Greetings to all and sundry
Nov 7, 2014 5:29:37 GMT
Post by Croccifixio on Nov 7, 2014 5:29:37 GMT
I registered here a few months ago, but never really posted anything until this week. That lurking allowed me to catch up not just on my meager sword knowledge, but also on the forum culture and atmosphere here at SBG, which is my favorite by far among like-minded enthusiasts.
So, background background. My forum name is from one of the Mario Puzo novels (I think it was The Last Don?), but the real name's Joren. I'm a 27 year old Filipino, relatively newly married, and have loved swords from before I could speak. My earliest memory of swords comes from the Disney cartoon Sleeping Beauty, wherein Prince Philip was given the Sword of Truth and the Shield of Virtue to slay Maleficent. That cemented things in my mind. Swords are pretty damn cool.
I had many plastic toy swords and lost them all when my family went to the US for my mom's master's degree. After puberty hit, and I realized that girls existed, I kinda forgot about swords. While the medieval Euro was my first love, I grew to love Japanese blades as well due to TMNT, and later on manga/anime. Movies with swords satiated me, but I always knew that one day, I'd realize the need for a real one.
Years went by, pushed quickly by the travails and folly of youth. Computer games nearly killed my academic future (of course a lot of them had swords, sometimes laser ones, sometimes normal ones, often fantasy swords that would be ridiculous in real life). The sword-computer game relationship reached its zenith with Mount and Blade: Warband (if you haven't seen that game, check it out, the sequel is in development. It's probably the best game for sword/medieval combat enthusiasts out there).
Tragically, real life knocked on the door and I had to finish my studies. I'm a lawyer now, alongside all the good and evil that brings (It's my dream profession anyway, since my mom is a lawyer-turned-judge. I just wish lawyers and litigants could sometimes settle things medieval-style through judicial and honor duels hehe). I'm also married, with a baby girl on the way this March (yay!). All this makes this hobby (passion?) somehow strangely timed.
At long last, a rare, boring day at work led me to search for jousting videos. I loved the jousts in A Knight's Tale and knew about renfaires and even jousting competitions, but hadn't really gone out of my way to find out what exactly that all entailed. I also had read quite a number of essays at ARMA (learning about the controversies in the teaching of Western Martial Arts), so I looked to those videos and references for learning.
One video led to another, and I stumbled onto Skallagrim's channel, which made me look up Albion, which led me here (and KOA). When I opened the forums, it was as if a whole new world was opened to me! I knew that people made swords. I also knew that many made SLOs (my dad once bought a SLO wakizashi that I loved playing around with). But I didn't know that an entire community had formed around bringing swords back to historical levels, and that there were actual, affordable, real swords! Not that Albions are very affordable, hehe, though definitely worth the price.
So I'd just like to thank the SBG community. Reading the various reviews, major threads, and different forums have not just convinced me to begin collecting replicas/recreations, but also pushed me to learn about my own culture's swords (that I never appreciated - I thought our warriors generally sucked cause we lost to the Spanish, Americans, and Japanese). Lo and behold, FMA is actually alive and thriving outside the borders of my own country! This provided impetus for my new policy on sword collecting: one Filipino blade for every non-Filipino blade. Right now I have 3 swords and I couldn't be happier with them. The wife is, however, quite harsh as to my new-found passion for swords, but that just means I have to build my case, so to speak, or even bribe her somehow (with, say, a body less 50 lbs its current weight).
So that's the long and short of it folks: glad to be here, happy to love and own real swords in a slowly-increasing collection, and hopeful that I can contribute somehow with my enthusiasm to this forum.
Cheers to everyone! And if any of you visit the Philippines (especially if you're looking for locally-made swords), hit me up with a PM. I've been testing the local smiths lately and plan to look for more around the country.
Regards,
Joren
So, background background. My forum name is from one of the Mario Puzo novels (I think it was The Last Don?), but the real name's Joren. I'm a 27 year old Filipino, relatively newly married, and have loved swords from before I could speak. My earliest memory of swords comes from the Disney cartoon Sleeping Beauty, wherein Prince Philip was given the Sword of Truth and the Shield of Virtue to slay Maleficent. That cemented things in my mind. Swords are pretty damn cool.
I had many plastic toy swords and lost them all when my family went to the US for my mom's master's degree. After puberty hit, and I realized that girls existed, I kinda forgot about swords. While the medieval Euro was my first love, I grew to love Japanese blades as well due to TMNT, and later on manga/anime. Movies with swords satiated me, but I always knew that one day, I'd realize the need for a real one.
Years went by, pushed quickly by the travails and folly of youth. Computer games nearly killed my academic future (of course a lot of them had swords, sometimes laser ones, sometimes normal ones, often fantasy swords that would be ridiculous in real life). The sword-computer game relationship reached its zenith with Mount and Blade: Warband (if you haven't seen that game, check it out, the sequel is in development. It's probably the best game for sword/medieval combat enthusiasts out there).
Tragically, real life knocked on the door and I had to finish my studies. I'm a lawyer now, alongside all the good and evil that brings (It's my dream profession anyway, since my mom is a lawyer-turned-judge. I just wish lawyers and litigants could sometimes settle things medieval-style through judicial and honor duels hehe). I'm also married, with a baby girl on the way this March (yay!). All this makes this hobby (passion?) somehow strangely timed.
At long last, a rare, boring day at work led me to search for jousting videos. I loved the jousts in A Knight's Tale and knew about renfaires and even jousting competitions, but hadn't really gone out of my way to find out what exactly that all entailed. I also had read quite a number of essays at ARMA (learning about the controversies in the teaching of Western Martial Arts), so I looked to those videos and references for learning.
One video led to another, and I stumbled onto Skallagrim's channel, which made me look up Albion, which led me here (and KOA). When I opened the forums, it was as if a whole new world was opened to me! I knew that people made swords. I also knew that many made SLOs (my dad once bought a SLO wakizashi that I loved playing around with). But I didn't know that an entire community had formed around bringing swords back to historical levels, and that there were actual, affordable, real swords! Not that Albions are very affordable, hehe, though definitely worth the price.
So I'd just like to thank the SBG community. Reading the various reviews, major threads, and different forums have not just convinced me to begin collecting replicas/recreations, but also pushed me to learn about my own culture's swords (that I never appreciated - I thought our warriors generally sucked cause we lost to the Spanish, Americans, and Japanese). Lo and behold, FMA is actually alive and thriving outside the borders of my own country! This provided impetus for my new policy on sword collecting: one Filipino blade for every non-Filipino blade. Right now I have 3 swords and I couldn't be happier with them. The wife is, however, quite harsh as to my new-found passion for swords, but that just means I have to build my case, so to speak, or even bribe her somehow (with, say, a body less 50 lbs its current weight).
So that's the long and short of it folks: glad to be here, happy to love and own real swords in a slowly-increasing collection, and hopeful that I can contribute somehow with my enthusiasm to this forum.
Cheers to everyone! And if any of you visit the Philippines (especially if you're looking for locally-made swords), hit me up with a PM. I've been testing the local smiths lately and plan to look for more around the country.
Regards,
Joren