Hey guys. I'm not sure if this is the best place to field this discussion, if there's a better one let me know and I'll delete and repost there!
I'll do my best to explain.
Is there a place to view something akin to TV tropes, but more history based in comparison to fantasy? So something where you can see where popular aspects of the fantasy genre originated from. Maybe tropes isn't a good word.
Stuff that might be covered could be where the idea of "paladins" came from, why the undead are a popular enemy, the origins of some of the things you see in magic (if it came from a historical place.)
Some of these questions have been covered here, but I was thinking more of a place to easily find the information in the context of fantasy origins (because let's face it, the reddit search isn't amazing).
it might be worth x-posting this one to /r/AskLiteraryStudies for their input
This would be great but I think it does not exist. I too would like to know who managed to first confuse longswords with side-swords, or invent nonsense words like "plate mail".
The goods news is that in the recent decades a community called Historical European Martial Arts or Western Martial Arts emerged who active practice swordfighting as a combat sport based on authentic resources. Sooner or later fantasy authors will listen. Until that at least I can show you a video how authentic longsword fighting looked like (at least in the Liechtenauer fencing tradition). Yeah, this is roughly how things should look like in Game of Thrones if they wanted to make it historically authentic.