…or, Going Round In Circles
The teaching assistant, Dobbs, showed far less imagination and perception in pairing off the students who’d been assigned to the east side.
He seemed to be going by similar weapons, putting swords against swords and knives against knives. Nobody else had a throwing axe like mine, so I was set against an axe-wielding, blond-bearded dwarf dressed in leather with so many rivets and buckles that it was as much metal as hide.
“Alright, you two,” Dobbs said. “Let’s see what you can do.”
“Uh, hi,” I said to the dwarf, hefting my weapon.
“I am Badulf, son of Badwulf,” he said, giving a little flourish with his battle axe. It was a double-bladed job, with a handle that was almost as tall as he was. Dwarves could get away with long, unwieldy-seeming weapons, because of their low center of balance. “Of the Clan Oakenkeg.”
“Jamie,” I said, returning the gesture. “Son of Kevin.”
We squared off warily. Neither of us made the first move. We stood there, studying each other. I imagined he must have been thinking the same things that I was.
I had longer arms, but his weapon had a longer haft. If he swung it one-handed—and I was willing to bet that he could—he could beat me in reach. I probably had the advantage in reflexes and natural coordination, but he was likely far more skilled. There was a reason Callahan had given all the dwarves a pass to the advanced section. I would be faster on my feet, but his forearms were thicker than my neck.
He had no reason to take the offensive. While a charging dwarf was supposed to be a fearsome sight, a dwarf on defense could be a fortress in himself. He could stand there and make me come to him, and take my legs off at the knees as soon as I came into reach.
Throwing the axe wasn’t an option. He’d probably be able to deflect it, and even if he didn’t, a dwarf’s skull was not the same as a human’s. Nothing but the most dead-on of direct hits would have a chance of ending the fight.
“What the hell are you two doing?” Dobbs asked. “Fight!”
“We are,” Badulf told him, without taking his eyes off of me.
“Well, do it faster!” Dobbs said.
I faked a throw and then charged at him, the axe raised up by my left shoulder. I was watching him for his move, and when he lifted his axe, I veered to the side and slashed at him as I passed on his left. He twisted with surprising nimbleness, moving just enough to avoid my blade. I had a feeling this was more a matter of economy of movement than of me pushing him to the limit. I pivoted around on the slick grass as I skidded to a stop, facing him again.
I stood regarding him for a moment, then charged at him, my axe held in the same position again. I faked the start of the same swing, but then darted around on his right. This time, I nicked his arm.
On the next pass, Badulf was ready for my direction change and I didn’t get close enough to even swing. On my fourth go-round, I threw the axe and dived wide to the side. I had to roll to avoid an overhead swing as the dwarf briefly took the offensive, but he resumed his original stance when my weapon winged its way back to my hand.
“Quit messing around!” the teaching assistant barked. “Get in there and mix it up!”
I wanted to tell him to fuck off, that I was fighting to win, not for his approval. He’d asked to see what I could do, and I was showing him.
Still, if his style was anything like Callahan’s, I did not want to piss him off.
I barreled in straight on, once again watching Badulf. As soon as I was within range of his blade, I leapt. His axe caught me in the leg, the blade passing cleanly through my shin. It would have been a severing blow. It was so quick that the pain was actually slow in coming, though it flared intensely for a second when it did.
My axe buried itself in his chest. I bounced off of him and fell to the ground. He stumbled backwards, but kept his feet.
“You need a better defense than dodging away,” Dobbs said to me, raising his clipboard. “What’s your name?”
“Bowman,” I said. “James.”
He marked something down.
“Go practice with them till Coach finishes sorting,” he said, pointing to another group of students. “You need to work on feinting and deflecting.”
“I know how to feint,” I said.
“You know to feint,” he said. “Move it!”
Badulf pulled my spectral axe out of himself with a grunt and handed it to me.
“That was a good, solid hit,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said.
Dobbs had stuck me in a group of girls armed with knives and short swords. They seemed like an agile bunch, but they stopped fighting when I approached.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hey,” one of them—a short, perky girl with really intense blue eyes and a short saber—said.
