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thanateWeek 1 I spent setting up camp, hanging out in a hammock, taking some classes, wandering around the merchants and buying rather little (except the hundred dollar huge-lots-of-hem belly dance skirt that I promptly wore to fence in...) and sewing colorful patches on various pieces of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
troyfish's fencing armor. (I think more people should wear patched clothing... ok, never mind that most of the fencers are trying to look all upper class and respectable...) And hanging out with Claire/Ragnhild and my 3-year-old fan club Ranga.
Week 2 (starting on Saturday) I headed out onto the rapier field. My goal was more or less to sort out most of the people that other people keep talking about, and preferably fight as many of them as possible. I think all in all I did pretty well-- I have faces for most if not all the names that I remembered coming in, and may have retained more than half of the new people I got introduced to... As for fighting, while there are several people who I realized ought to have been on my amorphous list of pick-up fights but weren't because they barely got out to the rapier field & were always busy when they did, I did get most of the people who were on my list. (and people got added to the list for various reasons... because Troy said I ought to fight them, because Nataliia said I ought to fight them, because they were good, because I liked their armor...) And of those I didn't get, all but two are atlantian, and mostly local...
So, for the moment I've missed Max (of the middle kingdom, the tall thin one with the fabulous landsknecht... I noticed him last year for the hat with feathers all around it, but had no idea he fenced) and the girl with the horse tail on her fencing mask, who I never managed to talk to, so I don't know what her name was or where she's from (I decided last year that the only reason I'd ever be tempted to fight heavy would be to make armor, which would probably include a horse tail helmet...)
Within kingdom I still have to track downccunning who spent too much time marshalling and not enough fighting, Melchior (who broke himself and had to go home early-- much more of that and someone will have to give him a new scarf or something-- though admittedly I have actually fought him once before), and Vortigern-- why didn't anybody tell me there was somebody named Vortigern in the kingdom? That is way cool!-- all three of whom are more or less distant southern people. And then I've got Giacomo, Kynny, maybe Alan (who I was thinking of subing in when Giacomo went home early...), Arghylle, Jack, and sort of Alice (which is to say I didn't feel the need to fight her at pennsic, but she still owes me a pick-up from... I think october, which is the last time we overlapped at a practice)... so in theory I could get over being lazy and get out to a Lochmere pratice and about halve the list here. Assuming I picked the right week when people showed up, that is.
Right, so most of my week was pick-ups... I did two tournaments (the atlantian free scholars' one, and the aethelmearc novice) in which I did ok but not that well, four of the five large melees (battle of Tortuga, which is not a very... well balanced scenario, the fort battle and the two war points (town & woods)), and the five-man. I'm still not up to one-touch fighting (I should probably do more bear pits or something), though I'm getting slightly better, I think mainly because I warm up on individual people by fighting them, & still don't process either watching or being told what to do against someone well enough to use it yet. But I begin to see that there is hope of my eventually getting there. We shall see...
As for melees, again, I'm still working up to it being both fun and worthwhile-- I'm getting better at the difference in focus thing (which is really just a matter of doing more of it, of course-- and I wonder if some people, likedominyk, have a head start at these things from having played team sports of the sort that require keeping track of where everyone else on the field is, and I'm just rather bad at that because I'm trying to learn it all at once, plus the differences in fencing with & against a group) But I got my first (memorable, at least) clean kill in a melee, and my first tidy DFB... and someday, when Troy says "go around that line and DFB them" I'll already know what line he's talking about & probably be heading that direction, rather than having to look around for twenty seconds trying to sort out where everyone is, and then get seen and/or cut off before I get there. One can always hope, anyway.
The five man was less of a good thing-- there were stupid issues with armor first getting there & then getting inspected, and by the time I got through with that I'd missed getting to fight Arghylle (who I turned to and said "Why have I not fought you?" and he actually knew what my name was, despite that I'm fairly sure we were never formally introduced-- I was kind of impressed...) and all I really wanted to do was go someplace cool and take a nap. But the rest of my team had a good time, and I perked up a bit by the end of the day (and greatly enjoyed watching Troy's five-man team beat up on their pool-- they did a beautiful job...) and even remembered to run sideways when faced with a front of four opponents who'd just wiped out the rest of my teammates... I was somewhat proud of myself, as I'm really rather bad about remembering sideways as an option once things speed up.
