main
side
curve
  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Block, Parry, Strike! - How to use a lightsaber

Discussion in 'Fan Fiction and Writing Resource' started by lightsaber_index, Jun 9, 2006.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. whiskers

    whiskers Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    May 19, 2005
    It was in there, you just missed it. I don't blame you because I accidentally hid it. The fic's called The Surviving Light and here's a non-hidden link.
     
  2. Jennifer_Lyn

    Jennifer_Lyn Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 8, 2005
    wow! i come back after the weekend and this thread is full of flashing saber duels!

    thank you all for posting these snippets and for your accompanying analyses. i learned a ton reading through all of this!

    Fanficfan: yup, it definitely came across that the Jedi was quite clearly overmatched. i liked the way you used the fans as obstacles and also as one of the tools the combatants had at their disposal. very nice duel, with plenty at stake.

    Earthknight: very nice, fast paced action here. you've definitely put forth some very strong visuals and i can easily follow the action. knowing that Ben is isolated from any source of help builds the tension nicely. i liked how you described the duel as a dance.

    Kidan: i like the use of emotion as fuel in this duel. i like how they're evenly matched, while coming from very different perspectives. the duel itself is quite powerful and very visual, while actually containing very simple descriptions.

    Ish: Leia's confidence and her thinking process are both evident, not just in her inner thoughts, but also in her fighting technique and her response to Vader's attack. the descriptions here are clear and powerful and i like how the dialogue works within the duel.

    ophelia: your breakdown beats anything i could try to write here, except to say that, yes, everything you tried to do with this duel came across as you intended. i really like the idea of using the effects guy's techniques in the descriptions. something i never would have thought of, but it works beautifully. and i just enjoyed the poetic descriptions you used within the duel itself. it was beautiful, if something so visceral can be so.

    whiskers: great combination of emotion and technique here. the comparisons between what had occurred with Dooku was helpful in visualizing "old" Ben moving more smoothly through the duel.

    sabarte: i liked how Qui-Gon's connection to the living force was shown when he pulled power from the tree roots. the desperation he was feeling under the influence of the narcosis was powerfully displayed through his desperate swings and aggressive tactics. to mirror that, i like how Dooku's fighting style came off very 'reserved'.

    Yod: *waves* this may sound strange, and i haven't seen many episodes so sue me if i'm wrong, but this has a very Samauri Jack feel to it. something about the descriptions. i dunno. anyway, i absolutely love the way you've identified the swords with starlight, it sets them apart from lightsabers quite clearly. i think it's also very impressive that you've managed to write a full duel with nary a single block or parry, yet we can clearly see what has happened. nice job!
     
  3. lightsaber_index

    lightsaber_index Jedi Youngling

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2006
    Just a quickie, official reminder type thing for you all. (Note JL's use of capital letters.)

    It is polite and helpful to respond to the post before you when posting excerpts.

    That is all. :D


    EDIT: ok, i lied. that is not all. *ahem*

    You all posted some lovely bits and pieces of your lightsaber battles. Many of you also alluded to further duels within the same fics. Know what that means? They are ripe for indexing!!!!

    Just PM the lightsaber_index or Jennifer_Lyn and get your fic archived here in the index. Simply fill out the handy-dandy form in the first post!

    Now that really is all.
     
  4. poor yorick

    poor yorick Ex-Mod star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA VIP - Game Host

    Registered:
    Jun 25, 2002
    Yeah, I guess I should probably figure out which of my stories are lightsaber-centric and submit them too. You'd think that would have occurred to me by now. :p

    Ish wrote: Is the comment about my living room a compliment or insult?

    Well, I didn't mean it as an insult . . . I think I already mentioned choreographing duels in my living room with an umbrella or a 2" x 2". There's just a particular cause-and-effect quality to duels that were plotted out physically. It allows you to see you can't do X because the other person is obviously going to do Y, etc.