“So, what are we doing?” I asked.
“Just fucking around a bit,” she said. “Dobbs is a tool.”
“I noticed,” I said.
“Wanna spar?”
“Sure.”
The rest of the group resumed their fighting when we started. None of them seemed to be aiming “to kill”, but stopping their blows if they got through each other’s defenses.
Following Dobbs’s instructions, I focused on feinting and turning aside her blows. I was pretty good at parrying; that simply hadn’t been as good an option when faced with a dwarven battle axe as it was when my opponent was a slender human girl with a light blade.
We both did pretty well. My technique was rusty. Outside of school, all my practice had been private, mostly focusing on throwing at targets and swinging at the air. It was coming back to me, though.
“That’s a really pretty axe,” the girl said as we went through the motions of attacking and parrying each other.
“Thanks,” I said. I’d never thought of it in those terms, but it was clear I’d have to learn to take that sort of compliment graciously.
“Where’d you get it?”
“Well, my great, great, et cetera grandfather was a woodcutter,” I said. “And he lost his axe in—”
“Oh, is it a faerie axe?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said. Again, that wouldn’t have been my chosen descriptor. It was my ancestral weapon, not a pretty faerie axe. “We think it’s one of the originals.”
“That’s neat,” she said. “Mine’s my grandpa’s infantry sword, from the Chaos Wars. Doesn’t do much, but it’s magical.”
“Hey, guys,” Steff said, joining our group. He was wearing a loose, faded t-shirt and jeans with patched knees, and a belt with a pair of daggers on them. The skin around his left eye was discolored and swelling up.
“Hey, sweetie,” the girl I’d been sparring with said. “What happened?”
“I think Callahan has a crush on me,” Steff said.
“You’re way psycho, Steff,” the girl said. “Why were you late?”
“Thought we were meeting on the south field,” Steff said.
“Hey, Steff,” I said.
“Oh, hi. You’re Margot’s friend, right?” he said.
“Marlot,” I said.
“Margot’s friend Marlot?” he asked, teasingly.
Though he was undeniably a man, there was something almost girlish about his smile. His long hair was definitely girlier than Iason’s, and it looked like his body was a bit softer, but he was broader across the shoulders and closer to my height.
“Marlot’s friend Jamie,” I said. “I was hoping I’d run into you again.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I wanted to ask you if you know an elf named Iason,” I said. “Iason Manblood?”
“Oh, yeah, I totally know him,” Steff said.
“Okay, because I—”
“Yeah, I know every elf, everywhere,” Steff said. “We all know each other, don’t you know? And we can tell what trees are by looking at them, and we come into human villages and steal little boys to ass-rape.”
“Oh, fuck off,” I said. “I’m part elf, too, you know.”
“Sure, you’re one sixty-fourth pureblood elven princess,” he said. “You and every other blond in the world.”
“Hey, ditch the attitude,” I said. “I just met this guy, and I figured that being in Treehome, you might know him.”
“Well, for your information, I’m not in Treehome,” Steff said. “I’m in Harlowe. I don’t know any of the elves that go here, and I don’t like the ones I do know.”
“Okay, okay,” I said, holding up my hands. “Sorry I asked.”
“Hey, do you two treefucking sissies want to quit flirting and pay attention?” Callahan shouted, and I realized we’d missed the end of the sorting. Dobbs was heading over to the beginner group, and most of the rest of the eastern group was already watching Callahan.
“I’m offended by that,” Steff said. “He’s not a treefucker.”
“I never said I was an elf, I said I had elven blood,” I told him.
“Alright,” Callahan said. “The first one of you fags who decks the other one doesn’t get a failing grade for the day.”
I didn’t have time to finish sorting out the meaning of the words before Steff’s fist hit the side of my face. I couldn’t say if he put everything he had into it, but it didn’t feel like he was holding back.
