LJ Idol: Topic 0

[rm]

That sounds like Patient 0, but then I haven't gotten much sleep.

Considering I was originally an LJ early adopter under another userid (which is to say, among other things, that I often have LJ/6A outrage fatigue), it seems a little weird to be introducing myself at this particularly late date.

I suppose we should start with the current events and general status issues.


Current Events

My mom has breast cancer.

My book, The Book of Harry Potter Trifles, Trivias and Particularities is coming out at the end of November.


General Status

I live in Spanish Harlem with my girlfriend who in the quippy sense of things can be described as a cross between Indiana Jones and Hermione Granger. She is the awesome and very patient with me. There are also cats.

I'm also a professional actor. How glamorous is that? Well, you can see me as a dying junkie whore covered in live insects (assuming the scene hasn't been cut) in the upcoming American Gangster. That SUCKED. Although, I do have a really cool dance thing in the new Sam Mendes film, but that won't be out for at least a year.

I am the queen of the part time jobs. This includes a media analyst gig that's often just referred to as The Germans (company is based there) and usually involves a great deal of absurdity and frustration.

I am a classical fencer. This is not olympic sport fencing, but rather a Western martial art. Currently, I am just studying foil, although I've had some very brief instruction in both rapier and sabre. My weapon goals, as it were, are smallsword and rapier, and this summer I'll be going to Sicily for a week with my fencing school for a seminar on Italian fencing.

I have celiac disease. This means I am unable to eat wheat, rye, barley, oats (because of contamination issues), spelt and other grains that contain gluten. What happens if I do that? Well, my body tries to digest my intestines and I start bleeding internally. There are also lots of other weird things that happen, but it's not that exciting. What is exciting is that I think the gluten-free croissants I ordered from France should arrive today.

I'm writing a novel. It's the Regency-esque quasi-Middle Eastern/Turkish steampunk lovechild of Harry Potter and Kushiel's Dart. Yes, I need a better elevator pitch.

I'm a historical dancer focused mainly on the Regency and Baroque eras, but have done other stuff too.


The Relevant Past

I'm a life-long New Yorker, who was educated for ten years at what was once Miss Hewitt's Classes for Young Ladies. I know a great deal about forks and curtseys and know way too much about the actual worlds that things like Gossip Girl (bad!) and Dirty Sexy Money (awesome!) are based on.

I attended Stuyvesant High School for a couple of years and through a weird quirk of the New York City public school system actually have a degree from two different high schools. Then I attended The George Washington University where I got a degree in journalism.

After that, I was swept up in the dot.com.stupid where in I made a lot of money, lost a lot of money and still mourn the passing of the wonder that was Urban Fetch.

I became unemployed, became an actor, watched the Twin Towers fall down, and spent a summer sitting on sidewalk waiting for rush tickets to Baz Luhrmann's La Boheme.

I went to Australia to study acting. Came back, landed a show that got my name in the New York Times, got into SAG.

If I go on much more, we get into the present pretty fast and it becomes one of those annoying fast paced list songs.


It should be noted that

My obsessions have a tendency to transmute into very vivid real world adventures and achievements -- Harry Potter, the book; Baz Luhrmann, Australia; Swordspoint, fencing -- and as such I am incredibly protective of my tendency to be obsessive, my fannishness and my belief that living what is nearly an entirley fictional life is not just plausible but possible. When I was younger, stories saved my life. Now they help make it.

My parents raised me listening to David Bowie, the Eurythmics and traditional old time and Irish music. Which basically means that my sense of narrative and abuse of gender norms have been outsized since I was a very small thing.

I've probably left out a ton of stuff, but welcome aboard!

Comments

[rm.livejournal.com]

Welcome and thank you.

As to the fencing question: Yes and no. It depends on the weapon and the context of of an engagement. Many of our competitions in many weapons also take place on a piste, but it's logical to the nature of the weapon to do so because it's the result of trying to present yoursle fas the smallest target possible. Some weapons thugh are fought in a large square area -- rapier and smallsword vs. rapier among others.

[anamacha.livejournal.com]

well, of course you'd want to present the smallest target possible -- but I was thinking of styles that allowed lateral movement. By so doing an attacker would be searching for a better position to move on his opponent. This being opposed to the Olympic style, where combatants don't need to pay attention to what's at their sides.

Does that make any more sense?

[rm.livejournal.com]

This does make more sense, but there's less cause for lateral movement than you'd think in certain weapons.

For one thing, we're largely, although not exclusively, talking about formal duelling (as opposed to street fighting), which has always had all sorts of conventions of form and honor. For another, you'd be surprised how often lateral movement doesn't do you much good at all in either avoiding being hit or hitting your target. If your form is correct, there are very few contexts in which you'd need it beyond a single step, maybe two, in one direction or the other, or in the form of a move like the volte.

This, of course, does ot apply to weapons like rapier, many techniques of which are based on ideas of circles, and therefore requires a ring or square area for the combat.

[anamacha.livejournal.com]

ah, good point -- I think I was thinking more of street fighting, which is what a large part of my background is in. Is the one-or-two lateral sidestep allowed in the formal Olympic fencing? It's a truism that the best way to block is to not be there, and there's no need to overdo it. This is something that I learned a long time ago -- when blocking or avoiding, there's no need to move beyond the point where you won't get hit.