    Besides, you've told me that you physically work out duels, even if you didn't do that one. :p

    whiskers: Ah, thank you. :D And sorry for missing it. Fanfic's style sheet makes me bananas with the way that its links are semi-invisible. I suppose I should go whine about it in Comms, where there's a slight chance someone will actually see my complaint and change the code.

    sabarte (Got to a new person! Ha!): First of all, I am absolutely in love with this duel. Dooku comes across as harsh, but strangely fascinating--perhaps because, as you said, neither we nor Qui-Gon knows what he wants. And there's an odd ambiguity in the "lesson" he's trying to teach Qui-Gon: "Every man has his breaking point. Know this."

    We don't really know who that comment is primarily meant to describe at that moment, Qui-Gon or Dooku, but there is a raw truth to it. If you've chosen a life that is going to be filled with extreme situations, knowing your breaking point is actually essential to your survival and the survival of people who are depending on you. Arguably, it's the fact that Anakin Skywalker refuses to learn this lesson that leads to his fall. (I have no breaking point! My cape allows the wearer to fly! Etc.)

    I don't know that I can quite buy the "cruel to be kind" rationale, however, especially given how Dooku leaves Qui-Gon, but you've done a wonderful job of placing Dooku just on the knife's edge of Jedi acceptability. On the surface, Dooku is teaching Qui-Gon a useful--if brutal--lesson, which is at least better learned from a Master than an enemy. On the other hand . . . there's just something off about Dooku's manner. Perhaps he's too silent and mysterious--Qui-Gon appears unable to grasp the significance of the lesson on his own, and a reasonable teacher would recognize that and explain.

    I loved your punctuation of the scene with the repeated command "Again." That did indeed create the sense that the cycle of danger and humiliation would never end.

    Dooku's lightsaber flashed down to where his face was a second ago, scoring the dirt.

    I liked the verbs--"flashed" and "scoring." The second one has more than one connotation--for whatever reason, this duel is definitely about who is scoring one-up on who. Nice thumbnail sketch of the threat to Qui-Gon as well--Dooku is slicing into the dirt where Qui-Gon's face was a second ago. Maybe Dooku could have pulled that blow at the last second and maybe he couldn't have, but the implied willingness to cut his apprentice's head open is there.

    Sweat was running down his face - and then he realized it was not sweat, but tears.

    Sabarte, UR breaking my <3! :_| I have no idea what the relationship between Master and apprentice is here, but I suspect it's . . . intense, for the duel to have gotten so personal. Interesting that you made the two so close in age, as well--10 years is closer than Anakin and Obi-Wan, who consider themselves "brothers" once Anakin is knighted. One thought that comes to mind is that a person needs the the most desperate amount of force and harshest tactics to put down someone who's not that far behind them in terms of skill. An adult sparring with a child can afford to be very gentle. A newly-minted Knight may have to pull out all the stops to defeat a senior Padawan. Dooku is not really presenting himself in a position of strength here, no matter how soundly he defeats Qui-Gon.

    Once
     
  5. 1Yodimus_Prime

    1Yodimus_Prime Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 13, 2004
    (Don't worry about it. Take your time)

    I remember reading about Exar Kun for the first time in a friend's sourcebook - Alion_Sangre on these boards - something about the history of the Sith or weapons or something like that. Anyway, it showed off his lightsaber and explained a few of the tricks that made him so unbeatable in his time. One of them was that Makashi trick, though it wasn't called anything I don't think. I always thought it was extremely clever. I also like the fact that they identified him as having a double-bladed lightsaber long before Ep. 1 started production. Kinda gives a bit of validation to his character - Maul was the copycat, not the other way around. I can only imagine how things would've turned out if Maul had been half as good as Kun.

    That's the kind of guy I'd love to have a chance to play with in a fight scene, if I ever get some time. Remorsless, athletic, skilled, and clever? You can't beat that.
     
  6. poor yorick

    poor yorick Ex-Mod star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA VIP - Game Host

    Registered:
    Jun 25, 2002
    Yodimus posted: I can only imagine how things would've turned out if Maul had been half as good as Kun.

    Well, Maul does end up being half the man he used to be . . . AHAHAHAHAH--::knight with rubber chicken shows up, looks at me, pulls gun from behind rubber chicken, shoots me in the head:: HAAAA! ::thud::

    Anyway.