“Right,” Callahan said, moving right along. “Now that I have everybody‘s attention, we’re going to get started. You’re here on this side of the field because you already know something about fighting. They say that experience is the best teacher. I’m going to give you the best learning experience you can get, short of going out and getting yourselves killed. I’m going to put you in fights with each other, throw you into situations that will test the limits of what I know you can do. The goal is that by the end of the year, you’ll be ready to jump into combat with any opponent. We’re not going to waste a whole lot of time on ‘technique’ or ‘form’. If I see you holding your sword by the wrong end, I’ll tell you.”
She started moving around the field, breaking groups up and setting them to tasks. One of the first people she grabbed was Steff. She ordered him to stand still and let three of the skirmishers practice their death blows. Maybe he was just putting on a front to piss her off, but he sure didn’t seem put out by this order.
“I saw a little bit of your hit and run shit on the dwarf,” she said when she got to me. “That’s not going to work against anybody who has a little bit of skill. You need to work on standing your ground enough to get in the good hits, even against a more powerful fighter.” She took some loops of leather cord off her belt, which unfolded into a hoop a yard across. She dropped it on the ground. “Stand here. For the rest of the period, you keep one foot in this hoop at all times.”
I stepped inside the hoop. Callahan whistled at a big guy from the skirmish team, who turned out to be a big girl when she got closer. She had a giant two-handed sword.
“I want you to try to hit Blingy-boy here,” she said. “Blingy, you work on dodging or parrying her blows for now. Let me see your axe.”
She held out her hands and I gave it to her. I half expected a backhand and a lecture about handing over my weapon, but then, I more-than-half expected retribution if I didn’t. She tossed it up in the air and caught it.
“Give me a downward chop,” she said to the short-haired female fighter, who obliged her with an overhead blow. She held my little axe with two hands like it was a staff and blocked the blow, then shoved it aside. “Diagonal swing,” she said, adjusting to a more normal grip, and this one she redirected. “Straight jab,” she said, and twisted aside. “Work on those,” she said to me, handing my axe back to me. “Your natural inclination is going to be to jump out of the way, so you need to focus on keeping one foot planted in the hoop,” she said. To my sparring partner, she said, “If he doesn’t, break his leg.”
The hulking fighter nodded.
I kept my foot inside the hoop, even when my opponent scored a hit, which was often.
I figured out early on that I could only block her blows outright if the attack was coming straight on and I used both hands. Otherwise, the force was enough to rip my axe out of my hands. It came back, fortunately. Callahan hadn’t made any provisions for weapon retrieval. Of course, she’d seen my axe come back the first time.
Callahan stopped by and halted our exercise several times, making us “replay” what we’d just done after giving one or the other of us a tip. I was slow in catching on to the fact that my opponent wasn’t just being used as a prop in my lesson. Her repertoire of attacks consisted only of really broad, powerful strokes. As I was getting better at defending against her attacks, she was getting better at landing them.
The jarring pain in my arms every time our weapons clashed faded quickly, as they were only spectral injuries, but by the end of the class period I was winded and sore from the effort of moving. I actually had to be faster to dodge by degrees than I did to throw myself out of the path of the sword.
“Good work, Blingy,” Callahan said to me at the end of class.
“Do I get a passing grade?” I asked.
“Did you hit Johnson first when I told you to?” she asked, and moved on without waiting for an answer.
@5, Phexar
> “I’m offended by that,” Steff said.
> “He’s not a treefucker.”
> “I never said I was an elf, I said I had
> elven blood,” I told him.
> I don’t think Steff was referring to Jamie’s
> validity as an elf. XD
The amusing thing of course is that Jamie just called all elves treefuckers
(and so did Steff but that is to be expected 
Eri
MOOK!
I don’t like the last line. Callahan said that the first person to punch would get a passing grade, but she never said that the other one wouldn’t be able to earn it. He earned it, so he should get it. Callahan seems like a very effective teacher, but to use grades to get people to follow your instructions immediately, all the time… And then not offering a way for him to get the grade anyway… meh.
The rest, I love!
