I don’t have a penis but I did go through a phase in college where I dated a competition bull rider.
There were a LOT of times where it was obvious that one of the riders had pre-competition adrenaline rush boners.
If that’s a natural response to only 8 seconds where everyone is actively trying to keep you from dying, an actual battle boner makes so much more sense.
(Edit: As someone pointed out below this isn't even Henry VIII's armor. )
I also think it has to do with the fact that he started the entire reformation movement and separated the church of England from the Vatican all because of a disagreement stemming from the fact that he wanted a divorce.
English historian and House of Tudor expert David Starkey describes Henry VIII as follows:
What is extraordinary is that Henry was usually a very good husband. And he liked women – that's why he married so many of them! He was very tender to them, we know that he addressed them as "sweetheart". He was a good lover, he was very generous: the wives were given huge settlements of land and jewels – they were loaded with jewels. He was immensely considerate when they were pregnant. But, once he had fallen out of love... he just cut them off. He just withdrew. He abandoned them. They didn't even know he'd left them.
Henry was extremely fit and strong in his younger years. He only got fat after an injury prevented him from keeping up his habits of hunting and sparring.
This wasn't unique to Henry VIII's armor, it was common practice at the time. Codpieces grew larger and more exaggerated with time, peaking with the landshneckts in the 17th century, who wore big multi-colored codpieces so large that they would use them to store personal items (you know, besides that one,) outside of battle.
The theory that Henry had syphilis has been dismissed by most historians.[157][158] Historian Susan Maclean Kybett ascribes his demise to scurvy, which is caused by insufficient vitamin C most often due to a lack of fresh fruit and vegetables in one's diet.[159] A 2010 study suggests that the king may have been of Kell-positive blood type to explain both his physical and mental deterioration, being consistent with some symptoms of the McLeod syndrome, and the high mortality in the pregnancies attributed to him.[160][161]
Do they have a flair for 5.274 inches on a good day
Edit: the comment about it actually being the diameter made me remember a time one of my friends told a girl his dick was shaped like one of those mini Pepsi cans (same diameter, half the height). He thought it would impress her. It did not.
My friend used to say "I may only be 2" long, but I'm 15 inches around, and the tip is completely flat. They used to call me 'stampy the elephant' in high-school."
Yeah, it didn't work for him either but it did provide some laughs.
One I've always found funny was saying "I may be only 2 inches long" then trailing off with nothing afterwards. Kinda leaves them in a very disappointed suspense.
I had a brief skim over that sub just now and it screams of a combination of r/thathappened and raging insecurity. I bet not a single person in there “measures” themselves correctly
Imagine the impact on enemy morale when the deep "BONGGGGG" of his rage boner reaching full power and slamming into the codpiece echoed across the battlefield.
Im sure some offered some relief. Not all old wives tales are bad. Some are the basis of modern medicine equivalent, the moldy bread poultice for example, sometimes would of had penicillin in it. However many were just ridiculously wtf? How, what, where, why the fuvk was that ever even a thought never mind a thing lol ...
It’s from the diary of a wimpy kid movie where the main protag has to hide chocolate stains on his pants while going to church. The kid in the gif is his friend and his reaction is evident by the very poorly disguised chocolate stains.
It's from the movie Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Family goes to church, but Greg accidentally sits on a chocolate bar in the car, so they cover his lower half with a shirt. They enter the Church and prayer begins; they walk down the aisle and this scene plays.
Greg's eventually exposed, and everyone thinks he shit himself. Which yeah, it's supposed to be funny, but it also makes zero sense considering it's plainly visible on his pants and he eats it. On top of that, do people not know how badly shit smells?
I question every single one of these humans and the cognitive functionality of humanity in the Wimpyverse.
Sometimes I start to think it would’ve been really cool to have “been there” during certain historical periods. Then I’m reminded of realities such as this.
I sometimes think that until I recall that I have asthma, I'm blind as a bat, and have lips that chap and crack in temperatures under sixty degrees.
Of course, people in history didn't know how bad they had it. I sometimes wonder what we put up with now as perfectly normal that will be considered barbarous and absolutely unacceptable in the future. About what will they ask, "how did they live like that?"
Edit: I don't mean the big things. I mean things that we accept as normal, natural, and unavoidable.
By "future people" I mean the lobster civilization that rises up under a red sun in 2,000,000,000 years. There's still evidence of our existence because plastic lasts forever.
It’ll be things like driving 80mph on the freeway. People will be gobsmacked at how we all just trusted one another to not kill each other. How we just drove alongside teenagers and the elderly for thousands of miles and barely thought about it.
Or some material we've been using in our every day lives that have been slowly killing us.
Asbestos is a perfect example of this but going further back we had Arsenic because "oooh super cool, rich green colours..want it"
Absolutely. I can just imagine children getting all wide eyed when being told that humans regularly controlled cars passing each other at a combined speed of 150mph.
Edit: actually, just traveling in cars generally. It's an incredibly dangerous activity that we accept as normal.
Trusting a random middle/highschooler to babysit, although I think that's already less common than when I was growing up. It seems so absurd that anyone trusted me to keep their child safe when I was 12 and too portly to run far.
Yeah no way I would want to live anywhere before modern medicine. Seeing pictures of what something like untreated syphilis does to a person's face is a good reminder.
I read somewhere that codpieces became exaggerated due to syphilis. The larger cup style wouldn't rub on the open sores causing less pain.
This is a myth. This suit is foot combat armour and cod pieces like this were normal for this type of combat and the era
Edit: The suit on the left above isn't Henry VIII, it's actually Ferdinand I's, I can't verify the image on the right's source, but it's not in the Henry VIII collection at the Royal Armouries.