But by thursday I was back on again, and probably did some of the best fighting I've ever done once people started drifting out of the champions' tourney and doing pick-ups on the side. Which means I missed the lady's tourney, which I was thinking of playing in, but I passed on Ragnhild's "prize recycling" (from the early period A&S competiton at Prechain) to Ihsan, who also missed the tourney, and I'm quite sure I had a whole lot more fun & benefit out of doing pick-ups.
So anyway, cool stuff:
*fighting Orlando (thursday), who does the most elegant little dance steps of footwork, all quick and light, and I totally fell into mirroring her... it's not something that would work (for me, at least) against most people, but with someone else who has that style of mobility it was fabulous.
*the continuum (also thursday) of fighting Stephanie (of ansteorra, maybe?... another excellent landsknecht, in a totally different rendition than the others I've seen), Orlando, and then Talib (sp??-- who also had fabulous armor in a very italian ren sort of way-- all leather in alternating black & brown)... the first two make very tidy small disengages, which I was catching virtually every time with my dagger as they attacked, while Talib had much larger movements and made me work for my parries.
*watching Vortigern (tuesday afternoon, in the eastern tournament I didn't feel quite up to entering) who mostly used a longsword, which was cool, but even better was the bout where somebody spoiled his fun & made him use epee... he had the most elegant light grip to the point of being reminiscent of a modern foilist with spanish grip. So pretty. :) (and his lady brought him cookies, which he shared...)
*fighting Ricardo (thursday)... sort of half-way between lesson and fight, but one of the most entertaining fencing experiences ever. He'd apologized profusely to me on Saturday for hitting me too hard in the Tortuga battle (which he didn't, although this is me and it would have been ok anyway) and spent most of the fight doing running commentary with a friend of his who was MITing (Julian, or some varriation of that, who just had knee surgery, so is off the field for a while) and did a bunch of "figure out how to deal with this" things in a quite tasteful (I know, odd word to use about Ricardo...) way.
*conversationg during my fight with Moira (friday)-- her: you're not defending your low lines. me: I know, I'm bad at that. her: then I'll keep attacking them until you do. me: good. her: good.
*fighting Gunnie (monday? tuesday?) who did a good balance of fight and conversation, and kept ticking at me.
*last fight of the day thurs, with Pascual, where we were both falling down tired, to the point where I was hitting him two times out of three.
*Arnaz's metaphor (in Troy's class on proper winning mindset) about fencing genuinely being like those computer games where you can level up and get skill points and stuff. Which was going through my head for the rest of the week, as I gathered xp...
*giving Alain a hard time about smashing up my finger with his quillion (it-- the finger-- didn't fall off, as I kept trying to suggest it would, though I can't say I'm actually disappointed by that)
*I was seeing significantly fewer shots that were obviously there and people weren't taking against me... of course the real test will be next time I fight Kenji, to see whether he's still holding back things that seem obvious even to me but I don't defend against because he's being nice to me. :)
*somewhere around thursday mid-afternoon I went through a movement change, and all of a sudden started sinking into a much lower guard, and occasionally even dropping down to a knee to close more quickly. Which is weird, but seemed to be working out pretty well... I'll have to see if this continues, or if it's just a consequence of the limbering up from fighting for a week straight.
*I don't remember any fights where I didn't enjoy myself. And I'm seeing stuff better (gradually, to be sure, but none the less, I have a clearer idea of what's going on, slightly better instant replay, and less need for it)
There's probably stuff I'm forgetting here, but that's a lot of it. And if for some reason you've actually read through this whole thing, you deserve a prize. :) dunno what, though...
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And then there were the social bits...