@Dave, 32
Sci-fi channel is airing Doctor Who, we’re only about 3 weeks behind the BBC broadcasts. This friday looks like the last episode before the big 3 episode finale. I am so tempted to hijack a friend’s BBC signal just to see the season end, so I don’t have to avoid every British geek site on the internet.
I am really happy to see all of these characters from a second view point. Callahan is proving to be a really interesting character, and we can see that it’s not just Mack’s view that makes Dobbs an idiot.
Seriously, who do I have to kill to get into this class? Cuz I’ll totally do it.
Steff’s kind of a bitch.
I wonder if the big girl is Rocky…
I wonder what Jamie’s reaction will be to Callahan giving Steff the Nutcracker Suite?
Steff has always been a bitch. However, can anyone honestly be surprised that this is the reaction Jamie gets after the way Marlot made him look at the fair? Steff doesn’t know about the origins of the tree conversation. She just knows Jamie keeps being presumptuous. Or that’s how it looks.
OOK!
A.E. has written Doctor Who fanfic so I bet the “bad wolf” is deliberate.
“Badwulf” isn’t so much meant to be an out-and-out reference… but yes, there is a reason it jumped out at me on the list of potential names I was looking at.
@ David Argall 50:
Not to mention that fencers are at a major disadvantage against anyone using a pike or other long range weapon. I mean, it’s the same disadvantage all swordsment have, but it’s multiplied by the fact that a rapier can’t turn a blade as well as a longsword or broadsword. Put a fencer against an axeman, and that fencer has no defense aside from dodging.
@Argall: Actually, any serious medieval historian can tell you that armored men were not slow. Fencers would not have relied on their endurance and speed to outlast them. Fencing, as we generally think of it (not ARMA sparring) is designed for duels, and has nothing to do with the rise of gunpowder. Some of the best Italian masters of fencing were from the same period as the best Italian plate. Not only that, but they operated in different realms. A fencer was a civilian, first and foremost. He would not be fighting a man with a shield, who would be military. Civilian duelists did not carry around shields. Nor did street thugs, or anyone else of that ilk. Also, you don’t “figure out countertactics for later”. You lose one fight, you are done. Not only that, but it simply doesn’t work that way. All plans but the simplest go out the window once the shit hits the fan.
@ 60 Andy, I get the feeling that you are an armchair sparrer. A rapier, or any kind of fencing weapon is excellent at parries and disarms. I’m not sure why you think it is worse at parries (turning a blade) when that is exactly what it was designed to be able to do. Put a fencer against an axeman, and not only can the fencer redirect a blow, but he has a much better effective range of attack. Also, dodging? WTF? You don’t dodge in fencing, or at all with most weapons, except maybe once to get in range, and generally you will use a parry or some other covering technique with your weapon for that. You step out of distance, or move with the blow so it doesn’t hit so hard. And since fencing is a method where you don’t want to get in close, you shouldn’t have any reason to dodge. They aren’t tied to one another, you know
RE: treefuckers:
the way both Steff and Jamie respond, it appears that “treefucker” is a common derogatory term for elf, and is also regularly applied to those who are clearly elvenblood.
@ David (not Argall):
I’m not an armchair sparrer, actually. I’m a fencer who learned by practice with SCA members. I think it more than fair to say that I know what I’m talking about. A rapier may be good for parrying or deflections, but it cannot block. It is much weaker than other blades due to its thinness. The same things that make it an effective weapon against similarly armed foes (light and fast) make it a hazard against anyone with a heavier blade. It is much harder to turn a heavier weapon (think momentum) than it is a lighter one.
And yes, there is plenty of reason to dodge. I think what you have in mind is mainly single rapier. However, do not discount case (2 rapiers), rapier and dagger, rapier and buckler, rapier and soft object (such as a cloak), or rapier and hard object (such as a cane). All of these may not be historically accurate, but would be perfectly normal in an MU circumstance. Remember that MU is modernized history. A fencer can and will be facing any number of opponents.
