and so this selection pressure is removed, but just because it was possible for this trait to evolve doesn't explain why it did. The fact of the matter is that human breast size is not a matter of function: a non-nursing breast is mostly made of fat, and the actual milk glands are what matters when it comes to feeding a baby. The size of a woman's breasts before her first child indicates nothing about how much milk she will actually produce after she's had a baby, and even if--for the sake of argument--larger breasts could produce more milk, any more than a certain amount would simply go to waste. So, is it possible that it could otherwise be a symbol of good genes, or aesthetically pleasing? It is possible that the shape of the breast, which has the nipple in the center of the larger circle of the breast, appeals to an instinctive association between symmetry and good genes. Quadrapedal animals generally have their teats hanging straight down, so that a nipple in the center will be at the lowest point and gravity will help the milk flow out when the child nurses. Since humans are bipedal, the nipples point outward and there is what we tropers might call a significant "underboob" below the waterline. Lindy suggests that it would actually be more efficient from a nursing perspective to have the human nipple more on the bottom or underside of the breast, just like the tap of a keg is at the bottom rather than the middle, but the human breast might have somehow evolved for form over function. As for bigger breasts being more attractive, it's not necessarily that bigness is the attribute which is attractive, but rather that it magnifies what is essentially pleasing about the breasts: symmetry. Having two small body parts that are the same size and shape is more attractive than not, but that necessarily very hard to do. It's much more difficult to grow to large body parts and make sure they turn out symmetrical and proportional. Big breasts wouldn't really be considered attractive if there were a large difference in size, so having large symmetrical breasts implies that you have good enough genes to pass the test at a higher challenge level.
** The fact that breast size is so variable from person to person is another thing that implies they are more decorative than functional: while you may encounter women with either huge or tiny breasts who get on equally well, you will never meet a healthy woman who has disproportionately enormous ''eyeballs'', because useful organs like eyes and hands have to be proportionate in order to work properly. Breasts are a secondary sexual characteristic, like a peacock's tail, and men have learned to find them sexy. However, there are evoutionary reasons that permanently large breasts should ''not'' have been sexy to prehistoric males, which somehow must have been overcome. In the periods concerned, women were less fertile while they were breastfeeding (this was true of hunter gatherer societies in which people lived hand-to-mouth, but is no longer true in the developed world now that nutrition is so much better), so it stands to reason that men would have found women with breasts *less* attractive than those without them. A woman's breasts should have disappeared after her child was weaned to show men that she was fertile again. Large breasts could have also been associated with older women, whereas men tend to be attracted to younger women. So how, then, did this turn-off get changed into a turn-on? Lloyd suspects that permanent breasts are related to something else unique to human women: ''concealed ovulation''. In other primates like chimps, females become fertile at certain times, and their bodies display things like bright pink rumps in order to advertise this fact to all the males. Once she has been impregnated, this sign goes away. Not only do human females show no outward signs to men of when they are most fertile, but the process of ovulation is so secret that even the woman ''herself'' has no idea exactly when it happens! In primate species, males will try to get in a fertile female's good graces by being really nice to her, offerings gifts and favors. If they can't tell exactly when she's fertile, but for all they know she ''could'' be fertile at any given time, they have an incentive to be nice to her all the time instead of just at certain times. Another thing that concealed ovulation allows is for a woman who has a less desirable male partner to invoke MamasBabyPapasMaybe by concieving a child with another male with better genes, and passing it off as her partners' so that he will help her raise it[[note]]as an addendum to Lloyd's commentary, anthropologists have proposed several other possible advantages of concealed ovulation, such as that it encourages monogamy by causing a woman's partner spend more time with her and have sex with her more often in order to avoid being cuckolded, which means he has less opportunity to cheat on her and takes better care of her and any children they may have. Human children spend a much longer time being helpless than primate children, so they are much more likely to survive if they have two parents taking care of them[[/note]]. But if a woman grew breasts as soon as she becomes pregnant, then it would give the whole game away! So perhaps after concealed ovulation evolved, women then evolved permanent breasts in order to take maximum advantage of concealed ovulation as a strategy for passing on their genes.
** But still, how did this trait spread through the gene pool? Maybe at some point there was a woman with a mutation that caused her breasts to stay enlarged after her first pregnancy, and she was able to take advantage of the fact that humans have tools of persuasion that simpler primates don't (intelligence, charm, [[ThroughHisStomach cooking ability]], etc.) in order to remain attractive in spite of her enlarged breasts. This prehistoric [[KavorkaMan Kavorka Woman]] would have concieved children who would pass along this trait, and since they were able to use concealed ovulation to their advantage in acquiring good genes, men who had some mutation that caused them to actually find permanent breasts attractive would have children with them and pass this trait along to their sons as well. There's an arms race on, and it ends with both breasts and the appreciation of breasts becoming the norm throughout the species.
** All of which, in Lloyd's opinion, leaves humans with an adaptation that is in many ways less than optimal. Breasts are aesthetically pleasing because we've evolved to appreciate them, but they still aren't functional for child-rearing and actually have quite a few drawbacks, from the usual symptoms of DCupDistress to being a risk for breast cancer. He sums it up by suggesting that breasts are kind of like nuclear missiles; they're a lot of trouble to have, but when everybody else has acquired them, you need nukes of your own just to keep up with the Jonses and it's very difficult to convince everybody to give up their arms at once.

