*blank stare*
. . . . you think tai chi can't be aggressive?
Have you seen what those pretty airy movements translate to at speed? Have you seen the weapons that tai chi users have come up with? Star Trek based the Klingon weapons off tai chi work!
Reactive martial art, I will grant you--the tai chi user reacts to someone else's action. But not aggressive?
Have you seen what those pretty airy movements translate to at speed? Have you seen the weapons that tai chi users have come up with? Star Trek based the Klingon weapons off tai chi work!
Reactive martial art, I will grant you--the tai chi user reacts to someone else's action. But not aggressive?
There is no point, in the end. He was told to learn it, so he did. He was told he must be able to defend his life in the event the House was attacked. That is exactly what he learned to do. It has never occurred to Nodhi that he might want to permanently disable or kill an opponent, even if they're trying to kill him.
The one time that I know of that he did kill, and not because he was ordered to, it was a purely panicked response and not, I think, what he actually intended to do.
And he DID learn dance to learn grace; that's how he became "Dancer". You'll note that, given any kind of choice, on his own he tends to prefer to practice his yoga or his dancing than his martial arts. The only time he practices his martial arts is when he's exercising with someone else who has an interest in that form of exercise, or learning his forms from him.
He was ordered to learn martial arts, so he did.
He was ordered to be able to defend his life; assuming he didn't curl up in a teeny whimpering panicball, he'd be able to use the martial arts he has to effectively defend his life. He certainly whups ass in training matches.
he didn't learn it because he wanted to, silly. What on earth would Nodhi want with a form of movement that can kill people?
He has much more fun with dance. As far as he's concerned, martial arts sparring is kind of a rough game of tag. *g*
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He should not be teaching others any martial arts.
He is doing well more than half of the moves wrong, by not following up, and training others into this is not appropriate.
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I think Alphonse is the first person from any Earth variant he's shown any of it to; I'll let him know that he should consider it a unique form of its own and not what Nodhi calls it. To anyone else, it's like saying "that's not qzsksl, it's garfarine" - it's just a word either way.
But for what he uses it for, it's a very effective self defense form. He's flipped Squall into walls - and Taran. And, this morning, Kiel. So it has value of a kind.
Care to name it something? I don't particularly fancy the meltdown Nodhi would have if it got hammered into his head he's supposed to hurt people with this stuff, but if he can be told "what you're doing is not that, it's this other thing", it'd save a lot of trouble.
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*sigh*
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As far as I know, Nodhi and his probable-father were the only empaths in that household, and that household consisted of the Lady of the house and a few hundred slaves, most of whom worked on an underground farm. Empaths, I think, are probably quite rare.
The women of the house do not act as soldiers. From what I gather, they consider physical combat to be something left to the men, mostly out of an attitude of moral superiority; the general belief was that without the collars, men were brute animals.
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That said - Nodhi is not typical. Firstly, he is by nature compliant/submissive. Secondly, he is a fairly strong empath. Take away either of these factors and you get very different results, even with the collar. The collar doesn't affect how slaves treat other slaves - they affect how slaves treat the free women, the owners.
Nodhi is a house slave; he's met - and been attacked by - the slaves who work outside the House. His own house...I don't know if it was unusual or not, but his particular mistress had a Thing for having only young beautiful boys where she could see them. And she had rules about not making them less beautiful. So he got a much easier ride than might have otherwise been the case, which is good, because if he'd had to work in the caverns I think he'd have been mentally crushed and died before I ever met him.
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