Known World Fencing Party on Sunday night... I got there around 10 (after a stop in at Carlos's birthday party), got sucked into the Atlantian huddle, broke away to get water, and got Simona, Dante and then Constanza in succession to introduce me to the foreigners. Which worked out pretty well, although I am still of the opinion that Troy owes me for not showing up until midnight, by which point everyone had gone off to bed before the town battle the next morning, thus leaving all the introducing to other people...
So as I mentioned in the above, wednesday was a bit... low energy and less fun than it should have been. And I was feeling better by evening, and went out towards the shopping frenzy with a very minor mission and a couple things I was thinking about looking for, and got caught by a conversation I didn't entirely need to have at that point (which is to say, it was good to have had, as it clarified for me where someone else was coming from and... well, I think said person placed me in a mental niche I wouldn't agree with, but it may have helped her, so whatever...) In any case, I was a little more tired than I needed to be to deal with that, and there was an implication (which turned out not to be true, so it's ok) that I didn't pick up on consciously until it woke me up after I'd been asleep for about an hour and a half and then couldn't get back to sleep once I realized what had been bothering me all evening...
So by the time I got back out to the shopping options, I had one firm mission, shopping-wise, (which made me feel better, and turned out to be a very good thing to have done) and no particular interest or inspiration for further purchaces once I'd finished. And I drifted around aimlessly with the vague notion of getting something forheuchera, and being vaguely tired and depressed, and people I knew kept walking by me without noticing I was there. Anyway, after Melchior walked by and totally didn't recongize me either (he was about the third one, I think) I made the conscious decision that it was time to be sociable, and ran after him and tugged on his scarf until he noticed me-- and then I just had to keep reminding him what my name was all night. :) Anyway, we were joined by Gunnie (who was missing a button-- shocking and scandalous!), and wandered slightly less aimlessly (as they both had things they still wanted to look at and possibly get) and much fun was had by all. We didn't have to call EMS for Gunnie, and Melchior asked if I wanted to marry him because I thought the monkey skulls were cute. :)
Thursday night Ragnhild, Ranga and I gate crashed the Casa Bardici's Hoity Toity party (invitation only) as caterers with a quite nice bowl with trail mix, two loaves of garlic bread and a bowl of plain spaghetti noodles... We didn't even have to break out the story about Petunia the dancing bear, who had been in an unfortunate accident while wrestling Ranga and thus would not be performing with me for the evening. (He-- Petunia, that is-- will not be siring any more cubs, we're sorry to say... and it just got worse, the more Ragnhild got going) Anyway, we set out our spaghetti on the back of the table, and wandered around the casa (as we'd gotten there terribly early), which is a very impressive set-up, admired the subtleties, had some punch, and then someone mentioned to Ranga that there would be a fire eater and he got it into his head that the fire eater was terribly dangerous (either going to eat up all the light, or maybe going to eat him up) and had to be taken home.
Now in the mean time, the travelling gnome turned up at the party-- that same travelling gnome that we gave a celtic makeover to last year, and I was going to take up to Fallen From Grace when it disappeared entirely... Anyway, I kidnapped him and carried him up to FFG (only to discover that dinner on friday, to which I had been invited, had been cancelled, because they were packing to leave) where he was duly photographed with the camp gnome, and we wrote a brief set of adventures in his travel log. Then I smuggled him back into the casa, which was full of royal types I hadn't met, and no fire eating... I listened to the second half of a story by "Roving Gypsy Theater" (a couple of girls with a rather ren faire street act, which was quite good), wandered around a bit, and then rescued the pasta bowl and took it back to Dalhraidia.
Later on there were brief adventures with the usual crew of locals plus Moira (for cultural diversity credit? I never quite pointed out that we ought to have been hanging around with more people we don't get to see all the time), including an encounter with the roving pirate party which had settled in at Ravenspittle where Ricardo was stagemanaging skivvie fishing. Hm... perhaps for next year I need better ragamuffin bloomers ("My hair ribbons match my bloomers, see?")...
