posted
I'm an only child, and my family moved around a lot. I was 14 years old when my mother convinced me to read EG. I had just moved to Minnesota from the San Fernando Valley. Everything and everyone I knew was gone, and I didn't belong in a rural town of 300.
Ender's Game changed my life. I was never a reader, and I started in with an unhealthy passion, spending a whole summer with my nose in a book, OSC showing me worlds I had never known existed.
I tried once, as teenager to tell Mr. Card he was my hero by email (don't ask me how I got it or what it is, I don't know anymore). He wrote back (!!!!) and said it was nice to say, but it was Ender who was my hero not him, a humble teller of tales.
I never thought of Ender as a character, I always saw myself in my mind's eye when reading Ender's Game. I was another gifted, isolated youth, our surroundings were worlds away, but the reality of being alone and different was real enough. It was not the story of EG that changed me, it was knowing that someone else understood what it was like to be me that changed me.
The problems his characters delt with were not my problems, but every story showed me a little more of how to live in a world of more questions than answers.
Orson Scott Card gave my dreams permission to live not only in my head, but in the real world. Fantasy that did not deny the reality of being human.
And once I realized my dreams could live outside my head, I realized I could change the world with my dreams, or at least my world.
I started making a conscience effort to live my ideals and not simply react to the world around me. Being a gifted, only child living with one foot in the adult world and one in the world of children had left me confused to the rules of life. I made up my own.
Maybe I would have found something else to help me take the first steps towards relating to humanity, but all I know is that I was in a dark place, and Mr. Card's stories, Mr. Card's ideals helped me.
My life is not a perfect one, far from it, but I live in it as a citizen instead of an outsider because of Orson Scott Card.
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
Welcome, Stone_Wolf !! I hope you enjoy Hatrack Forum.
Well, this is a welcome change from the standard "I love your fiction yet hate your columns" threads we've seen so much of.
I'm glad you had a chance to express the difference Card's work meant to your life, both earlier and now. I'm sure it meant a lot to him, as it would to any writer.
How long have you been into SCA? Have you enjoyed it? I've often thought of joining a local chapter but never taken the plunge.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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Thanks for the welcome....do I enjoy the SCA? Come on, what's not to enjoy? I do both rapier and heavy, and they are both a blast in the pants! SCA is very newb friendly, loaner gear and lots of good people willing to help. I suggest looking up where the local meeting place is for sword practice (or sewing if that's your thing) and just show up. Everyone is willing to answer your questions. But be careful, they can suck away every single solitary second of your free time.
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
Thanks for the quick response, Stone_Wolf. How much of the sword-play is practice, and how much is for real stakes? According to Larry Niven et al in Fallen Angels, sword fights (presumeably with blunted swords?) are fought to determine who will be the head of chapters. Is this true? Or is it fictional? How are chapter heads and other titles in SCA chosen?
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: I'm an only child, and my family moved around a lot. I was 14 years old when my mother convinced me to read EG. I had just moved to Minnesota from the San Fernando Valley. Everything and everyone I knew was gone, and I didn't belong in a rural town of 300.
Ender's Game changed my life. [etc]
Wow, moving from S. Cal to a town with 300 people, what a drastic shift, especially when you were a teenager. It's not surprising a book that was important to you made such an impact.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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Well, in the Kingdom of Caid (Southern California, Southern Nevada and Hawaii) there is a royal turny(for heavy), if you win, you are king for six months. Heavy weapons you fight with one and a half inch ratan (kinda like bamboo, used for outdoor furniture) because it won't splinter, it turns into hay. Most "swords" have a basket hilt to protect the hand and are covered in duct tape (different colors to signify the edge) and a tip made of foam for thrusting. You can make almost anything you want, axes, warhammers, polearms, thrown weapons, etc etc etc. Most people fight sword and board, i.e. sword and shield, but some fight "two stick", and some use a sword and spear. You have to have armor for your knees, elbows, crotch, kidneys, throat and a head. Most wear more, but that's what you need. Of course it's not that simple. Did I mention lender gear?
Anyway, once or twice a week (depends on the area) there's a fighter practice. Some have separate practice for rapier and heavy and often there's no love lost between them.
Anyway anyway, there are events, tournemnts, and wars. Wars everyone separates into two sides (usually determined by geography) and then all hell breaks loose. Or tourny, they set up individual battles.
They do great things at wars like catipulting bundles of socer balls into the middle of a fight, and that simulates siege weapons. Anyone the bundle touchs is instantly dead.
For rapier, you can use rubber band guns, which simulate muskets. Oh, and for rapier, you use actual swords with blunted edges and tip with a rubber tip on the end. You need a puncture proof chest protector (light leather or stacked cloth), a neck guard or gorget (gore-shay), a cup and a fencing mask. Pretty much except for the "personal protection" they have lender gear for everything you need.
You can be knighted by a king, but you have to swear frealty (sp) and win a tourny or something.
posted
Stone Wolf I live in the west Kingdom the only events i've been to was Estrella war in adtenvelt Kingdom. Ive gone every year since my freind tom invited me 4 years ago. Estrella war is really fun.
Posts: 513 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
Personally, I think spending a summer with your nose in a book is PERFECT, not an unhealthy passion at all. As I kid I got so buried in books that I didn't even hear calls to dinner. I have to be shaken, literally, to notice what was going on around me.
I'm glad when something I wrote can provide something that a reader is hungry for - and that helps make her or his life better. No book and no author can do that for EVERYBODY, but it's way cool to find out that my work did that for anybody! <grin>.
As for SCA, I was part of the gatherings in Salt Lake City back in the late seventies - I was Friar Orison, and I would write bawdy poetry to recite at gatherings. It's been so long now that I can't even remember the name shire we were part of then. But I had a great time and remember my SCA days fondly. The poems, of course, are unprintable.
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Orson Scott Card: Personally, I think spending a summer with your nose in a book is PERFECT, not an unhealthy passion at all. As I kid I got so buried in books that I didn't even hear calls to dinner. I have to be shaken, literally, to notice what was going on around me.
It reminds me when i first started reading ender's game. I was reading during lunch time during school. I was in the back in the lunch room were no one really goes/can be seen well. I got so into the book that i accidently missed two one my classes. Posts: 72 | Registered: Nov 2004
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