As for not wanting to get in close, well, I have one response: draw cut. Or push cut. Basically, slicing someone open with the length of the blade. In my experience fighting and watching others fight (including a person that favors the draw cut with a rapier), you do have to be fairly close for a draw cut.
Finally, I would almost never use any covering technique other than an attack with my weapon. To parry with your rapier ties it up, meaning that anything you do must be extremely fast. I would use my off hand, or whatever happens to be in my off hand. And that’s if I did anything besides dodge.
@ Isobel:
I think Steff’s reacting much the way some people of color/ethnic-andor-religious minorities react, in the classical universe, to “well meaning” people whose words or statements create implications that all POC/members of the minority in question know each other (Oh, my doctor is Jewish, his name is [name], I bet you know him…) as well as to those who are “claiming” a racial identity based on one distant, most likely nonexistent ancestor (My great-great-great-great-grandmother was an Indian princess!) We can judge from her comments that claiming an elven greatity great may be something that many people do when it isn’t necessarily so.
We already know that her half-elfitude is an Issue for Steff, in much the same way that multiracial people in our own universe often face bullshit from both “sides”…her art is beautiful to Mack but “crap” because she was constantly compared to full elves, but she gets treated as a bishy dishy by humans who just see “Elf! Pretty! You must live in Treehome and be Totally At One andalsosupersexy…” She can’t ever fit in in elven society and human society won’t treat her as anything but an elf.
Her reaction is apparently offputting, yes, and not laden in politeness, but as well meaning as his words may appear to us, with our “inside the head” view of what’s up with Jamie — Steff doesn’t know Jamie, and Jamie is being rude – not intentionally so, but rude – in the way that he’s approaching her.
If Callahan and Dobbs keep drilling parrying into Jamie’s head, a spar between him and Mackenzie might be interesting. We’ve all seen what parrying gets you against her when she’s actually trying, after all, and so will he.
@Scornflakes, Clara:
“I know how to feint.” “You know /to/ feint.”
What’s actually being said here is ‘I know how to feint.’ ‘No, you know you *should* feint, but I don’t think you know how and when to do it for best effect.’ In a different context, it’s the difference between ‘I know how to drive a car.’ ‘No, you know how to put your foot on the pedal and make the car move.’
i gotta say, i disagree with the idea that jamie is being rude to steff. he asked a simple question of one college student to another, under the perfectly reasonably guess that they live in the same dorm. “Do you know Iason Manblood”? Steff says “yes” and then goes off on him. This is not the same thing as saying “oh you’re canadian, do you know _____” because the scale is not canada. the scale is one college, possibly even one dorm. and we know from normal MU that MOST ELVES half and up do live in treehome, so yeah, reasonably guess.
was there a dorm at your college where all the guys who wanted to pledge a frat chose? if you met one of those guys and you had already met another, might you ask if they know each other? this is what we are talking about, not asking if two jews in nyc know each other. steff is, as usual, demonstrating her ability to be “way psycho.”
oh, and pope lizbet…. you’re saying we CANT use info we have from inside jamie’s head to judge him and then you’re using info from inside steff’s head to judge her. jamie does not know steff’s half-blood status is an ISSUE nor does he know about any of her other ISSUES. he is reaction to, he has every reason to assume, a half elven male who would plausibly support the pride coalition to defend his right to fuck dudes when he wanted to. no other reason is necessary to explain why a half elven dude would be at a table for “faggots.”
so yeah, jamie asks one half elf dude if he knows another half elf dude, who probably lives in the same dorm, as far as he knows, and steff goes ape shit. classic case of someone with a whole suitecase of issues expecting everyone they meet to already know to walk on eggshells. if steff wants jamie to know about her issues and treat her accordingly, she has the obligation to tell him, once, or make sure someone else tells him. she cannot just expect him to know out of the blue.
Quote – “… For the rest of the period, you keep one foot in this hoop at all time.”
Should that be ‘at all times’?
@ an elf girl:
You missed it entirely.