    I agree with Jennifer_Lyn that your story has a faintly Samurai Jack feel to it--actually, it has very much your own style, and that style is very visual. You mentioned imagining a panoramic shot narrowing down to a view of two men--that was a great technique and you used it very well. Retaining the third-person omniscient POV (or possibly third person objective) does indeed create a sense of emotional coldness, but your dramatic "camera work" and descriptions keep the passage from being boring.

    Your sweeping "zoom shot" and comparisons of the two warriors to things in nature (wood and marble, starlight) connects them to the world that's bigger and older than humanity, and helps give their fight an epic, mythic feeling. Kidan actually stepped back and used an omniscient narrator technique when he described Jacen and Tenel Ka as "mother and father, light and dark." There seems to be something about that tactic of pulling back and connecting your characters to forces on a cosmic scale that creates a very mythic feel.

    (For anyone who has no idea what I'm talking about in the POV department, check out this page on:

    point of view)

    I'm keeping that in mind for future reference. [face_thinking]

    I loved the way you used language and metaphor to infuse your scene with emotional content, BTW. You write as if the cityscape itself were alive and dangerous--an animal ready to gobble things up:

    Tangled roads walled in by the unknown, ceilinged by gloom, and paved in empty confusion, fall away toward every direction like a starburst. Their black starry spires impale the sky and their foundations devour the landscape.

    You give two really active verbs: "impale" and "devour," to an inanimate thing, a city. It seemed like what you were doing was displacing the emotions of the two characters onto their environment. It is not, for instantce, the city spires that have their sites set on impaling anyone or anything. ;) It's the dark-white- and bright-black-cloaked characters who are set on impaling each other. (Incidentally, I love those color descriptions, even though I have no idea what they would look like. :p) Personifying an environment and using metaphor and imagery to make it seem as if things and places are expressing feelings can allow you to convey your characters' feelings without having them appear to emote at all. I use this technique a lot when writing about characters like Obi-Wan, since he's just not going to sit you down and tell you what a bad day he's having. :p Having him appear silent and stoic while everything around him goes to hell is more his "James Bond" style. (Actually, in one of the Clone Wars cartoons--which were done by the guy who does Samurai Jack--had Obi-Wan trying to sleep in a twisted-up wreck of something in the rain. He never complains--he doesn't even have any dialogue. He just can't find a spot to sleep where water isn't dripping on him. Finally he just sits up and kind of huddles in his cloak, with this priceless look on his face. It's kind of like: "Typical. Welcome to my life. Please don't trip over any of the pitchforks on your way down the stairs." The effect is hilarious and strangely affecting--he seems very human and very vulnerable, despite having expressed almost no emotion at all. His unhappiness is displaced onto the wretched environment around him.)

    As for the speed of a RL swordfight, I've also been told that such fights would likely be over almost before they started. I've heard that if you can't kill your opponent within four seconds, your chance of survival starts dropping like a rock. I've heard the same thing
     
  7. sabarte

    sabarte Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Sep 8, 2005
    ophelia: Thanks, yeah. I don't do any sort of swordfighting, but the height thing sort of comes with writing Dooku and Qui-Gon. Qui-Gon has about an inch to grow, and isn't quite comfortable in his height, while Dooku, yes, knows exactly where his death zone is. :). The retracting the blade comes from Dooku in the AOTC novelization, though we never see him use it.

    Qui-Gon's kind of bouncy and flippy in TPM, relatively, which makes more sense for short person than one his height. Maybe trauma ;). Dooku's supposed to be a fencer, so I'm sure being tall is something he's very aware of. Writing this duel, I recalled some of Christopher Lee's remarks on his height in his autobiography (AKA "I'm surrounded by midgets"). The height thing also would apply when writing Vader (though I'm not sure how the six extra inches from the suit quite work) or Qui-Gon. Short folks like Luke or most women are at a bit of a disadvantage.

    10 years is the canon age difference (Qui-Gon's 60 in TPM, Dooku's 80 in AOTC), and Dooku from implied canon started training Qui-Gon between 20 and 23. So yeah, they're quite close in age. But older teachers are maybe a little more secure in their authority than somebody who is still in the Padawan age range, and like certain new teachers I know, Dooku's trying to keep a formal distance between him and Qui-Gon.