--> "Our heroes deploy to meet the attack, and--top marks! They've actually formed a shield wall! That's rare in a film, but...ah, can you see the mistake they've made here? All the men in the front wall here are [[HelmetsAreHardlyHeroic wearing helmets]]. That means that they're minor characters. In the front row. Final big battle. Yep, they're dead!"

As of January 2017, he has 423,444 subscribers.

* AwesomeButImpractical: In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV2nIkqnGBI One-man tank turrets - were they a good idea?]], Lloyd looks at how French tanks such as the SOUMA S-35 and Char B1, despite being bigger, better armored, and having bigger guns than the Panzer IIIs they were up against, may have had a tactical disadvantage because they were designed with one-man turrets as opposed to the Germans' three-man turrets. A one-man turret could be advantageous in theory because compared to a three-man turret it presents a smaller target, it can be armored more thickly without making the weight excessive, and there are fewer crew members inside it who could be lost if the turret gets hit. Unfortunately, the commander's cuppola on the APX 1 type turret didn't have a hatch on top, and the view from inside of it wasn't good enough that he could efficiently track the enemy while buttoned down. Therefore, the commander had to climb out the hatch on the back of the turret to look outside whenever he needed to reacquire a target or reestimate the range, and since he was also the loader and gunner, he faced the ergonomic hell of having to keep changing positions while juggling different pieces of his equipment. This also made it hard to give orders to the crew, much less to other tanks if he was also a unit leader. In contrast, the Germans and other countries with three-man turrets could have the commander with his head out the turret hatch visually tracking the enemy while continuously giving orders and range corrections to gunner and loader inside the turret, allowing them to get shots off more quickly and accurately. To be fair, it's impossible to know which was better in the sense that the French tanks never got to fight the German tanks on equal footing, but the superiority of three-man turrets at that time is suggested by how quickly the one-man turret designs disappeared afterwards.

* BuxomIsBetter: Donwplayed and analyzed in "[[https://youtu.be/xcrxNBlqrbM Why do women have breasts?]]", where Lloyd is avoiding the question of why some men find bigger breasts more attractive in order to ask why women evolved to have breasts ''at all'':
** Most animals have breasts that are hardly there before pregnancy, grow while they are actually nursing a baby, and shrink away again after the baby is weaned. This is because they do not need breasts when they are not actually using them to feed babies, and in fact having breasts or udders makes it more difficult to run from predators. Only human females have breasts both before they even have their first child and after they stop nursing and become fertile again. Humans have better ways of protecting against predators and so this selection pressure is removed, but just because it was possible for this trait to evolve doesn't explain why it did. The fact of the matter is that human breast size is not a matter of function: a non-nursing breast is mostly made of fat, and the actual milk glands are what matters when it comes to feeding a baby. The size of a woman's breasts before her first child indicates nothing about how much milk she will actually produce after she's had a baby, and even if--for the sake of argument--larger breasts could produce more milk, any more than a certain amount would simply go to waste. The fact that breast size is so variable from person to person is another thing that implies they are more decorative than functional: while you may encounter women with either huge or tiny breasts who get on equally well, you will never meet a healthy woman who has disproportionately enormous ''eyeballs'', because useful organs like eyes and hands have to be proportionate in order to work properly. Breasts are a secondary sexual characteristic, like a peacock's tail, and men have learned to find them sexy. However, there are evoutionary reasons that permanently large breasts should ''not'' have been sexy to prehistoric males, which somehow must have been overcome:
** In the periods concerned, women were less fertile while they were breastfeeding (this was true of hunter gatherer societies in which people lived hand-to-mouth, but is no longer true in the developed world now that nutrition is so much better), so it stands to reason that men would have found women with breasts *less* attractive than those without them. A woman's breasts should have disappeared after her child was weaned to show men that she was fertile again. So how, then, did this turn-off get changed into a turn-on? Lloyd suspects that permanent breasts are related to something else unique to human women: ''concealed ovulation''. In other primates like chimps, females become fertile at certain times, and their bodies display things like bright pink rumps in order to advertise this fact to all the males. Once she has been impregnated, this sign goes away. Not only do human females show no outward signs to men of when they are most fertile, but the process of ovulation is so secret that even the woman ''herself'' has no idea exactly when it happens! In primate species, males will try to get in a fertile female's good graces by being really nice to her, offerings gifts and favors. If they can't tell exactly when she's fertile, but for all they know she ''could'' be fertile at any given time, they have an incentive to be nice to her all the time instead of just at certain times. Another thing that concealed ovulation allows is for a woman who has a less desirable male partner to invoke MamasBabyPapasMaybe by concieving a child with another male with better genes, and passing it off as her partners' so that he will help her raise it[[note]]as an addendum to Lloyd's commentary, anthropologists have proposed several other possible advantages of concealed ovulation, such as that it encourages monogamy by causing a woman's partner spend more time with her and have sex with her more often in order to avoid being cuckolded, which means he has less opportunity to cheat on her and takes better care of her and any children they may have. Human children spend a much longer time being helpless than primate children, so they are much more likely to survive if they have two parents taking care of them[[/note]]. But if a woman grew breasts as soon as she becomes pregnant, then it would give the whole game away! So perhaps after concealed ovulation evolved, women then evolved permanent breasts in order to take maximum advantage of concealed ovulation as a strategy for passing on their genes.

