When you pick up a sword for the first time you will be slow and awkward. This is frustrating, but refuse the temptation to try and become a “faster” fencer. Chasing after speed is like trying to catch smoke. If you try and pursue speed, all you will accomplish is haste.Haste is the enemy of 1st class fencing.
Speed is a lie the untrained mind tells itself when it sees an action it cannot follow. The truth is a combination of timing, control,andfluidity. Fluid motion, even done slowly, will always arrive before a hasty strike. Control will allow you to move without wasteful motion that will slow you down. Timing will eliminate the need to move fast almost entirely. There is no need to get somewhere fast so long as you get there at the right time.
Tip for mymutuals who engage in bladed armed combat
While we like to joke about Izzy being in the wrong genre, I would argue that there are in fact at least five distinct genre universes in the world of Our Flag Means Death, and all of them have different rules.
Stede Bonnet, and his crew when they’re around him, live in a Muppet movie. I didn’t come up with this analogy but it’s so accurate. Insane physical comedy and comedy-action where no one really gets hurt. Mild peril but you know everything is gonna work out. Terrible puns and sight gags, but room for sweet, genuine emotional moments too. The rules of time, space, probability and logic will bend for a good joke.
Izzy Hands is in a grimdark action/drama where if someone gets stabbed in the gut they will behave normally and fucking die. (Probably slowly and painfully, of sepsis.) Crucially I think Izzy also lives in a genre where you can only be subtextually queer, and violence (done for or with or to each other) is the only acceptable form of intimacy between men. This is why being forcibly dragged into Stede’s world, where everyone is busy having silly low-stakes misadventures and being gay and emotionally available all over the main text–and seeing his Subtextual Boyfriend go into this world and love it–sends him round the twist.
The British, Spanish and other imperialist militaries are in a Master and Commander-style naval adventure where they’re the heroes. This is why they all take it completely seriously when Stede (unintentionally) kills Badminton and takes hostages, even though we can see that he bumbled his way into it ass-backwards. This is also why Stede is so shocked to get actually for real stabbed aboard the Spanish ship. (“Did you mean to do that?”) He didn’t realize until that moment that he’d stepped into a different genre. The stabbing is one of the first Surprise Genre Switch moments we get and in retrospect it’s very important for setting up that in this world, the threat of getting hurt or killed is very real–which we need to understand to know that there are real stakes much later, when Stede almost gets executed by the British.
For fuck’s sake, where is the fic where Obi-Wan tries to protect Mace but ends up taking the hit for him, saving his life, and Mace protects them both until help arrives and then Mace gets introspective about how loyal the Jedi are to him and how much they love and trust him and how honored he is but at the same time how humbling because he knows they have followed and will follow him to the ends of the galaxy and beyond even if it gets them killed because they have that much faith in him and the force and he knows their faith is not blind and neither is his but he will always respect them and never take his Order for granted or his responsibility to them lightly and then he’s at Obi-Wan’s bedside thinking about how Obi-Wan had called him Master and he remembers when Obi-Wan was so young and thinks about how far he’s come and how far he has to go and even though they’re on more equal footing now Obi-Wan still looks up to him and Mace still knows that he had a hand in raising that kid and when Obi-Wan wakes up Mace is ready to lecture him about what he did even though he’s heard it before and Obi-Wan is his cheeky self and says he would do it again and Mace wants to reprimand him but also gives him a very sincere thank you and Obi-Wan tells him always, but that last always reaffirms everything Mace had thought about and Mace gives him a gentle nudge back into rest with a hand on his shoulder and the Force behind his words and Mace knows that he would have had the same interaction with any Jedi and he looks down at Obi-Wan and he sees all of the Jedi
