jhart06
Member
Slowly coming back from the depths...
Posts: 3,292
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Post by jhart06 on Feb 2, 2012 6:48:49 GMT
Since I was a kid i've had a fascination/obsession with Arthurian myth. I don't spout it off much now-a-days, but I know more on it than is healthy. And i've read a translation that of Mallory that was so direct they had footnotes to translate some of it XD... The earliest memory I have with that Mythos was the (I think disney) 'Sword in the Stone' movie. My grandfather bought it for me one time I was visiting, and I remember just being in awe the whole film.
As I grew, I began to read probably more than most kids do, and at the age of 8, while at a pow-wow/swap-meet type event with my grandmother, one of her friends gifted me with a copy of 'The Hobbit' when she heard I liked knights and dragons and such. I dont recall that I finished it then. But I did read it. And I know I had it finished by the time 6th grade came around.. That was when I was excused from English to get a new book, and saw an old hardback of Lord of the Rings, with the elvish script circling the Eye of Sauron...
From there, it just sorta went haywire. As I grew I read more and more. Books of miltiary history, armor, weaponry, battle tactics of the ancient world, sword use/fighting type books. Any culture, any system. And when the Kentucky Highland Ren started up just an hour away, I joined and received my first introduction to stage fighting, which prompted a friends father to 'teach me right'. And it's proceeded thus for.. Well.. Most of my life!
The interest in cutting/sharps only started about last year. For the most part I was interested in sparring and combat, and well.. sharp blades didnt fit into that world. With a severely lessened physical capacity from an accident last summer, cutting and sharp blades were a way to keep on living.
This is interesting to me, how so many of us have so much in common, but even those factors impacted us in a ton of ways, and all of us nutters still ended up here. Birds of a feather and all that rot, eh?
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Post by zentesukenVII on Feb 2, 2012 7:45:12 GMT
for me it was a lot of things. My brother (hes thirty-one now, I'm eighteen) Always played with me when i was little, plastic state fair katanas and whatnot. My whole family are devout Star Wars worshipers as well, and yes that fight scene at the end of ROTJ was phenomenal in many ways, more now that I'm older and understand how sad that scene really was. But I think my main two reasons were Chrono Trigger for the super nintendo. Crono was a master with a katana, and the weapon always looked cool the way he held it, edge up angled slightly downward towards his opponent.
I was into swords then, but what REALLY did it for me was this right here.
You have to admit, that Sephiroth makes wielding a katana (I guess a nodachi if you want to be technical) look absolutely awesome. The noise, the movement, just everything about it makes me love it. The consept of using a sword in a world with guns draws me in too. I love that imagination, its unrealistic, but that's what makes it so cool. He can still f*** up anyone with a gun, because hes so damned good with a sword. It's this kind of imagination that fuels my interest in anything. Don't get me wrong Cloud is awesome too, just not back when this scene is from lol. It also helps that they are genetically enhanced super humans.
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Post by Lonely Wolf Forge on Feb 2, 2012 15:20:28 GMT
i LOVED FF7....I even have my 36 inch o katana o prove it! Lol
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Post by Freebooter on Feb 2, 2012 16:53:23 GMT
Hey Jhart06, yes, it something how so many of us have the same interest. I read an article a while back about why somer guys love such stuff as we love and some care nothing for it or even are repulsed. The article, or author of it, theorize that there is what they call a "Warrior gene" in us from way back in our human early history. Certain humans had to have it, tyo be the warriors, etc, to survive, for our people to survive, etc.. So I suppoe we are all kindred spirits!!
Zentesuken, in the beginning of Cold Steel's "Fighting with the Sabre and Cutlass" Lynn Thompson, president of CS or part of it, gives a big introduction, and goes into how a sword can be used in todays world (saw if you were attacked going from your vehicle to your apt, home, gym, etc, and you had your sword with you...? ), gives pros and cons, etc.. It is interesting to say the least.
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Post by zentesukenVII on Feb 2, 2012 21:11:08 GMT
speaking of which where did you get that thing? I just got an o-katana and im already obsessed with big swords now.
