My Rapier State of Mind

I hit a wall.

We all hit those walls.

You reach a point in anything you do where you look at it and go "I know I can get better, so why am I not getting better?" It gets upsetting that you can't see yourself progress anymore. Sometimes you are progressing and you just can't see it yourself. Other times you have truly hit a wall, and you're going nowhere. The latter is what happened with me. Let's rewind a bit.

Rapier over the last couple months

For a while, I was feeling like I had lost it. Every fight I went in to, I felt I couldn't hold me own. My opponents were dictating the fights, my reaction time seemed to be awful, and I didn't feel like I was learning anything. There were a lot of factors that could have been causing that. I kept working through it, and luckily came through the other side. Right now my skill level is about at the best it has been. Get ready for a wall-o-text

A Cloak for Liadan

Way back before Pennsic, Liadan asked me to make a cloak for her. The only purpose of the cloak was to be used as a non-rigid parry device. Obviously some major changes happened in our life not long after Pennsic, but we finally got settled and I started the process of making the cloak.

Ghost, Ghouls, and Goblins (And the Roses Tournament), K+Q Rapier, and some Practices

Hey, it's been a while! Some things have happened in the last two months, such as us moving to Philly and a couple events which had large combat components: the Roses Tournament and King's and Queen's Rapier Champions. I got to fight a bit at the former, and marshaled the entire day at the latter.

Brennan & Caoilfhionn's Ducal Challenge I

Saturday the 27th was Brennan & Caoilfhionn's First Ducal Challenge. You may remember the post I made two weeks ago showing that I made a thing for it. I hadn't expected to go to the event, but due to car problems, I ended up being in the area for the event, and decided to go. I never planned on participating in the Rapier tournament, but it turns out I'm feeling good enough to fight again. So I fought!

The prizes. The half in the foreground were the prizes for rapier combatants, background were fore heavy combatants.
Photo by Christy Page

I made a thing for the Ducal Challenge!

The 27th is Brennan & Caoilfhionn's Ducal Challenge down in Settmour Swamp. The idea of the tourney is similar to the Master Gregory Finche Memorial Tournament held at GNEW this year where every entrant crafts something to use as their entry fee, and everyone walks away with something made by an entrant. As I am still broken, I can't fence, and I actually won't be able to attend the event either. I love making cloaks and needed to time myself so I know how long it takes to make one for the future, so I decided to make one to donate in case a fencer needed an entry. So this post is more of an art post than a rapier post. Deal with it.

GNEW XXX

Hmm GNEW XXX. Imagine if it was still called the S&M War this year . . . I'm amazed I didn't hear that joke at all.

It was a wet and weird weekend. We attended with the singular focus of getting rid of stress that mundane life has piled on us.Let's face it, our intentions were a teensy bit (read: a great deal) self-centered.

Is this a post about Rapier? Kinda

About seven or eight months ago I had been talking with a friend of mine at an event about me never getting the chance to be Rapier MiC (Marshal in Charge) at an event. She responded by saying she MiC'ed Sommer Draw in Bergental every year and was willing to share that role with me this year if I wanted to. I was more than willing.

Long Time, No See!

Sorry it's been so long. I haven't had a computer in nearly three months, and typing out blog posts on my phone sounded like the opposite of "fun". I'm borrowing a computer for a bit, so look forward to seeing a few posts coming up in the near future.

For now, know that I've been injured since early February so there hasn't been much fencing going on, and our D&D group's weekends have been very packed, so D&D has only happened a few times since my last post. Hopefully both of these things change and I can bombard you with way too many posts about my nerdy hobbies.

~John/Teo

Teaching at Practice

Recently I was asked to start attending my local practice here in Smoking Rocks to help teach. We have two new fencers in the area, and one of the big reasons I stopped going to the local practice was the lack of bodies. So we got a couple new people, and I was asked to come up and start teaching them. So over the course of the last two Fridays, I have been teaching our two new fencers - Elise and Nuno - the basics of rapier combat.

I forgot just how much I love teaching.

Birka A.S 50 (2016)

Oh, Birka. I'm never quite sure what happens to the day. This year was no different. Last year I bounced between marshaling and fencing while the tournament was open, and didn't do too poorly. Even though I'm not a huge fan of bear pits. This year, I had offered to help volunteer for a solid block from 830am-1230pm. For the first hour or so, it was just going over ground rules for the day and the procedure our MIC wanted us to follow. The next two hours was some inspections mixed with morning court.Then about an hour and a half of marshaling the tourney - which was great. I didn't see any issues, and that is completely unheard of at Birka.

How can you not love this picture? Morning Court. Photo by Rowan

Rapier Practice 12/7/15

This took a few days to get going. Sorry for that. After practice I couldn't words so good. And I wanted to make sure I could get all the words out that I wanted to. Lots of words.

I took a few weeks off of fencing. My brain had become a muddled mess, I was getting frustrated, and (quite frankly) a bit burnt out. So I had to step away from things Rapier as much as possible for a bit; it ended up being about 3 weeks total. During that time, I tried to not even think about fencing, though it did come to to mind quite often even still.

Teo goes to Fall Crown Tourney and two practices in three consecutive days

Even if you've been living under a rock, you're probably aware of all the happenings at Fall Crown Tourney. I don't want to spend a lot of time on that. I have started talking to a lot more people than I have before (not bad for an introvert pretending to be an extrovert, huh?). I'm even remembering names! Only took me 9ish years to get to this point. I'm having a great time acting as part of Her Majesty's Guard. That is assisting in the "meeting people" thing. I'm also feeling incredibly useful. During court I ran away from a group of blood thirsty children chomping at the bit for what I was keeping from them. Yep, I ran with the Toy Box.

Preparing to run with the Toy Chest (Photo courtesy of Onora/Rowan)

Self-reflection including advantages and disadvantages of the way I fight, and a break-down of Monday's practice in which I learned stuff. And things.

I believe I've mentioned before how different I fight than far more than most of the rapier combatants out there. I fight with my blade unengaged.

K+Q Rapier Champs, 10/10/15

So this was a pretty spectacular day. So many of my friends were recognized by their Majesties for doing what they love. Being on the Queen’s Guard, I am also lucky enough to hear the things spoken at the thrones and see the expressions on people’s faces. Oh yeah. Hey guys! I’m on the Queen’s Guard for this reign! So far it’s been fun, and there are six more months left of it. Congrats to all my friends!

Ladies of the Rose Tournament 9/19/15

Yesterday I had the honor of participating in the Ladies of the Rose Tournament, fencing for Duchess Avelina. It was a great day. Lots of fun, and I had plenty of fencing come the end of it. We had a fun team consisting of Don Mallochio, Duke Kenric, Clockwork, Rowan, and myself.

Rapier and SCA musings

Next week is the Rose Tourney. I'm equal parts excited and worried about it. I've fought in a few Birka tourneys in the past, more for fun than anything. The only tournament I've actually "competed" in to this point was my local Barony Champions event, and that ended pretty poorly (reasons for that, by the way). So this time I'm still new to the tourney scene, but I'll also be fighting for the Rose that has given me this chance to fight (Duchess Avelina has given me this honor). I just hope I don't let her down. I just need to make sure I'm able to utilize what I've been focusing on lately.

Obligatory Intro Post

Welcome. This is the obligatory first post for my blog.