nice set-up, but it's a straw man argument: in other words, pre-supposing that the rationale behind a negative comment is because of the context instead of the content is a thinly veiled attempt to "head off at the pass" someone with a valid criticism; for example, if you read my commentary on a video of a broadsword vs. spear set (
http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/foru...32782&page=338), you will see that I say
nothing about the skill of the participants nor about whether it is "real" Shaolin or not and I draw no conclusions about SD in general; my comments focused soley its
technical aspects, e.g. - whether the weapons were being used in a way that, given their respective characteristics, made sense in terms of strategic combat useage; interestingly enough, the rebuttles came only in the form of comments to the effect of "oh, you can't judge SD by people whose skill level is low, etc."; again, the skill of the practitioners can be low or high, but it doesn't change the content of the form: illogical moves with a weapon are as such regardless of how well they are done, and quite frankly, most of the moves were illogical: for example, there is no range changing in the form at all: a major component of 2-person sets is to get both practitioners to learn how to use their weapon in a range that is inherently less advantageous (e.g. - spears at short range, swords at long range), and also how to get themselves out of that and back into the optimal range; Idon't care who you are or what style you do, if you don't have that aspect as part of a two-man weapons set you are wasting your time - and this is true even for basic 2-man sets, so don't pull up the "it's a beginner's 2-person" BS excuse;
BTW, there's one other thing I've noticed: every vid that does get posted, the SD supporters to a man decry it as a bad example of SD; would one of the SD authorities kindly provide a link to what they consider to be a good example?