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Post by dougman on Apr 25, 2012 15:41:23 GMT
Ha, back in high school, I hung out with a lot of the DnD/anime kids. A bunch of my friends brought BudK catalogs to school, so we'd all pore over them before class. One of my friends bought one of the cheap William Wallace swords, and a replica Hitler Youth Knife, and I was immediately in love.
The first sword I ever bought was a 48" bastard sword from a gun show...then I bought a katana set...ultimately, I wound up getting into knives and knifemaking, which is a ton of fun in itself.
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Post by DavidW on Apr 25, 2012 15:48:41 GMT
I stumbled upon TrueSwords back in 9th grade. I got a "tanto battle package" from them and loved it, and my collection took off from there. 1st thing I ever got though, was a cheap $20 katana from the flea market.
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Post by paulrward on Apr 26, 2012 3:11:42 GMT
Hello All ;
Returning to the original question, how did I aquire my love for swords and swordsmanship? Well, a fellow Californian introduced me to his Uncle Jack, an ex-soldier who had moved from Virginia to Arizona to do some prospecting, and had come back years later after having struck it rich. He was a gentleman adventurer, a crack shot, a skilled equestrian, and a deadly swordsman who could literally weave a net of steel around himself with a sword. His example led to my lifelong affection for long, straight swords that could thrust as well as cut, and caused me to study fencing, both with the classical 'Olympic' blades as well as heavier blades such as such as combat sabers and 'hand-and-a-half' swords.
I have not heard from the old gentleman in a number of years, and wonder where he is these days......
Respectfully;
Paul R. Ward
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Post by Freebooter on Apr 26, 2012 15:50:56 GMT
That sounds cool. Would love to have met the gentleman! As i said before, I go back to as a child in the '60s watching all those old movies from that era such Sinbad the Sailor, Hercules, Jason and Argonauts, etc, etc.. Even as a very young child before ever seeing any sort of movie or sword I had a love and an eye for fine edged weapons, knives, etc.. Just a longing for them or something. That has made me wonder if I am reencarnated from age of edged weapons. LOL!
Freebooter
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Greg
Senior Forumite
Posts: 1,800
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Post by Greg on Apr 26, 2012 16:39:27 GMT
 Prince Phillip, from Disney's 'Sleeping Beauty', had inspired me at a young age to be selfless and to fight for what you deem worth fighting for. The sword and shield became symbols of that ideal, and stuck.  |
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Post by paulrward on Apr 28, 2012 18:19:28 GMT
Hello Freebooter ; Please PM me ( or e mail me at paulrward@outdrs.net! ) I may have a line on the old gentleman ! Respectfully; Paul R. Ward |
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Post by MOK on May 11, 2012 9:48:29 GMT
I liked swords as a kid. What kid doesn't? But then three things happened, at roughly the same time. I got into roleplaying games, which made me curious to know more about and better understand what exactly my characters were wearing and doing. We dabbled in LARPing and boffer fighting, too. I got into martial arts, with pretty much the same people I played RPGs with. Just Han Moo Do to begin with, but we branched out very quickly. And I got into the adult section of the library (kid's books were in a physically separate area, and the vile harpy of a librarian disapproved if people wandered outside the area appropriate for their age) and discovered the primal wonderland of early fantasy and weird tales - H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith... and eventually Lord Dunsany. There were weapons and warriors elsewhere and they were cool and all, but it was Dunsany's "The Sword of Welleran" that really struck that chord in me, putting to words - and such beautiful words! - what I've ever since felt was the real Riddle of Steel, the paradoxical valor and terror of weapons and the heroes who wield them, at once awesome and awful. And then I found out there are still people making and selling real swords. Oh my. |
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Post by lamebmx on May 11, 2012 10:30:04 GMT
dont forget real people training in their use and cutting with them!
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Post by MOK on May 11, 2012 11:03:58 GMT
Obviously, but that came well after I'd started collecting. Specifically after attending a lecture by Guy Windsor at Ropecon, a Finnish RPG convention. Funny how things circle around like that.  |
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