    Jedi are pretty vicious- they're sending kids out at 13 into combat. As for relative skill levels, Dooku wouldn't pull something like this unless he was confident he could keep an intoxicated Qui-Gon with a live blade from killing him, himself from killing Qui-Gon, and Qui-Gon from killing himself by accident. . And it's easy to kill or maim yourself by accident with a lightsaber, I imagine.

    To be fair to Dooku, there were a couple of "Jedi" outs Qui-Gon could have taken that were the "right answer". Dooku never actually told Qui-Gon to attack him, it was just heavily implied (as is addressed later in the fic). This was very much the moment to back down and go "No, this is stupid" and he -almost- does, but not quite. :)

    To be fair to Qui-Gon, Dooku was kinda looking for an excuse to kick his butt. o_O
     
  8. poor yorick

    poor yorick Ex-Mod star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA VIP - Game Host

    Registered:
    Jun 25, 2002
    sabarte wrote: Short folks like Luke or most women are at a bit of a disadvantage.

    Ah, but only offensively! :D Without getting into excessive detail, it's easier to defend the borders of Rhode Island than Texas. The's just less territory to worry about covering. Women have a lower center of gravity, too, in the hips rather than the shoulders, so we're harder to knock off balance. I won't bore people with specifics at the moment, but there is something to, "Size matters not."

    I also found this really cool fan film today, called Art of the Saber, made by two brothers who can make a saber fight look beautiful. They sure look like they've trained in weapons forms, although I admit I was mostly watching the pretty saber blades sweep around and not trying to analyze anything "real." They've put in the Hong Kong action film moves that Nick Gillard uses (lots of bouncing and flippping), :p and they've reproduced all the good stuff like saber noises and the flash when the blades cross, etc. Their blades don't shine that convincingly when they're still, but they aren't still very often. :D I admit I'm not a connoisseur of fan films, but their saber fight is the best-choreographed amateur one I've ever seen.

    (There's kind of a long intro that didn't do a lot for me, so you might want to fast-forward through it. Or maybe you'll like it--the little bit of a story involved does give the fight some depth.)
     
  9. sabarte

    sabarte Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Sep 8, 2005
    Isn't this the thread for boring people with specifics? I'd like to hear more. How much do differences in physical strength (often size-related) come into play?
     
  10. poor yorick

    poor yorick Ex-Mod star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA VIP - Game Host

    Registered:
    Jun 25, 2002
    Okay . . . well, you asked. Prepare boron torpedoes . . . :p

    Well . . . if you had two fighters who were equal in every way except physical size and strength, then the bigger, stronger one would win out. However, pairs of people generally don't come like that, especially since fencers of different sizes inevitably learn to adapt their fighting style to their physical capabilities. (Or if they don't, they're in trouble. :p) So if you're looking at two opponents of different sizes, you're also looking at two completely different fencing techniques, the strengths of each of which are designed to counter the other. In my experience, who wins any fight--physically mismatched or no-- depends on three primary things. One, on who knows his or her craft better, two, on who is more creative and surprising with their moves, and three, on who is more ******* insane. :p

    A friend of mine is not especially physically imposing--he's sort of medium everything. I can fight him without having to resort to desperate tricks for getting through some enormous "death zone." However, he's studied various martial arts since he was a kid, beginning with Aikido, which stresses balance and finding the weak point in your opponent's stance. He has an excellent sense of when each part of his body should be where, which is the key to speed and precision on both offense and defense. So he's definitely put in the grunt work. He's also a lunatic. Now that he's in his mid 30's and not as resilient, he's more cautious than he once was, but he is definitely the person who will push the intensity of a fight past the point where more sensible people want to go. (He'll also *not* do that if you ask him, which is the only reason why I'll spar with him.) He's quite happy sporting large welts and bruises that turn colors not usually seen on living flesh, and if you're not, don't invite him to fight all-out against you. Now, if your reaction is, "That's stupid. Who would do that for the sake of what's basically a game?" you would be echoing the sentiments of most of the people who square off against him--and these would also be the people whose nerves fail at the last minute, and get "killed" in the moment when they realize, "OMG, he's nuts. This just ain't worth it." He also does weird things that most people don't expect. Even in an (almost) anything-goes fight with padded "toy" swords, I wouldn't have realized you were "allowed" to do some of the things he does if I hadn't seen him do them. One of his favorites is to throw himself at the ground, roll into a ball, and snap out of it inside his opponent's guard, "slicing him in half" before the guy has any idea what the hell it was this nutjob just did. This is apparently an actual move in some obscure martial art or other, and he's quite proficient at it.

