Fencing lesson of the week: Just Keep Swimming

So yesterday took a rough start. Completely unrelated to fencing (and the SCA altogether). On my way to my second day of work, I tried to stop short when the car in front of me slammed on his breaks and I ended up hydroplaning and crashed into him. Luckily, nobody was hurt and the insurance is taking care of everything. This however, left me spiraling downwards pretty fast. For those who are unaware, I suffer from depression. I tend to go through periods of normalcy interspersed with days/weeks of being a self-loathing hermit. The SCA has helped me handle it a lot better than I used to and has given me a sense of confidence that was unknown to me previously. If there’s interest, I’ll write a post about how the SCA has helped me through some very dark times but for now let’s talk swishy-poke.

So I wanted to stay home last night (Rachael was going to Carillion after work and I didn’t really want to people (yes that is a verb). The fact that I didn’t want to go see friends and/or fence tells you just how crappy I was feeling but that’s why I decided that I needed to go. So I went and was put in charge of running footwork drills with our beginner fencers. While it could have gone a lot smoother, it seemed to go over well with everyone and I’d like to think I was able to help them progress but only time will tell. After footwork drills, I worked with Lucy on her dagger work. Her dagger finally arrived so she was itching to use it (especially itching to stab me with it). Her defenses with it are getting good though she can be a bit eager to parry with the dagger instead of her sword (I know you’re reading this, don’t forget your homework). Next step is going to be getting her to use it for offense as well. We worked to fix this by putting the swords down and fighting with just the daggers. The goal was to get her to see the dagger as an offensive weapon as well as defensive. As was pointed out to me afterwards, it looked like we were using them as mini rapiers instead of daggers but that’s just something to keep in mind and work on in the future. One of benefits of our dagger fight was it did get her to start moving more. The beauty of SCA fencing vs “olympic fencing” is that we can move in more directions than forwards and backwards. Sometimes thinking laterally is the best way to kill your opponent.

On the topic of thinking sideways and killing opponents, after working with Lucy, I got the chance to fight Owyn. Unlike every other time I’ve fought him, I actually managed to hold my own to some degree and killed him on a few occasions. I was moving, parrying, and fencing better than I ever have against him and was finally able to stop thinking and just fence him. Afterwards, he told me that I made him work too hard though I’m pretty sure this was a compliment (it’s hard to tell sometimes since Owyn likes screwing with me whenever he can). Overall, it turned into a great night that really helped everything.

So, it turns out that that forgetful little fish was onto something and not just when you’re feeling blue. Standing still just makes you an easy target for your opponent to stab you. That isn’t to say standing still will automatically get your killed or that it’s bad. We fencers strive to be the epitome of efficiency in killing our opponents with the least amount of movement/work required. At the same time, not moving at all is a good way to get dead. A fencer’s first line of defense is to parry their opponent’s shot but their second is to not be where their opponent’s sword thought they’d be. Your opponent can’t kill you if they can’t hit you and they can’t hit you if you’re out of range. At the same time, getting stuck in your head will just bring you down and when life’s got you down, what should you do? Just keep swimming.

Rule 1 of dagger: Stab them with it. Practice report 4/5-4/6

This week involved practices in Settmour Swamp and Bhakail, the two practices I work to go to every week when I can. First up was the Swamp practice on Tuesday night. I started the night off fencing the newest baron of the kingdom (congrats again by the way, your excellency), Yehuda. It’s been a while since I’ve fought him and, instead of my usual tactic of retreat until the opening presents itself (and at times make him yell at me to stand still so he can stab me), I only backed up half the time and was a lot quicker to notice openings and get in to stab him. I got some good shots in on him and he had some good shots on me and overall it was a lot of fun. Afterwards, I took a break and fenced E (the littlest fencer of not even two years of age who loves to fence with my dagger) with foam swords and lightsabers. Fencing him always brings a smile to my face as well as everyone who watches (it’s hard not to smile at such an adorable toddler fencing) but then it was back work.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been working with Lucy (Berenika) and been teaching her some tricks that have been used on me over the past couple of years so she’d learn not to fall for them too. She wanted to start learning dagger so I borrowed Malcolm’s, handed her mine and started teaching her the general basics of fighting with a dagger. She gave me a look when I told her the first rule of fighting with dagger is that you can stab your opponent with it and that the second rule was not to parry your own sword. It seems like it shouldn’t need to be said but I’ve watched so many people forget that their dagger is for offense as well as defense and I’ve seen a few people (myself included) parry their own sword when they started out. I told her to practice at home with a ruler in her off hand (her dagger hasn’t arrived yet) to get used to moving both weapons independently without binding oneself. She picked up the idea of parrying with her dagger really quickly (it turns out she’d worked with Garrick on it previously) so I moved on to teaching her about using both weapons together to “pass” the opponent’s sword out of the way and close the distance. We started sparring a bit and made sure to keep her focused on which weapon was a threat (the dagger isn’t a threat at distance and the sword is not much of a threat when you are an inch from your opponent) so I could wave my dagger all day long at her when we were at normal distance and she shouldn’t get too worried about it unless I stepped in. She took my hand a few times and had the chance to take advantage of her two blades against my one and it was really heartwarming to see her having so much fun and picking it up so quickly. Afterwards, I talked to Malcolm and told him what I’d worked with Lucy on and asked if I could help out teaching the new fencers so I could learn how to teach. I feel that part of becoming a good fencer is being a good teacher so that I can pass on what I’ve learned just like my teachers have passed on their knowledge and experience to me.