Steff has no reason to be polite to Jamie, when Jamie is asking questions that make him look like an ignorant ass.
Us knowing what we know about Jamie and Steff might tell us, the readers, both why Jamie doesn’t see what he’s doing as potentially offensive or rude, and why Steff is reacting in a way some people might parse as an overreaction.
Considering that my first college campus had a selection of the “oh, you’re X, you must know Y” that even I experienced, I think your idea of scale is off, but oh well.
I suppose it just disappoints me in Steff, because she’s been so adamant about breaking Mack of the same habit, and because she is aggressively different about so much. Also, I think it was Iason who mentioned that most elfbloods prefer to live in Treehome, so it’s a short skip from there to thinking these two live in the same hall. Being as I’m pretty sure Steff knows Treehome = where those of elvish extraction live, I gotta say “what the fuck” to her.
Is it sequential that she is annoyed? Yes. But did I expect her to pull a Mack on a freshman who’s also elfy? No. It hasn’t ruined Steff as a character, I just thought she’d be a little less whiny about it. Plus I think she’d probably enjoy getting spanked by Amy, so extending Mack’s punishment to her wouldn’t be much of one.
@70, pope lizbet
I disagree that steff has “no reason to be polite” to jamie. Everyone else in the class is being reasonably civil to him, as expected of people who do not know each other. i really don’t think the tone of his trees question was earnest, as in, i dont think he came off as really thinking all elves can tell trees, to anyone but steff, who has a giant stick up her ass about elves. i think it was a lot more likely to be an exasperated, say something inaudible to a friend then turn to the nearest elfblood and be like, look, can YOU tell trees by looking at them” and they might think it was mildly odd, but the expected answer is obviously “no.” so i think we are starting from different assumptions on whether or not steff is justifiably already hating jamie. one odd question from a freshman at a welcome fair? most ppl would shrug that off.
Outside of any character’s perspective, steff hassled jamie first, goodnaturedly (about marlot’s name and his name, and whose friend he was), and set the tone as casual. jamie asked a very straightforward question. “do you know iason, iason manblood?”
steff answered in the affirmative, and when jamie proceeded to take that at face value, she blew the fuck up.
say this is a college with 15k students, less then 10% black kids, so less than 1500 black kids. furthermore, the residence halls are grouped into elective groups, (like at duke) and one of the groups is for black kids. almost all the black kids on campus live in this house. if, at a welcome fair, an apparently white kid turned to black kid not wearing basketball clothes, and said, are you on the basketball team? that would be weird, and the black guy and his friends would justifiably make fun of the white kid behind his back. but then, if they turned out to have a class together, and the black kid was joking around, and generally seeming cool, and the white kid proceeded to ask, hey, do you know (name of someone in the black housing group)? and the black kid proceeded to flip the FUCK out on the white kid (who, unbeknownst to black kid, has a black grandparent and black cousins), and started about all the stereotypes of black people, you would say that black kid was over-reacting. in the same way, i think steff is exhibiting her bitchy side in full colors and over-the-fuck-reacting to jamie’s question.
In Jamie’s defense on the Steff argument, Iason did tell Jamie that ONE half-elf at MU didn’t live at Treehome. There are those with less elven blood who don’t live there, but Steff is the only student with that much elf blood who chooses to live elsewhere. I think that this puts the scale of the assumption in perspective, making it far less of a racist comment than it would otherwise seem.
On the rapier issue: Yes, many people in that world wear enough armor to make a typical rapier less than ideal, especially after you factor in the enchantment of the armor. Then you have to consider that last bit again: enchantment. Enchantment changes everything that we base our assumptions on. We know from some of the Thaum lectures that it is easier to enhance an existing attribute, so a rapier could be made to make the wielder extraordinarily fast. Additional layers of enchantment could be added to increase its ability to deflect, to wound, to pierce armor, to find gaps in armor, etc. quite nearly ad infinitum. You also have to consider that we are talking about rapiers here, not foils, which are what most people think of when they think of fencing. A fencing foil is practically useless in a real fight against a real sword because it is a sport weapon, designed to be used only in the sport against other foils. And before it comes up, I have done some fencing, which I suck at, but I also have a friend who used to teach fencing, from whom I picked up most of what I know about fencing.