    There are obviously other ways to be an effective fighter besides being a total loon--in fact, my friend's major weakness is his willingness to take excessive risks. I don't know how many times I've gotten him in the back as he tried to pull some bizzare-o move that involved him turning away from the "enemy." (*Sometimes* he can "use the Force" and block over his shoulder when he's not looking at you. Sometimes he can't.) He's just a good example of someone who's physically unimposing, but who has the skill, single-mindedness, and creativity to be much more effective with a blade than you would expect just by looking at him.

    He's really a mid-sized fighter, and a guy too, so he's better compared to Ewan McGregor's Obi-Wan than, say, Princess Leia.

    My experience involving small female fencers is limited--mostly because there aren't very many. On Earth, anyway, there isn't an even distribution of size and gender among people willing to attack each other for fun. So most of the time, when I talk about things that can work for small people, I'm talking about myself, on modern Earth, using modern Earth stuff. There's probably a world of other tricks out there, I just don't know them, because history has not been full of
     
  11. DarthIshtar

    DarthIshtar Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Mar 26, 2001
    The point about the bigger/stronger has merit, but there are two things that also count: 1) motivation and 2) the element of surprise. For example, if Leia faced off against Vader, but he had a moral motivation to not kill her without a very fair fight, he might want to level the playing field. You made the point about the surprising moves. Insanity can be a part or not of it. One of my favorite duels that I've done was between Padme and Vader when she has just had to surrender her children and when she's lost Anakin forever and the only thing she has left of him is his lightsaber, so she takes it up against him. She knows that she's committing suicide, but it is the one way she can fight back against Vader at that point and it's a powerful motivation. And yes, she does die.

    There is also something to be said for the fact that no two warriors will fight the same. The thing that I loved about the ROTS duel is that Anakin and Obi-Wan had the same training, knew each other's tricks inside out and what lent the only element of surprise was the ability to go further than propriety. Insanity played a major part in that duel simply because Anakin dared to throw his life away if it meant revenge and Obi-Wan was willing to kill Anakin if necessary. That is, essentially, the major power of the Mustafar duel where none of the other duels had it to that degree.

     
  12. poor yorick

    poor yorick Ex-Mod star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA VIP - Game Host

    Registered:
    Jun 25, 2002
    Perhaps "insanity" is the wrong word . . . originally I'd given it a bunch of other names as well, but it just started to sound redundant and tedious. I have a peculiar, patchwork training that mostly comes down to "whatever works" in the end, but the one principle that was drummed into my head no matter where I went was that you don't point a lethal weapon at someone unless you are truly willing to kill or die. A deterrent isn't a deterrent if it's clear you won't use it. If it's obvious you won't use it, someone will take it away from you, and use it against you--which is bad. I don't live in a mental space where "kill or die" is a normal set of options, so even approximating it for sparring against someone who plays rough requires a kind of break from my usual reality. More polite terms for the same thing would be "focus," "single-mindedness," or even "zazen." More emotion-laden words might be "battle fury" or, well, "insanity." The word "insanity" fits the rolling-on-the-ground fellow particularly well, so I went with that. Sometimes you just look into his eyes and he ain't right. :p If you're really going to fight with the intent to win, I don't think you can do it without an absolutely-focused mental state, and the person who manages to immerse themselves most deeply in that has got an edge--even if they're a little old lady. (I've met little old ladies who could run off fit young guys with The Glare of Death.) :p

    There are as many ways and reasons to fight as there are to do anything else--my hope was just to answer sabarte's question about factors other than physical strength that could affect the outcome of a saber fight. Since we're all fanfic authors here and there's nothing wrong with our powers of invention, I figured that you guys would have guesses as good as mine in the realm of things I'd never experienced. All I could offer was the experience I had, tempered with caveats about how duct tape, foam, and PVC do not actually make a lightsaber.