----Also, for those of you with the long friends lists (er, Troy?)-- who of these people I just met all week is on LJ, that I don't know about?---
Ok, end disturbingly long entry. Perhaps I will go practice point control by stabbing my light pull. Or even actually unpack or something...
troyfish's fencing armor. (I think more people should wear patched clothing... ok, never mind that most of the fencers are trying to look all upper class and respectable...) And hanging out with Claire/Ragnhild and my 3-year-old fan club Ranga. Week 2 (starting on Saturday) I headed out onto the rapier field. My goal was more or less to sort out most of the people that other people keep talking about, and preferably fight as many of them as possible. I think all in all I did pretty well-- I have faces for most if not all the names that I remembered coming in, and may have retained more than half of the new people I got introduced to... As for fighting, while there are several people who I realized ought to have been on my amorphous list of pick-up fights but weren't because they barely got out to the rapier field & were always busy when they did, I did get most of the people who were on my list. (and people got added to the list for various reasons... because Troy said I ought to fight them, because Nataliia said I ought to fight them, because they were good, because I liked their armor...) And of those I didn't get, all but two are atlantian, and mostly local...
So, for the moment I've missed Max (of the middle kingdom, the tall thin one with the fabulous landsknecht... I noticed him last year for the hat with feathers all around it, but had no idea he fenced) and the girl with the horse tail on her fencing mask, who I never managed to talk to, so I don't know what her name was or where she's from (I decided last year that the only reason I'd ever be tempted to fight heavy would be to make armor, which would probably include a horse tail helmet...)
Within kingdom I still have to track down
ccunning who spent too much time marshalling and not enough fighting, Melchior (who broke himself and had to go home early-- much more of that and someone will have to give him a new scarf or something-- though admittedly I have actually fought him once before), and Vortigern-- why didn't anybody tell me there was somebody named Vortigern in the kingdom? That is way cool!-- all three of whom are more or less distant southern people. And then I've got Giacomo, Kynny, maybe Alan (who I was thinking of subing in when Giacomo went home early...), Arghylle, Jack, and sort of Alice (which is to say I didn't feel the need to fight her at pennsic, but she still owes me a pick-up from... I think october, which is the last time we overlapped at a practice)... so in theory I could get over being lazy and get out to a Lochmere pratice and about halve the list here. Assuming I picked the right week when people showed up, that is. Right, so most of my week was pick-ups... I did two tournaments (the atlantian free scholars' one, and the aethelmearc novice) in which I did ok but not that well, four of the five large melees (battle of Tortuga, which is not a very... well balanced scenario, the fort battle and the two war points (town & woods)), and the five-man. I'm still not up to one-touch fighting (I should probably do more bear pits or something), though I'm getting slightly better, I think mainly because I warm up on individual people by fighting them, & still don't process either watching or being told what to do against someone well enough to use it yet. But I begin to see that there is hope of my eventually getting there. We shall see...
As for melees, again, I'm still working up to it being both fun and worthwhile-- I'm getting better at the difference in focus thing (which is really just a matter of doing more of it, of course-- and I wonder if some people, like
dominyk, have a head start at these things from having played team sports of the sort that require keeping track of where everyone else on the field is, and I'm just rather bad at that because I'm trying to learn it all at once, plus the differences in fencing with & against a group) But I got my first (memorable, at least) clean kill in a melee, and my first tidy DFB... and someday, when Troy says "go around that line and DFB them" I'll already know what line he's talking about & probably be heading that direction, rather than having to look around for twenty seconds trying to sort out where everyone is, and then get seen and/or cut off before I get there. One can always hope, anyway.The five man was less of a good thing-- there were stupid issues with armor first getting there & then getting inspected, and by the time I got through with that I'd missed getting to fight Arghylle (who I turned to and said "Why have I not fought you?" and he actually knew what my name was, despite that I'm fairly sure we were never formally introduced-- I was kind of impressed...) and all I really wanted to do was go someplace cool and take a nap. But the rest of my team had a good time, and I perked up a bit by the end of the day (and greatly enjoyed watching Troy's five-man team beat up on their pool-- they did a beautiful job...) and even remembered to run sideways when faced with a front of four opponents who'd just wiped out the rest of my teammates... I was somewhat proud of myself, as I'm really rather bad about remembering sideways as an option once things speed up.