@ elf girl:
No, I wouldn’t say he was overreacting and the fact that he “had Black cousins” wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference, but I’m not about to start a fight over here. Friends are one thing, people you barely know are another. Steff is touchy, I think she has good reason to be touchy.
We disagree, big deal.
you think that in the above scenario, it would be appropriate, non-overreacting behavior for the black kid to start yelling at the white kid when he asked him if he knew someone?
you’re right, you and i definitely disagree.
On the rapier issue–looking at the age of swords from a couple of centuries later, we forget that different kinds of swords were used at different times in history. Rapiers were a feature of the 16th and 17th centuries, and were never a military weapon, being too light for such use, although very good in civilian use to keep an opponent at bay, or for dueling. By those centuries, persons who would would carry a sword had abandoned mail or plate, except on the battlefield, and military swords, such as the saber, were heavier, intended as they were mostly for cutting. In the days of armor, the hand-and-a-half or two-handed longsword was the usual fighting sword.
In early modern times, armor was gradually abandoned as guns became more and more common, and to lighten the load on horses and men. Since no armor was going to stop a Minie’ ball, virtually no one wore armor of any kind after Napoleonic times.
You know I’ve been asked “do you know ?” quite a few times in my day, and it’s never wandered out the mouth of someone who didn’t come from a place where that was likely to be the case. My current SO is from a close-knit little plains state town of less than 50thou and it’s more or less like that. The Jewish people attend the same synagogue. The immigrant population all settled in the same part of town. So on and so forth. If you ask a person if they know a member of their personal demographic it’s more about finding a way to connect with them than being an insensitive prick. Don’t get me wrong. I try to break them of that habit every single time I hear it, but I can see how it gets picked up.
Jamie has absolutely no reason not to think Steff knows Iason. People from the same dorm tend to get chummy and since Steff’s a half-elf and all but one of them lives in Treehome. Jamie was just unlucky enough to ask that question to the one half-elf who doesn’t. On Steff’s end, that question is really fucking offensive to the rest of the world and considered a nasty way to group people together based on poor metrics and she has every right to be touchy, and that’s not even taking her previous history with other elves into account. I think they both just need a little perspective and I hope they get to know eachother better.
Just to throw out my warped opinion but in single combat I say stick with a flail and shield. Add some light armor and your average swordsman will give you a wide berth.
Oh on a side note Pax is already a language and a race in another book.
I belong to several minority groups. I get asked “do you know. . . ?” a lot. It bugs me. I’m not likely to fly off the handle at it though, but I MIGHT, if the person doing the asking had been a jerk on a previous occasion. Jamie wouldn’t have looked like a jerk if Marlot hadn’t gone off on him for asking the dreaded tree question, making the whole situation look like what it wasn’t. (I decided at that moment that I would not intentionally befriend her if she was real. That’s some good character development there- when you can get REALLY annoyed with fictional characters.)
Well, clumping people in groups is an instinctive thing. I know I’m not the only one who’s done pretty much what Steff did here; “Sure, there’s only five million of us living in . I probably knew his dad or something.” Still, people usually get the point pretty quick. And sometimes it pays to take a wild guess or not be an asshole about questions like that.
I found this mixed melee first class really intriguing. I wonder if Mack’s view of the class would be different if she’d have seen that display.
I get the “Do you know” thing sometimes (“hey! you live in england do you know my friend Bob from Newcastle?” “Oh’ you’re Pagan do you know susie the satanist?” etc)
It’s annoying.
I don’t fly of the handle as I don’t feel that it would achieve anything but I understand it when others do.