** All of which, in Lloyd's opinion, leaves humans with an adaptation that is in many ways less than optimal. Breasts are aesthetically pleasing because we've evolved to appreciate them, but they still aren't functional for child-rearing and actually have quite a few drawbacks, from the usual symptoms of DCupDistress to being a risk for breast cancer. He sums it up by suggesting that breasts are kind of like nuclear missiles; they're a lot of trouble to have, but when everybody else has acquired them, you need nukes of your own just to keep up with the Jonses and it's very difficult to convince everybody to give up their arms.

** But still, how did this trait spread through the gene pool? Maybe at some point there was a woman with a mutation that caused her breasts to stay enlarged after her first pregnancy, and she was able to take advantage of the fact that humans have tools of persuasion that simpler primates don't (intelligence, charm, [[ThroughHisStomach cooking ability]], etc.) in order to remain attractive in spite of her enlarged breasts. This prehistoric KavorkaWoman would have concieved children who would pass along this trait, and since they were able to use concealed ovulation to their advantage in acquiring good genes, men who had some mutation that caused them to actually find permanent breasts attractive would have children with them and pass this trait along to their sons as well. There's an arms race on, and it ends with both breasts and the appreciation of breasts becoming the norm throughout the species.

* GutturalGrowler: Parodied in his ''Film/{{Ironclad}}'' review series, where he has a narrator announce the title of each video in an exaggeratedly deep, gravelly voice. The implication is that such historical action movies' use of this trope in trailers, etc. is just one example of how they offer more hype than substance, and take themselves way too seriously. He does it again in the intro for "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQEDzLeAkBs Super-recognisers: the future of law enforcement?]]"

* [[invoked]]TrueArtIsIncomprehensible: The target of his rant [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN9iJCZ5Il8 Modern art insults me]], where he describes a visit to a Slovenian castle where they were showing a certain sculptor's work, and despite a program extolling it as being full of meaning, it just looked like a pile of refuse to him. What made him feel insulted was that the work made no effort to be understood. He compares this to when you throw a big fancy costume party and everybody dresses up, and if one guy shows up in jeans and a T-shirt, then it's kind of insulting to the host because he didn't put any effort into making the party a success like everybody else did. What most people appreciate is effort, skill, and an apparent attempt to please, and he thinks that all of these things are missing in a very great amount of modern art. In contrast, he thinks the critical establishment tends to look down upon artists such as hyperrealist sculptor Ron Mueck who puts a huge amout of skill and craftsmanship into his creations, but the public loves him because they see that the artist is making such an effort to show them something extraordinary.

* ''Built for the Stone Age'', a pilot for an {{edutainment}} show about evolutionary psychology that didn't make it to television. Features Lloyd and several other actors portraying strange scenes that demonstrate how the nuances of human behavior are a result of our evolution and contribute to our survival as a species.

* BoringButPractical: A big proponent of using whatever is most reliable and efficient, even if it's not as sexy as the fancy or exotic options. He frequently points out that ''rocks'' can be highly effective as thrown weapons, and the ammunition's dirt cheap. Slings do one better, and the ammunition is pebbles.

* HornyVikings: Not only were they not horny, the term "viking" is used too loosely and often applied to Scandinavians as a whole. Vikings were specifically raiders, essentially pirates, not anyone who happened to live in northern Europe during the dark ages.