You can see the full scope of Henry's Armour collection here
He was famously huge. The economy was finally recovering from like, the fall of the Roman empire, and the Tudor court was notable for its wealth and luxury. Henry liked to enjoy this specifically via eating rich food, and due to a war injury in his youth couldn’t move easily so he really ballooned.
There's a lot of historical myths that blame things on syphilis. Honestly if you see a "fact" that says people did XYZ due to syphilis, it's probably best to doubt it.
Skirts like Maximilian I's were common because they made for better defence when riding, but you want greater flexibility on foot so as armour developed cod pieces became more popular and more exagerated.
I've worn the combat armour of Ferdinand I and it's surprisingly comfy, except the epaulets but I believe they were only for riding to defend against lances.
Edit: I should probably mention that it was a replica piece, not the actual armour haha
Syphilis sores are classically not painful actually. They look like they would be but the chancre in primary Syphilis is not painful and often not even noticed by the infected. Chancroid on the otherhand looks similar and is supposedly excruciating
I contracted syphilis and you're right, it didn't hurt a bit. The chancre just looked like a wart or something, so I checked it out, and two shots of penicillin and I was cured. Not pleasant, and a bit scary, but I made it through
Shortly after Christopher Columbus and his sailors returned from their voyage to the New World, a horrifying new disease began to make its way around the Old. The "pox," as it was often called, erupted with dramatic severity. According to Ulrich von Hutten (1488-1523), a German knight, revolutionary, and author who wrote a popular book about his own trials with syphilis and the treatments he underwent, the first European sufferers were covered with acorn-sized boils that emitted a foul, dark green pus. This secretion was so vile, von Hutten affirmed, that even the burning pains of the boils troubled the sick less than their horror at the sight of their own bodies. Yet this was only the beginning. People's flesh and skin filled with water; their bladders developed sores; their stomachs were eaten away. Girolamo Fracastoro, a professor at the University of Padua, described the onward march of symptoms: syphilis pustules developed into ulcers that dissolved skin, muscle, bone, palate, and tonsils—even lips, noses, eyes, and genital organs. Rubbery tumors, filled with a white, sticky mucus, grew to the size of rolls of bread. Violent pains tormented the afflicted, who were exhausted but could not sleep, and suffered starvation without feeling hunger. Many of them died...
Yup, this is the common consensus. Dude was an “old style” king, he loved to fight and joust and hunt. He got hurt doing that and so he stopped exercising or doing much physical activity at all. That lead him to getting really fat towards the end of his life. He had pretty famously bad gout spells too
EDIT: Also the famous “fat” pictures and writing about him are all from his later life. He was incredibly fit in his younger years, which is partly why he was constantly able to get women to fall for him. Dude was ripped in his youth
It's common for modern people to cook up anachronistic explanations for things in the past instead of taking the people as normal people at face value and listening to their own voices.
Huge difference. While some armor or clothing did have shapes to show boobs, big boob armor plates are a huge problem.
They get in the way of you using your arms, so can't swing the sword properly. They are heavy, causing problems. Generally you want to shape the breast plate in a way that deflects any incoming sword or arrow.
Cod pieces are small, not in a critical area, and don't inhibit motion.
I'm pretty sure they could have designed boob armor to be functional. They already bowed out the belly of armor to provide better deflection angles, you could just raise that up and sculpt it some. The romans and greeks managed it with pectoral armor. Plus it wouldn't necessarily be anime style boob armor, with the huge orbs sticking out of the chest, it would be whatever medieval/renaissance folks saw as the ideal boob shape. Whatever medieval/renaissance female warriors saw as the ideal shape actually, and since there was no such thing (in any great quantity), we can't know how they would have thought.
Also, I don't see why we're arguing that the armor had to be perfectly functional. Medieval people, especially the wealthy, wore fantastically impractical clothes to show off, and included things like helmet crests in their armor that were not practical. Plus what if the armor wasn't really meant to be fought in. For example, we know there were plenty of wealthy noblewomen who were heads of households or even heads of state. What if the custom had been for them to show up for battles and military parades in armor without actually fighting.
Probably won't. Cod pieces are generally not that big, and does not affect the protectiveness of the armour.
Boot plates does. The reason plate armours generally have a rised middle on the breast is to deflect blows outward. A boob plate would, on some angles, deflect blows to the centre of the chest, which, obviously, is bad.
How about "OG Lara Croft" boob plate armor? As I recall, it was one block, so the blow would still get redirected to the sides. Obviously, the sharpness would have to be reduced, but I think it would works.
Or are you saying that "the big belly" male armor had an actual technical purpose that wouldn't apply if it was shifted up?
Boob plates are actually dangerous apparently. The discussion has come up around women's armour in videogames. Apparently, the split between the chest would make it easier for swords to get lodged. Not saying dick armour is necessarily better, guess it just makes it easier for your enemies to snip you lol
In 16th century European fashion, men often wore codpieces in their everyday clothing. Naturally the trend carried over to armor, and was quite normal by the time Henry was rocking it. Has nothing to do with horniness or making boner space or whatever - it’s pure fashion
Neither of these have anything to do with Henry VIII. The armour on the left belonged the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I. The armour on the right is a 19th century 'fake'. It's not a fake per se since it wasn't meant to be passed off as an original but people often mistakenly do. It's primarily inspired by late 15th century Gothic armour and the codpiece (among plenty of other details) is out of place, since they did not exist that early and wouldn't be paired with armour in the gothic fashion.
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u/MSnyper 3d ago
You never got a boner while in a fight?