But by thursday I was back on again, and probably did some of the best fighting I've ever done once people started drifting out of the champions' tourney and doing pick-ups on the side. Which means I missed the lady's tourney, which I was thinking of playing in, but I passed on Ragnhild's "prize recycling" (from the early period A&S competiton at Prechain) to Ihsan, who also missed the tourney, and I'm quite sure I had a whole lot more fun & benefit out of doing pick-ups.
So anyway, cool stuff:
*fighting Orlando (thursday), who does the most elegant little dance steps of footwork, all quick and light, and I totally fell into mirroring her... it's not something that would work (for me, at least) against most people, but with someone else who has that style of mobility it was fabulous.
*the continuum (also thursday) of fighting Stephanie (of ansteorra, maybe?... another excellent landsknecht, in a totally different rendition than the others I've seen), Orlando, and then Talib (sp??-- who also had fabulous armor in a very italian ren sort of way-- all leather in alternating black & brown)... the first two make very tidy small disengages, which I was catching virtually every time with my dagger as they attacked, while Talib had much larger movements and made me work for my parries.
*watching Vortigern (tuesday afternoon, in the eastern tournament I didn't feel quite up to entering) who mostly used a longsword, which was cool, but even better was the bout where somebody spoiled his fun & made him use epee... he had the most elegant light grip to the point of being reminiscent of a modern foilist with spanish grip. So pretty. :) (and his lady brought him cookies, which he shared...)
*fighting Ricardo (thursday)... sort of half-way between lesson and fight, but one of the most entertaining fencing experiences ever. He'd apologized profusely to me on Saturday for hitting me too hard in the Tortuga battle (which he didn't, although this is me and it would have been ok anyway) and spent most of the fight doing running commentary with a friend of his who was MITing (Julian, or some varriation of that, who just had knee surgery, so is off the field for a while) and did a bunch of "figure out how to deal with this" things in a quite tasteful (I know, odd word to use about Ricardo...) way.
*conversationg during my fight with Moira (friday)-- her: you're not defending your low lines. me: I know, I'm bad at that. her: then I'll keep attacking them until you do. me: good. her: good.
*fighting Gunnie (monday? tuesday?) who did a good balance of fight and conversation, and kept ticking at me.
*last fight of the day thurs, with Pascual, where we were both falling down tired, to the point where I was hitting him two times out of three.
*Arnaz's metaphor (in Troy's class on proper winning mindset) about fencing genuinely being like those computer games where you can level up and get skill points and stuff. Which was going through my head for the rest of the week, as I gathered xp...
*giving Alain a hard time about smashing up my finger with his quillion (it-- the finger-- didn't fall off, as I kept trying to suggest it would, though I can't say I'm actually disappointed by that)
*I was seeing significantly fewer shots that were obviously there and people weren't taking against me... of course the real test will be next time I fight Kenji, to see whether he's still holding back things that seem obvious even to me but I don't defend against because he's being nice to me. :)
*somewhere around thursday mid-afternoon I went through a movement change, and all of a sudden started sinking into a much lower guard, and occasionally even dropping down to a knee to close more quickly. Which is weird, but seemed to be working out pretty well... I'll have to see if this continues, or if it's just a consequence of the limbering up from fighting for a week straight.
*I don't remember any fights where I didn't enjoy myself. And I'm seeing stuff better (gradually, to be sure, but none the less, I have a clearer idea of what's going on, slightly better instant replay, and less need for it)
There's probably stuff I'm forgetting here, but that's a lot of it. And if for some reason you've actually read through this whole thing, you deserve a prize. :) dunno what, though...
----------
And then there were the social bits...
Known World Fencing Party on Sunday night... I got there around 10 (after a stop in at Carlos's birthday party), got sucked into the Atlantian huddle, broke away to get water, and got Simona, Dante and then Constanza in succession to introduce me to the foreigners. Which worked out pretty well, although I am still of the opinion that Troy owes me for not showing up until midnight, by which point everyone had gone off to bed before the town battle the next morning, thus leaving all the introducing to other people...
