Percy's Forge - Latest Inventions

Though I have done a miserable job of chronincling it, Percy has certainly not left his forge idle in the past couple of months. Indeed, quite the opposite, I'm excited to say. I always knew he was one for putting things together and so forth, and this PVC weapon making seems to have taken a firm hold of his imagination and creativity.

I bought him the red tassle from Jo-Ann's.

First he made the spear. It's a fairly easy design, which I have given the dimensions for in the post before this one, but cool noentheless. He and I actually started choreographing a fight scene between a spearman and a swordfighter. At present it is far too hot to go outside and continue it, but I'm sure we'll pick up again at a later date.

Then, a little bit ago we watched the 2002 version of The Count of Monte Cristo. I personally really like that version (minus a couple of scenes for obvious reasons). The acting, cinematography, and especially the swordfights are all great. Soon after watching it, Percy decided he wanted to come up with a PVC Rapier design, and spent quite a bit of time contemplating how to do this before we actually went to Home Depot and bought the pieces he'd decided he needed. I must admit the result impressed me more than I thought it would.

Percy's first rapier.



Blue crusader coloring.

Obviously the basket hilt was the only hilt Percy could make using PVC. At least at the moment, with the tools he has. The one in the picture has the one and a half inch rim on the hilt, but he made another one where he sawed that rim off. Unfortunately, that one sufffered an accident (*cough*Seph.*cough*) and cannot make an appearance at the moment.

So! While we were on vacation, Percy taught Dana how to make some of the basic PVC swords, and in the process forged a broadsword. Since none of us really needed another weapon, he decided to have fun with the duct tape design on it. At the same time, Dana got creative with his sword's coloring, as well. However, I haven't gotten pictures of Dana's sword yet (or the Lance-Blade, another sword variant I'll discuss later), but if I can remember, I'll do it tonight.

And now for my favorite. I was browsing pinterest some while ago when I came across a tutorial for how to make a "Brave Little Miss PVC Bow and Arrow." It consisted of a very small, simple bow made of PVC that fired dowel rods tipped with giant wads of foam in the shape of arrowheads. Yeah. I told Percy about it anyways, he did a very brief perusal of the how-to, then went off and came up with his own design. Once again, I confess to not have had as much faith in his abilities as I should have. The bow he made not only looks awesome, but actually fires. I have an awesome little brother.

He's still figuring out how to make arrows that will fly straight, but I've learned my lesson by now and have no doubt he'll have a working prototype soon. There's a video I found on youtube for how to make functioning arrows for a modern recurve, so he's going to look into that. Plus I need to figure out (or ask Lynn to) how to make a quiver for when he learns how to do the arrows.

Have no fear! If and when he makes another bow, I'm GOING to make a tutorial for it because it's too cool for me not to. I'll do the same thing for the rapier, as well. Promise.

The stack of PVC weaponry in the corner of the boys' chambers is growing in both number and diversity. When we move back up to Illinois near the forest preserve, we are going to have a full arsenal for our Imagination Games.

I can't wait.

Dia duit,
~Penny

Improv Characters and Ponderings on Personality Bases

There are two ways to get Percy to carry on a conversation: talk about something he's interested in and leave out 'yes' and 'no' questions, or take him for a walk. He's very much like my Dad in that once you get his legs moving, his mouth starts moving, too.

Percy and I conspiring.

So he and Seph take turns coming with me when I walk my dog, Gypsy. One day when it was Percy's turn, we started on the subject of acting. Now, it must be understood that I dislike acting. A lot. Mostly because I stink at it. That being said, I have no problem -- and actually enjoy -- our Imagination Games.

But that's a form of acting, right?

Well, to me, it's not quite the same. When acting, it's your job to portray the character you've been assigned. In Imagination Games, you get to pick which character to portray, and also have the freedom to develop that character on your own, around your own capabilities and personality. You are the character, you don't have to become the character beause the character is just you in a different life. All you have to do is toss in a few quirks to make your character slightly different from the real you, but even still you're not constrained by script pressure to be a character that's been created with a completely different mindset as yourself.

 This is when we hit upon the idea of personality bases. See, each of us in our group has a set of Improv Characters. These are characters we've made up or adopted from old legends during various games (e.g. Robin Hood, Camille, King Arthur, Fayre and Dascah Grey...) and kept around to re-use in other games. Got that? Okay. In examining the various characters that Percy and I have, we came across similar patterns for each of them, with slight differences. Boiling things down, we came up with the idea of personality bases.

