A Miscellany of Projects - Gaming, SCA Combat, Arts & Sciences, and Travel

  Picking up Windsor after reading Paul of Bellatrix involves a radical change of gears.  First, Windsor is not writing a fechtbuch, but a book about how to read  a fechtbuch, and how to interpret that information.  Second, despite Paul Porter having about two decades on Windsor in terms of combat experience, Windsor is one of the few professional swordsmen in the world at this point, which means that he has a distinctly different viewpoint from strictly dealing with SCA combat.  Windsor is also much more of an academic - he holds a PhD from Edinburgh University for his research into historical sword texts, and his approach to problems tends to be both more holistic and more cerebral than Paul of Bellatrix. By holistic, I mean that Windsor attempts to find commonalities across multiple sword schools, things that all of them must address in some form or another.  Paul Porter is writing from a different perspective, attempting to teach one particular style of...

 Last time, I discussed the four-kanji problem and the problem with medieval Japanese female names in the SCA - simply, they just don't get all the fun that men's names get in terms of wordplay and, in period, often look a bit like an afterthought in terms of naming.  "My son's name is Noble Truth; my daughter's name is... uh... Pine Tree!" This time, I will discuss the four - yes, you read that right, four - writing systems found in medieval Japanese.  First, and "best" in terms of prestige, is kanji, which is to say, Chinese characters imported during the earliest period of Japanese history and used based on their meaning.  They may deviate from modern hanzi characters because hanzi have been simplified, and even here there are two forms, a "proper" form and a cursive form, which will be important in a moment.  The second is manyougana - the use of kanji not for their meaning , but for their sound .  Thus, the character 由 can be read a...

Women portraying a Japanese persona in the SCA get left out of half the fun of making a Japanese persona - the name.  Japan's traditional aristocratic naming conventions are, to put it mildly, completely bonkers, and the fact that female names have traditionally been almost an afterthought means that women don't get to play the game of "which kanji are you today?" that men get to play.  To give the most notorious example of women getting shafted on Japanese names, the "lady daimyo" Ii Naotora (井伊 直虎) (d. 1582) is known primarily by the third or so of her names - she was a child, then a nun, then finally a feudal lord, naming gets complicated as you'll soon see - and by a clearly masculine name that, to give you an idea of the fun that can be had here, can be read as "Lady Ii, the Straightforward Tiger."   Depicted - Lady Ii, a Straightforward Tiger, from "Meow Meow Japanese History," Ep. 55 In contrast to Ii Naotora, most aristocra...

    The Bellatrix System is a hard book for me to review - not because I have no thoughts on it, but because it requires two separate reviews, first as a system of combat and second as a book.  It also requires that I acknowledge the potential counters to any review I make - that I am not being fair to its author, that it's all so much clearer in class or in person, and that he's forgotten more about fighting than I'll ever learn.  Those are all valid criticisms, but I am not reviewing Paul Porter as a fighter (the only reason he's not an exceptional fighter now is because he's more interested in teaching than fighting), I'm not attending a class, and he is a giant in the field, both literal and metaphorical. So let's start with the easier of the two reviews - as a system of combat, specifically tuned to the SCA's rules and conventions.  The Bellatrix System is an effective system of SCA armored combat, well-proven and established over fifty years of fi...

I instruct only the passionate. I enlighten only the fervent. If a student cannot return with the other three corners of the square after I have shown them the first one, I will not repeat the lesson.  - Confucius, Analects , Book 7, Chapter 8 I wouldn't usually lead with Confucius, especially with a saying that I consider to be bad teaching, but I think it is important to contrast with Paul Porter's approach.  The most consistently frustrating feature of the Bellatrix book is that he goes into endless detail about, for instance, variations on a flat snap.  The truth is, they're still flat snaps, and the body mechanics required to throw the first shot are the body mechanics required to throw the twentieth.  The section on shields - on all actions conducted with a shield, from selecting shield shape, size, and strapping, to how to use a shield - is shorter than the chapter on flat snaps. To use Confucius, above, the student needs to be shown how to throw a flat ...

Before this continues, a note about names.  Throughout this, I refer to SCA folks by their SCA names.  This isn't because you can't figure out who they are, that's easy enough, but out of a combined respect for their privacy, and because that is the context where this happens.  I realize it lends the entire proceeding an air of the ridiculous, but context is important even if the consequences apply outside context.  Second, despite the fact that this is 100% about Colin Darby, I will try to make it as broadly applicable as I can, because I'm not writing this for Colin.  I already know this. Before I became a squire to Sir Maelgwyn, or even a man-at-arms, before I was ever part of their household, Mistress Willoc asked me why I wanted to do it.  My answer, which seemed simple and straightforward, was "I want to be a knight."  That took her aback.  Apparently most people are supposed to reply with "I want to learn," or some more humble response than...

  One of the recurring problems I see in the Bellatrix book is the problem of too much and not enough.  That is to say, the book is comprehensive to the point of being overwhelming, but for large portions of it, how to train the movements described is simply left to the reader as an exercise.  When the level of detail given is, for instance, the proportion of weight that should be on each foot, that's a dangerous assumption.  The more prescriptive the methodology the more it becomes incumbent on the author to explain how to get to that point .  The Bellatrix System is nothing if it is not prescriptive.  There are blows, variations on blows, and more blows taught, without near enough discussion of how to train those basic movements. This criticism opens me to the accusation that I've ignored his chapters on training and slow work; I haven't, and in fact I've read them five or six times each.  They're very good.  So is his section on how to train a ...

  I am incapable of offering an unbiased review of anything by Jackson Crawford.  I first became aware of his work back in 2016 or so, when I first started playing in the SCA and his Old Norse work first came across my Facebook feed.  Ironically enough, Crawford's own words played a part in my decision to turn off that same Facebook feed (original text from Crawford's website here ): You will talk yourself into trouble if you don’t think before you speak: Hold that tongue, and think a little, or you’ll find out that it’s a long whip, and it’s gonna hit you from behind. That is from his "Cowboy Havamal," a very loose and informal translation of Havamal , which translates either to "sayings of the High One" or "sayings of the Hanged One" or, given that it's meant to be a collection of the wisdom of Odin, probably both and neither all at once.  The "Cowboy Havamal" is, of all of the things he has published, by far my favorite, and it is ...