So as I mentioned in the above, wednesday was a bit... low energy and less fun than it should have been. And I was feeling better by evening, and went out towards the shopping frenzy with a very minor mission and a couple things I was thinking about looking for, and got caught by a conversation I didn't entirely need to have at that point (which is to say, it was good to have had, as it clarified for me where someone else was coming from and... well, I think said person placed me in a mental niche I wouldn't agree with, but it may have helped her, so whatever...) In any case, I was a little more tired than I needed to be to deal with that, and there was an implication (which turned out not to be true, so it's ok) that I didn't pick up on consciously until it woke me up after I'd been asleep for about an hour and a half and then couldn't get back to sleep once I realized what had been bothering me all evening...
So by the time I got back out to the shopping options, I had one firm mission, shopping-wise, (which made me feel better, and turned out to be a very good thing to have done) and no particular interest or inspiration for further purchaces once I'd finished. And I drifted around aimlessly with the vague notion of getting something for
heuchera, and being vaguely tired and depressed, and people I knew kept walking by me without noticing I was there. Anyway, after Melchior walked by and totally didn't recongize me either (he was about the third one, I think) I made the conscious decision that it was time to be sociable, and ran after him and tugged on his scarf until he noticed me-- and then I just had to keep reminding him what my name was all night. :) Anyway, we were joined by Gunnie (who was missing a button-- shocking and scandalous!), and wandered slightly less aimlessly (as they both had things they still wanted to look at and possibly get) and much fun was had by all. We didn't have to call EMS for Gunnie, and Melchior asked if I wanted to marry him because I thought the monkey skulls were cute. :) Thursday night Ragnhild, Ranga and I gate crashed the Casa Bardici's Hoity Toity party (invitation only) as caterers with a quite nice bowl with trail mix, two loaves of garlic bread and a bowl of plain spaghetti noodles... We didn't even have to break out the story about Petunia the dancing bear, who had been in an unfortunate accident while wrestling Ranga and thus would not be performing with me for the evening. (He-- Petunia, that is-- will not be siring any more cubs, we're sorry to say... and it just got worse, the more Ragnhild got going) Anyway, we set out our spaghetti on the back of the table, and wandered around the casa (as we'd gotten there terribly early), which is a very impressive set-up, admired the subtleties, had some punch, and then someone mentioned to Ranga that there would be a fire eater and he got it into his head that the fire eater was terribly dangerous (either going to eat up all the light, or maybe going to eat him up) and had to be taken home.
Now in the mean time, the travelling gnome turned up at the party-- that same travelling gnome that we gave a celtic makeover to last year, and I was going to take up to Fallen From Grace when it disappeared entirely... Anyway, I kidnapped him and carried him up to FFG (only to discover that dinner on friday, to which I had been invited, had been cancelled, because they were packing to leave) where he was duly photographed with the camp gnome, and we wrote a brief set of adventures in his travel log. Then I smuggled him back into the casa, which was full of royal types I hadn't met, and no fire eating... I listened to the second half of a story by "Roving Gypsy Theater" (a couple of girls with a rather ren faire street act, which was quite good), wandered around a bit, and then rescued the pasta bowl and took it back to Dalhraidia.
Later on there were brief adventures with the usual crew of locals plus Moira (for cultural diversity credit? I never quite pointed out that we ought to have been hanging around with more people we don't get to see all the time), including an encounter with the roving pirate party which had settled in at Ravenspittle where Ricardo was stagemanaging skivvie fishing. Hm... perhaps for next year I need better ragamuffin bloomers ("My hair ribbons match my bloomers, see?")...
----Also, for those of you with the long friends lists (er, Troy?)-- who of these people I just met all week is on LJ, that I don't know about?---
Ok, end disturbingly long entry. Perhaps I will go practice point control by stabbing my light pull. Or even actually unpack or something...