yurodivuie (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} yurodivuie) wrote,@ 2009-06-12 22:49:00 |
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Kung Fu and Gaming, Sequentially
Started learning the lion dance tonight.
In the days of yore, in China, allegedly, the lion dance was one way of demonstrating a kung fu school's prowess. The heads of the lions often had swords concealed in them in case things got out of hand when dancing with other schools. Essentially, you could see based on the tricks they did and how well they were performed the strength of their stances and their endurance. In the jerking of the head, the power of a student's strikes could be demonstrated. It's an incredibly exhausting performance as well.
I am fortunate, in some ways. I am big (by this I mean tall and relatively heavy compared to most other students). I will not be jumping on top of people and balancing on their legs/shoulders. I am the one that will be jumped on, for most tricks, it seems. And I can handle that; all it takes is a good horse stance. Tonight all I did was learn to do stacks, and I had the lightest partner, which helped. He would jump up onto my thighs with his butt in my face, and then we would slowly rotate. It was a lot of fun. If you want to see the lion dance, we'll be opening a new school in Redmond on August 9th; I'm pretty sure the dancing will be open to the public. And you can see me sweat and breath through my mouth!
In my regular class, I have nearly surpassed the little 11 year old girl. She only comes once a week! I already know more form techniques, but she is farther along in the basic exercises of the class. Someday! It is, however, not an advantage to be big in regular class. I get worn out a little too quick, an don't have enough strength to do frog-jump situps at the end of class. I tried on Monday... and ended up losing my breath for a good fifteen minutes once I finished. Being big does give me an advantage when attacking though... I can blunder through most people's stances, and if I want them to stop advancing I can just hold still.
One of (the many) odd things about learning Kung Fu is how it informs my roleplaying. Roleplaying is an odd hobby; violence is fetishized and studied intensely entirely independent of its actual execution. I played various violence-heavy games for most of my gaming career (and enjoyed them; I am not very deep), but relied on movie tropes to inform what I was actually trying to reproduce. Which is strange; not quite black-face strange, but a little weirder than playing rockband all the time and never learning an instrument. And also there is a bit of an air of dehumanization in the process, since combat is reduced from the full experience to a few pithy highlights. I'm not really explaining this well. Here's an example.
In one of Andy's games, I play myself, and I got in a fight with another martial artist. I'm starting to see how hard it is to model an actual fight; in game I was trying to visualize the opponents attacks and what counter would be appropriate for the situation. I don't know if it made it more or less fun. The more I learn, the less likely I am to use flashy, cinematic attacks, in favor of direct blocks, strikes, and stancework. Anyone else experienced something like that in play? The more you know, the less spectacular it plays out. Also, until I started learning to fight, I always preferred characters that favored mental abilities, and relied on magic or other special effects rather than physical prowess in conflicts. Now I seem less interested in those character types. Perhaps you only decide that there is some sort of virtue in rigorous physical training when you've tried?
Started learning the lion dance tonight.
In the days of yore, in China, allegedly, the lion dance was one way of demonstrating a kung fu school's prowess. The heads of the lions often had swords concealed in them in case things got out of hand when dancing with other schools. Essentially, you could see based on the tricks they did and how well they were performed the strength of their stances and their endurance. In the jerking of the head, the power of a student's strikes could be demonstrated. It's an incredibly exhausting performance as well.
I am fortunate, in some ways. I am big (by this I mean tall and relatively heavy compared to most other students). I will not be jumping on top of people and balancing on their legs/shoulders. I am the one that will be jumped on, for most tricks, it seems. And I can handle that; all it takes is a good horse stance. Tonight all I did was learn to do stacks, and I had the lightest partner, which helped. He would jump up onto my thighs with his butt in my face, and then we would slowly rotate. It was a lot of fun. If you want to see the lion dance, we'll be opening a new school in Redmond on August 9th; I'm pretty sure the dancing will be open to the public. And you can see me sweat and breath through my mouth!
In my regular class, I have nearly surpassed the little 11 year old girl. She only comes once a week! I already know more form techniques, but she is farther along in the basic exercises of the class. Someday! It is, however, not an advantage to be big in regular class. I get worn out a little too quick, an don't have enough strength to do frog-jump situps at the end of class. I tried on Monday... and ended up losing my breath for a good fifteen minutes once I finished. Being big does give me an advantage when attacking though... I can blunder through most people's stances, and if I want them to stop advancing I can just hold still.
One of (the many) odd things about learning Kung Fu is how it informs my roleplaying. Roleplaying is an odd hobby; violence is fetishized and studied intensely entirely independent of its actual execution. I played various violence-heavy games for most of my gaming career (and enjoyed them; I am not very deep), but relied on movie tropes to inform what I was actually trying to reproduce. Which is strange; not quite black-face strange, but a little weirder than playing rockband all the time and never learning an instrument. And also there is a bit of an air of dehumanization in the process, since combat is reduced from the full experience to a few pithy highlights. I'm not really explaining this well. Here's an example.
In one of Andy's games, I play myself, and I got in a fight with another martial artist. I'm starting to see how hard it is to model an actual fight; in game I was trying to visualize the opponents attacks and what counter would be appropriate for the situation. I don't know if it made it more or less fun. The more I learn, the less likely I am to use flashy, cinematic attacks, in favor of direct blocks, strikes, and stancework. Anyone else experienced something like that in play? The more you know, the less spectacular it plays out. Also, until I started learning to fight, I always preferred characters that favored mental abilities, and relied on magic or other special effects rather than physical prowess in conflicts. Now I seem less interested in those character types. Perhaps you only decide that there is some sort of virtue in rigorous physical training when you've tried?
