Arisia Post (Everyone's doing it!)
Arisia was amazing. I worked in the Fast Track (children's) area for most of my mornings, then stayed up until two most nights to party. In the middle, I won Best Presentation in the Masquerade for a sketch on swordplay, did a whole lot of boffing, and just generally hung out and chatted with everyone who came within earshot.
damarie ran a ritual on the balcony of our hotel room. The balcony is the size of our living room in my apartment. We had a great time, and Dawn-Marie wasn't the only high priestess there, so the two of them got into a truly dizzying discussion of magic and ritual etc. I and a guy named Steve who is at about the same level as I am (though obviously with different strengths and weaknesses) sat back and talked about how we couldn't follow the discussion. :-p
suntzusdisciple showed off his impressive First Impression skills again by pissing off all of the LARPers in a large group, whom I was approaching to challenge to boffer duels. Because Merc was standing next to me, I lost the opportunity to fight with them. That annoyed me greatly.
Merc didn't insult their costumes. He told them (with no evidence) that they were inferior swordsmen and women, and offered to show them what real swordsmanship looked like. I wanted to see if any of them were better than me, damnit. I doubted that any were, but there was a possibility, and I didn't want to assume. Even if they weren't better than me, two of them at a time would have been a really good workout. (Hopefully, three at a time would overwhelm me, but that is not always the case.)
I did end up making up for that gaff later, and actually got into a discussion of comparative weapons-making techniques, and the advantages and disadvantages of heavier swords. I got the e-mail address of the head weaponsmith of the Realms of Wonder LARP.
My favorite memory, I think, is the sword fight I had with an Eastern martial artist who gave a couple martial arts demonstrations and panels. He and I grabbed my boffer swords and just went to town. We had planned for about half an hour, but we only lasted about fifteen minutes because the swords got so horribly destroyed by our fight. He was really, really good, in that he beat me two out of every three passes.
(We were fighting in a place with a low ceiling however, which gave me a disadvantage because the style I use does a lot of over-the-head moves, whereas he was doing a lot more lower stuff. I'm curious how I would have done if we could have used one of the ballrooms with the 30 foot ceilings instead.)
What an amazing weekend! Huzzah! It sucks to be back in the real world now, where people don't randomly come up and challenge me to sword fights, and where the teenagers' vocabulary is smaller than the eight year olds at the con.
damarie ran a ritual on the balcony of our hotel room. The balcony is the size of our living room in my apartment. We had a great time, and Dawn-Marie wasn't the only high priestess there, so the two of them got into a truly dizzying discussion of magic and ritual etc. I and a guy named Steve who is at about the same level as I am (though obviously with different strengths and weaknesses) sat back and talked about how we couldn't follow the discussion. :-p
suntzusdisciple showed off his impressive First Impression skills again by pissing off all of the LARPers in a large group, whom I was approaching to challenge to boffer duels. Because Merc was standing next to me, I lost the opportunity to fight with them. That annoyed me greatly.
Merc didn't insult their costumes. He told them (with no evidence) that they were inferior swordsmen and women, and offered to show them what real swordsmanship looked like. I wanted to see if any of them were better than me, damnit. I doubted that any were, but there was a possibility, and I didn't want to assume. Even if they weren't better than me, two of them at a time would have been a really good workout. (Hopefully, three at a time would overwhelm me, but that is not always the case.)
I did end up making up for that gaff later, and actually got into a discussion of comparative weapons-making techniques, and the advantages and disadvantages of heavier swords. I got the e-mail address of the head weaponsmith of the Realms of Wonder LARP.
My favorite memory, I think, is the sword fight I had with an Eastern martial artist who gave a couple martial arts demonstrations and panels. He and I grabbed my boffer swords and just went to town. We had planned for about half an hour, but we only lasted about fifteen minutes because the swords got so horribly destroyed by our fight. He was really, really good, in that he beat me two out of every three passes.
(We were fighting in a place with a low ceiling however, which gave me a disadvantage because the style I use does a lot of over-the-head moves, whereas he was doing a lot more lower stuff. I'm curious how I would have done if we could have used one of the ballrooms with the 30 foot ceilings instead.)
What an amazing weekend! Huzzah! It sucks to be back in the real world now, where people don't randomly come up and challenge me to sword fights, and where the teenagers' vocabulary is smaller than the eight year olds at the con.