I suspect in Steff’s case the fairly simple “everyone else is in Treehome” doesn’t even occur to her, what she’s being asked is “you’re a half elf, do you know this other half elf?” He didn’t actiually say “this other elf who goes to MU” so from the point of view of a snap judgement about a guy who thinks all elves can indentify trees just by looking at them her reaction, if extreme, seems reasonable.
OK, small rant ahead. Why are there no paladins in this story? I don’t necessarily mean that in a literal sense. I mean no one has ethics. They have issues, and codes, and occasionally even compassion, but no one, not one single character has shown ethics. They are either religious bigots, or so open minded that they are willing to accept torture, or willing to just stand by while the coach beats the crap out of someone to prove a point. Isn’t there anyone who would stand up to Callahan and say just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. She is absolutely right in that people must be able to be able to resist violence with force or else be overrun. The problem is her first object lesson renders this worthless by allowing the cruelty to win. One should learn what to fight for before leaning how to fight. In stories, these paladins are characters like Superman or Sir Lancelot, but in real life they can be Winston Churchill or Martin Luther King, people who inspire the many to join. We don’t know the full back story behind why humans despite all their frailties have become the dominant species here, but I’d like to think it is the idea that a moral principal can hold thousands of weak individuals into a force that can stand against the sort of violence that Callahan demonstrated. I was kind of hoping that was what we would see in this chapter.
So does anyone know about the Moar schedule updates?
I’m a bit confused but if someone can tell me it is random then I am content with that.
@ JT 80:
It’s random. She updates it as much as she can, I think, but there’s no set schedule.
@80 JT cool: Every weekday, but she’s currently on vacation until Monday. In my experience, it’s generally around midnight.
@81 Andy: Why must you tell these lies?
Yea, the updates of GnuMU are scheduled for Mon-Fri, but I believe she said Friday was a total skip. I just expected a post for Wed and Thurs.
I asked about the update schedule on the main story (where she posted about the vacation), and she edited it to say that the rest of the week was a no for this story too.
And that’s all the gnus that’s good gnus, from Gary Gnu…
Sorry for the lack of updatesm guys… I’d say my “vacation week” was poorly planned, but that would imply that it was planned at all.
Ae: Don’t worry about the updates: what’s the point of taking a break if you have to keep running into the office?
hey, #82…..someone DID stand up to callahan…..Mack. Remember? she got the stuffing beat out of her?
@82
Because they’re all teenagers, who have the moral and ethical backbone of mudcrabs, and I don’t mean those incredibly difficult monsters from the Eldar Scrolls, I’m talking about crawlfish. Mmm, yummy.
Three cheers for haiku.
Something anyone can do.
If that’s what they choose.
@ #82
How does Callahan’s actions render her point worthless? I think given the example they make her point quite clearly. Good intentions and claims of ‘moral superiority’ don’t mean squat when someone bigger and stronger decides they want to beat your face in, when it comes to that the only thing that’ll save you is being able to beat the other guy’s face in harder.
in response to 82- why no paladins? Because we are dealing with a bunch of eighteen year olds living away from home for the first time mostly. In order to develop a solid moral code, you have to have seen enough of the world to actually come to the realisation that the world is flawed. You have to be mature enough and knowledgeable enough to say “this is right and this is wrong, not because it’s what I was told but because I have seen both in action.” Of the people in the MUniverse, I actually think Mack may become such a person, which on its face is preposterous, but seriously, she’s tolerated injustice her whole life, and if she sees unfairness happening to other people, she’s liable to actually NOTICE it, which not everyone does. She’s showing the tendencies already. She’s the most notable example but she’s not the ONLY person to have tried to improve things in some small way.
Also, I think in her own way, Callahan may be making the world a better place, one competent fighter at a time. Want to defend the world? Gotta know how to defend yourself, first. All the moral highground in the world won’t help you if some dictator offed you with the apparently still viable excuse “but they were different, and therefore doubtlessly up to no good.”
GOD I love Steff. <3
Alexandra, where did you learn to write fights so well? Do you do any martial arts? Hell, some of this stuff sounds like it was written by someone who is in ARMA or HEMA…