Basically, when you're coming into an Imagination Game with a completely new character, you have to go off some established cliche as a starting point for how your character is going to develop. We called these personality bases. I'll give an example. I personally can play either a villain or a hero with no difficulty switching from one to the other. But one thing I'm not so good at is playing a perfectly cold, stone faced villain. I simply cannot do it. I am far too visually expressive, without intending to be, to be able to pull it off. So instead of starting from the cold villain base, I start from the misunderstood villain base. This gives me much more leeway to be flustered, smile, and laugh, even, while still being either completely heartless or else heartless enough to be villainous. I'm one of those villains you think you have a chance of turning, but who's always too hurt or too stubborn, in the end, to actually change sides. This comes all from the misunderstood villain base, one that allows for little weaknesses and does not require an immoveable demeanor.

For heroes, my base is still on the weaker end of things. I often use an impulsive hero base. Strategically, I'm not very spectacular (XD), but I cannot stand doing nothing, especially when it's my team member/brother/friend/etc. on the line. One of the others I have is the ringleader hero base. This comes from being naturally bossy, and talent for getting others to go along with my schemes.

Now Percy on the other hand often starts with the warrior base, whether hero or villain. He's a fighter right from the start, and stays one right to the end, win or lose. He makes quick decisions based on his own assessment of situations, which often lands him as a mercenary or wandering warrior character, though he will work on teams sometimes, as well.

A personality base is the dumbed down, oversimplified cliche description of a given character type. From there, you can layer histories, tendencies, quirks, and skills over top to make the character ultimately original. As of yet we haven't compiled a list of common personality bases, but we'll do it sometime, and I'll post it here.

Just some food for thought. As we have grown older, our Imagination Games have become more and more orginized. In the end, however, our goal is just to have fun. The whole reason we enjoy these games so much is because we love the comraderie, the story (most of us are writers), and, of course, the costumes and sword fights.

Yeah. The sword fights are awesome.

Dia duit,
~Penny

Introducing Percival Drake

I know I've already technically introduced Percy at the beginning of the PVC Pipe sword tutorial, but I really ought to do it properly. So here he is: Percival Drake, my younger brother by a couple years. As you know, he handles our Forge, making the medieval weaponry we use when we play. As well as that, he likes to fiddle around with duct tape, and has constructed several back sheathes for our swords. He's a bit more reserved, personality wise, which is why he often gets picked to play either the mysterious lone warrior or the villain in our games.

I love him to pieces. He's an awesome brother.

It was Percy's birthday the other day, and I bought him a tunic and belt as presents. Well, they arrived a week late, since I kept forgetting to actually place the order, but oh well. So I bought these items from YourDressmaker.com, the same place Dana got his kilt from. The tunic is a dark blue version of the Tall Lace-Up Shirt No.15.

"This shirt was developed in response to customer requests for a half-lace-up shirt with a longer hem. Like our similar tops, this design fits a wide variety of looks and epochs from pirate to peasant to renaissance poet. The 100% natural cotton is a favorite fabric with customers and provides an authentically rustic look with contemporary ease of care and comfort." [Taken from description of Tall Lace-Up Shirt No.15.]

The belt is the Medieval/Celtic belt No.1. It's real leather, and only cost $26. The tunic cost nearer forty dollars, but both of them are very much worth the money. I didn't get the tunic tailored to Percy's exact measurements -- that would have given away the surprise -- so I guessed and got him a medium. It fits him very well; quite a relief!

The hood he's wearing in the picture is one that I'd made him a while back for a Robin Hood Imagination Game we played a couple years ago. That back sheathe he made is constructed of duct tape, and his claymore is one of our numerous PVC pipe swords he made. As you can see the tunic falls to the lower thigh a little bit above the knees in length, and has a slit on either side that goes to about mid thigh to allow more ease of movement. I didn't manage to get a good shot of the lace up on the front because his back sheathe is in the way, but if you visit the link to this tunic, you'll be able to see it. It's made of lightweight, sturdy material that looks and feels like it will hold up very well even when we move back up to Illinois and play in the forest near our house.

In short, he's happy with it, I'm happy with it.... Percy had a very happy birthday. ^.^

Dia duit,
~Penny