Last night, Rachael and I drove out to Bhakail (which is awesome because it’s only half an hour away so we can go every week. I was asked to dance by Morwill so we brought our daggers and got to playing. We went back and forth the whole time trading shots but neither of us connecting with a kill. Honestly, that’s the kind of fight I prefer where we get to go back and forth a bit and have to work for the kill instead of spending the whole time killing someone with one shot. He was fighting left-handed so our daggers didn’t really do much until someone closed and then we went back and forth parrying blows and having a blast. When we broke apart at one point, he mentioned that he was slightly distracted listening to the story from a fencer on the side. I laughed and breathed a sigh of relief because I was in the same boat. Does it count as a advantage/disadvantage if both fighters are equally distracted? We continue going back and forth, he took my dominant hand a few times, I took his, it was a stabby good time.

Lastly, I got to fight Melchior whom I’d only ever fought a couple of times before, the most recent being when he was a lava otter (East Kingdom’s agents of chaos) in a woods battle last November. For those who don’t know him, imagine a man six feet tall with a sword in their hand standing in the woods with their face hidden behind a mask. Now imagine that you don’t know if he’s a friend, foe, or non-combatant and anytime you ask him, he says nothing and just stares at you or starts giggling. I have to say, hearing talk at practice at first threw me off. We got to fighting and fighting we did. By the end, I was winded, poked, and had a blast. He pointed out to me that whenever he threw a shot, my immediate response was to counter-attack with my sword and hope my dagger parried his shot. Sometimes it did, sometimes I got stabbed. He suggested I work on using my sword for defense more and dagger for defense less. I’m going to take his advice and work with single more so I can focus on my sword parrying. On the one hand, I do need to use my sword more to parry and my dagger to attack and I’ll definitely work on it, but on the other, I realized that I was fighting more aggressively than I used to which is something I’ve been working on. It’s a step in the right direction and shined some light on what another step should be down the road and all with the fun of stabbing and getting stabbed.

As I told Lucy and every new fencer I work with, in a fight it’s never about winning or losing. It’s about learning and having fun. Whether you killed them or they killed you, everyone can learn something from their opponent and as long as you have fun doing it, you already won. Yeah, it sounds like something we tell kids in little league but this is a hobby and what good is having a hobby if you can’t have fun with it? More to come soon. Until then, keep stabbing, keep learning, and keep having fun.

-Ciaran Ua Meic Thire

Blue Tiger of the East- Mudthaw 2016

This is my first post on here so let’s see how this goes. Last weekend was another of many firsts for me; it was the first event I was a deputy autocrat (supervisor) an event under the eye of Master Alexander and the first time I had entered an Arts and Sciences (A&S).

Now, onto the arts. As many people may know, I sometimes do cut paper art but never in the period correct style. The style I tended to do was more around using multiple sheets of paper of different colors to create images like the ones above (the templar knight, Odin and Fenrir based on a Viking stone carving, and a horse triskelion as the symbol of the Celtic goddess, Epona). I learned this style back in high school and got into doing it in college when I got bored in my dorm room. Several people in the SCA told me that I should look into doing some pieces for A&S but I never felt like I could because 1) it was a completely different style, 2) I didn’t think I was good enough to do it in the period style, and 3) I never could find any information or extant pieces. The Chinese who had originally created the cut paper art could do intricate works of art and had been doing so since the creation of paper. I started looking into paper cutting history but couldn’t find a site that had credible information and was in English. I tried looking for the Chinese term for paper cut art (jian zhi) but it turns out that Jianzhi is also a Chinese name. Eventually, I checked wikipedia and checked their sources. I hit the jackpot and found a research paper that led me down the rabbit hole that is A&S.

Now filled with a new found excitement for the art I had been working on for years, I decided to do a piece for Mudthaw representing the thawing of the mud. I looked into Chinese mythology and found out that there are five celestial tigers, one for each season, and the last to oversee them all. I took this and ran and found that the blue tiger represented Spring and the earth element so I decided to go with this. Most traditional jian zhi is done on red paper because it represents good luck and prosperity but I couldn’t really do a blue tiger in red especially because the red tiger represented fire and summer. I was so excited that I completely overlooked the fact that the blue tiger represents the east kingdom as well (ok, it’s a blue tyger, not a blue tiger but still). I spent some time finding the perfect piece to create and found one from an amazing artist with ALS who made jian zhi by holding the knife in his hand and pressing his face to the end of the knife to make the cuts. I wanted to do the artist justice and used his piece as inspiration to create the blue tiger that I went on to enter. As I cut away the pieces, the image of the tiger started to come through and I started getting really excited as the tiger took shape. It has become one of my favorite pieces of all time. I finished the piece and set it aside so I could focus on smoothing over the remaining details of the event.

The day of the event was finally upon us and Rachael agreed to set up my piece as part of the display for the event. I left a small book and a pen next to the piece so anyone who wanted to could leave comments. When the event was over and I collected my piece and book. I could not believe the feedback I had received and had never expected people to react to it as well as they had. I can’t wait to figure out my next piece!

-Ciaran Ua Meic Thire