     
  13. 1Yodimus_Prime

    1Yodimus_Prime Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 13, 2004
    You start what looks like some kind of demented downward attack at your opponent's foot, and then when they insinctively react by moving to a low block, you let the tip of your sword bounce off the floor. It will get knocked up at an angle, and generally hits the person in the thigh or hip, some 12"-18" higher than they were expecting.
    - This 'death from above' thing sounds similar to a move I have my Kemp character use later on in the story (from the scene where he kills his master). I figured generating your sword's momentum in a direction opposite to the one you intend to attack in would be an extremely useful way to put your opponent off balance, which is essentially what you'd be doing by ricocheting your blade off the ground. But, he fights with a sword, so that sort of thing would work. Like you said - lightsabers don't really bounce all that much.

    I'm actually a relatively short guy, so I tend to rely on a closeness to the ground when thinking up clever tricks. It's interesting, though, what you said about your approach to sparring someone bigger - that you don't give them a chance to react. I actually do the exact opposite. I rarely initiate the first move. Of course, this is mostly because I'm just really good at judging where to parry. Plus most big guys I've fought have slower reflexes than I do. Two inches and a couple milliseconds, yeah? Haven't had any experience sparring someone my own size, though. Oddly, the only girl I've ever gone up against was taller than me.


    I"ve always wondered about the lightsaber though. For something with such an odd balance, with such odd properties for a sword...there's gotta be some really crazy stuff you can do with it. Stuff that would make the 'death from above' trick look standard and boring. Like - I wonder how many moves we're missing out on because our own body is in the way, and we can't turn off our blade to continue a spin..
    Or for that matter, how would you even handle a sword whose center of gravity is beneath the top of the hilt?
     
  14. 1Yodimus_Prime

    1Yodimus_Prime Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 13, 2004
    J_L - By the way, I love Samaurai Jack. So the idea that I may have written something that sounds like that show is quite a compliment. Thanks
     
  15. Kidan

    Kidan TFN EU Staff star 5 VIP

    Registered:
    Jul 20, 2003
    Those are very interesting points. i know try to ensure that most of what I write tends to be things that are possible with a real sword (except for the damage the attacks do)....and I will get out one of mine to test with, but that does beg the question on what type of moves could be acheived with a lightsaber which a katana or a rapier just couldn't do here in the real world. And conversely, how many things that we're putting into stories probably shouldn't be because it is a lightsaber and not a weapon of metal (such as the bouncing blade trick described above)....
     
  16. Jennifer_Lyn

    Jennifer_Lyn Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 8, 2005
    ophelia, Ish, Yod and Kidan! you all brought up tremendous points and have given me a lot of food for thought. the only bit of sparring/training i've had is quite minimal and mostly hand to hand, so this is all great information.

    thank you so much for sharing it!
     
  17. lightsaber_index

    lightsaber_index Jedi Youngling

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2006
    I hadn't thought about it until Yod mentioned it, but the center of gravity on a lightsaber can really effect the way one wields it. It is essentially a hilt with a shaft of light coming from it. Granted, that's plasma-heated, ouchy-burny light, but weightles nonetheless.

    I'm putting out this topic, to keep things going for a little bit here. I'm thinking we'll start up with some kind of challenge in September and do one once a month from there out.

    So, moving on here:

    Let's go over the more traditional, but often less thought of, techniques one could use in a duel. Wielding a plasma weapon with an 'off' switch requires one to rethink the rules so throw out most of what you thought you knew about dueling and grab a hilt from the pile of training sabers at the door there and give them a shot. Don't worry, they'll just sting a little.

    And just to keep you all motivated, give me 31. One for each day until a challenge is announced.

    ~.~

    Don't forget people! The PM box is open and ready to index your lightsaber fics!
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.