The honest truth is that if a wushu master (wushu means martial arts, btw. You all could be talking about pencil spinning. Fucking kung fu master.) were to face any Harry Potter verse wizard, they would lose. No matter what.

Can you imagine:

What I'm trying to say is: no fist fights when you have a stick that helps you to break the laws of reality.

 

The entire English language is made up of words "stolen" from other languages and translated with wildly varying degrees of accuracy.

Actually, all languages are like that, at least until historical linguists are able to reconstruct the prototypical First Language.

Good luck convincing everyone to stop using "kung fu" to mean "Chinese martial art," though. I think that ship sailed before David Carradine ever stepped in front of a camera.

 

I don't mind the odd punch in the face or headbutt used as a distraction, but it shouldn't be used as a primary method of fighting.

Otherwise, I use physical combat as essential to the kinds of fight scenes I write (close combat usually in alleys).

On guns... Every story can benefit from a Colt Peacemaker with Long Colt bullets.

/classy

 

I think some folks need to take a deep breath, go back and read Bungle in the Jungle again, and come back here.

It's not impossible to do well, just rare. It's not a very good central concept of a story, but there are useful points to it.

 

Why would we do that to ourselves?

 

The Innocence Of Guilt is very good and it uses non magical fighting a lot.

Like squirrel move "just go for the nuts"

 

True, but Innocence of Guilt is a humor fic, with sprinkles of serious plot thrown in.

 

I thought that this recent work's scene nicely illustrated how much of a rolephysical combat should play in your average HP fic. Brief, quick, and surprising to the person on the defensive - not (as I said earlier) a drawn-out exchange of blows between Wizard A's "Slashing Tiger" versus Wizard B's "Graceful Crane" style.

 

Cute. Back on topic, examples are examples, if you want to refute them, go nuts.

 

I think stories that have Harry forge some magical swordthat turns any person who uses it into some sword master who can also fire spell and attack long range are cheap and ineffective. Mostly because only Harry can use it for some reason. Godrics sword is said to be one of the most powerful swords ever and it only can cut through alot of tough materials.

Also guns are a tool for bad writers to make Harry seem like some rebel badass who only weres black and goes around screaming "Fuck you Dumb-as-a-door and the wizarding world can save itself." Before that Harry goes and cries because Draco left him for another dude.

 

Meh, I'm no fan of swords, fists and guns...

How about dynamite?

 

I think physical combat is acceptable so long as it's unplanned. Harry deciding to use it = bad. A fight over who can get to a wand on the floor first = ok.

 

The only good Martial Arts!Harry I've ever read was in Harry Potter and the Sun Source, which is a HP/The Destroyer crossover. But in that, the only reason Harry is godly is because he was trained since infancy in Sinanju, which beats all other hands.

Seriously, for where the story comes from and where it goes, it's pretty awesome.